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).
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.
Seems incredibly likely that in 5 years every small linux shop has an AI router endpoint like openrouter, but router.smalllinuxshop.net or something with open models. And if there aren't open models anymore ... then openrouter won't exist anymore either.
Hell, I'd be disappointed if half of them don't have one today.
> 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.
God, no, I hate how stripe went from a wonder child in 2014 with its propaganda spiel about “we pay all employees 70k/year” to what it is now, PayPal of the 2010s.
Ramp Router: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987253