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OpenRouter Raises $120M at a $1.3B Valuation
- verdverm 6mo agoI was looking at OpenRouter earlier today, after becoming frustrated with VertexAI. Similar in that they offer a menu of many models, different in that Google is running them and OpenRouter is a proxy. If OpenRouter is not much more than a middle man, what business model are they raising money on? Surveillance?
- dchest 6mo agoThey are a marketplace for model providers, which is quite a nice business model.
- verdverm 6mo agoBeing the middleman is always nice until the need is obviated. My understanding is that this is largely used to cycle through free usage tiers without getting rate-limited. Anonymous Credentials is designed to end that. What makes this preferable to a self hosted or framework built-in version? https://blog.dock.io/anonymous-credentials/ https://blog.dock.io/anonymous-credentials/
- hu3 6mo agoConvenience. They sell very convenient shovels in a goldrush.
- polski-g 6mo agoThey reduce friction to using different models and providers. Don't want to spend 4 hours getting an API key to use Google AI? Use openrouter Don't trust Chinese providers with your data? Use Openrouter and blacklist non-US inference providers.
- njyx 6mo agoSuper convenient for switching out models, and they also play a vetting function. Cool to see a useful service raising!
- njyx 6mo agoA little crazy that Google seems to be the lead investor though...