Stripe in talks to buy OpenRouter for ~10B

(wsj.com)

51 points | by htrp 9 hours ago ago

16 comments

  • chromatin 8 hours ago ago

    Extremely relevant:

    Ramp Router: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987253

    • claw-el an hour ago ago

      Maybe there were more than 1 bidder for OpenRouter… Regardless, a business like OpenRouter may be best in the form of a complement product of something else (like payment processing).

  • BobbyTables2 6 hours ago ago

    Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just spend $1B reimplementing it?

    (Of course that is absurd, $10M would be plenty)

    • sds357 6 hours ago ago

      The value is in the existing customers, isn't it? Not so much the product.

      • kennywinker 3 hours ago ago

        What percentage of the potential market does openrouter have? Like even if they have 100% of today’s customers, they probably have like 3% of 5-years-from-now’s customers.

        • BobbyTables2 2 hours ago ago

          Seems like it’s also assuming in 5 years from now people will still want an AI router.

          How many people even use more than one search engine?

          A “search engine router” wouldn’t be very successful…

          If AI tokens become unlimited like cell phone minutes, why bother routing?

    • 3 hours ago ago
      [deleted]
    • dnnehgf 2 hours ago ago

      quick you are a saas company pulling 3b cash annually how do you deploy it

  • Taikhoom2010 8 hours ago ago
    • evenhash 8 hours ago ago

      > it has clear platform dynamics. It is an aggregator of AI models, and once enterprises use it, that creates switching costs since all your AI expense is in one place: logs, budgets, etc, so switching would be painful and generally not make a lot of sense.

      Clearly what we need is a Router Router, to avoid router lock-in.

      • jackb4040 6 hours ago ago

        You jest but this is basically exactly what happened in crypto.

  • thomasingalls 8 hours ago ago

    Do they have to

  • subarctic 8 hours ago ago

    Interesting. I guess it fits since Openrouter's main value is in consolidating payment to all these different model providers

  • zb3 7 hours ago ago

    Does it mean openrouter can't sustain on its own? If so, bad news, new owner 'd surely want it to be profitable, so expect price hike.. :<

    • BobbyTables2 2 hours ago ago

      Do sustainable tech startups actually exist?

  • fractorial 5 hours ago ago

    Please, no.