[wg0]

Do you really need VC money to put a proxy in front of other APIs? For what exactly? Marketing? What exactly you want to maket? You're already known.

Infrastructure? For proxying requests more infrastructure? You could just pay Cloudflare.

More engineers? But you yourself are the stret seller for the same snake oil that engineers aren't anymore necessary

So what that 100 million dollars are for?

[svnt]

They are because they can, because it serves as social proof, which convinces their customers that they are doing something of deeper value. Then in reality they will use it to develop channels preparing to use their customers (and the data customers trust them with) as the product in the future.

[wg0]

That signals the reverse that they might jack up prices at any time for their 10x returns for the investors. How does that instil any confidence at all?

[svnt]

As I see the perspective of a typical vp champion/customer/middle manager at a large org that buys their services: if my vendor increases their prices that is usually an indication they have something of value and things are going well. It is a negotiation, buy or build business choices, not embarrassing. If my vendor doesn’t raise, and then they cease to exist, or become so weak that a competitor of mine can buy them out, then I am actually in an embarrassing place.

My main job in this conception is to not be in an embarrassing place, and grow my budgets and headcount. Prices rising can even help with this, perversely.

[sohzm]

ig this reply by co-founder of openrouter is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48340940