OpenRouter is basically a payment system for LLM tokens. Yes, it does route TCP connections from you to an inference providers' cloud, too, but what is way more important is that it routes money from your wallet to inference providers'wallets.

The latter is the core business of Stripe. For them, buying OpenRouter to become the premier channel for LLM token money makes perfect sense. At least if you assume that the current state of labs offering heavily subsidized subscriptions directly is only temporary and the future lies in people buying tokens and switching between models fluidly - and I consider that the future, in light of the recent developments with Kimi K3.

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dd8601fn 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Are they doing something novel there?

I had assumed they’re just reselling inference, where they’re “routing money” the way Walmart is “routing money” from my wallet to whoever makes Cheez-Its.

Are they doing something unique from resellers there?

	▲	Slartie 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They are reselling inference. That is not a novel concept, indeed, a stationary merchant like Walmart does conceptually the same. Although since inference doesn't require any stockkeeping, I would rather compare it to Amazon Marketplace. But it's been novel for inference services when OpenRouter was founded. And nowadays they have a considerable foothold in the market. There are competitors, but the one everyone knows is OpenRouter. And since they do not need to maintain any stock, don't need to do anything with queries but route them through 1:1, the most complex thing they do from a business perspective is that they collect your money and route the right amounts to various inference providers that served you.