If LLM providers continue grow and become such a standard part of the tech stack of any deployment, this acquisition makes a lot of sense. It's just another payment management system for stripe.

It's fun to see someone being able to exit so well without owning any model.

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therrop 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[flagged]

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root-parent 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The acquisition makes no sense, as most LLM providers only reason not to forbid them right now, is because they were funded by exactly the same VCs as the providers. Go check.

Of all the no moats they are the example of no moat. Its seconds switch to another router if even that is tolerated. And lets not even talk, the lack of compliance in an enterprise environment, and as they defer to providers on that...

But the acquisition makes a LOT of SENSE, if you realize that as the same VCs sit on Stripe, Anthropic, OpenAI and most important OpenRouter. Said VCs have a lot of interest in recovering their money...by pushing one of their companies to buy another one of their own, before LLMs providers financial pressures cut OpenRouter legs.

Is this stuff even legal? I will wait for Patrick Boyle video...

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beambot 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And lets not even talk, the lack of compliance in an enterprise environment, and as they defer to providers on that...

A middleman that adds compliance & regulation while skimming a slice off the top for themselves: You just described credit cards - stripe's core business...

	▲	trollbridge 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Very much the same line of business as Amazon Bedrock except OpenRouter gives more options (choice of where hosted, data retention options and so on).

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nkohari 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You over-estimate the amount of sway investors have on Stripe. If VCs had the influence you're describing, Stripe would have gone public many years ago.