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Posted by rvz 19 hours ago

OpenRouter is joining Stripe(openrouter.ai)
Previously: Stripe will reportedly acquire OpenRouter for $7B+ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323381
887 points | 454 commentspage 4
rwiteshbera 4 hours ago||
Hopefully it will be good. I have started using openrouter.
funlang 10 hours ago||
Congrats to the OpenRouter team! Been using it since the early days — the ability to try every new model without creating 20 different accounts is still the killer feature. Hope Stripe gives you the resources to keep building.
johnnyApplePRNG 14 hours ago||
Congrats, OpenRouter is a great product!

I check it's model rankings and prices daily. The charts are great. Please never change!

On another note... I'm surprised OpenAI didn't buy them.

I'm even more surprised OpenAI is giving exclusive discounts on openrouter, essentially encouraging the few API customers they had onto a much larger, cheaper and richer marketplace.

mNovak 13 hours ago||
Cynically, I suspect oAI is subsidizing OR tokens to manipulate perceived traction, since OR usage stats get widely publicized
HDBaseT 13 hours ago||
What exactly does this mean? You can verify the pricing differences from their official API vs. OpenRouter.

If you have some grand conspiracy, you should be able to validate it. Yes, on occasion, OpenAI has offered Discounts on their API.

infinitezest 13 hours ago||
> please never change I've got bad news for you...
happybox2016 4 hours ago||
Raw Cookie header test - OpenRouter + Stripe API limits?
wxw 18 hours ago||
> And as we grow, we will relentlessly aim to preserve the velocity, agility, efficiency, and talent density of the 90-person startup that we are today.

Echoes of WhatsApp. Huge congrats to the team!

yipinwong 18 hours ago||
Stripe is a high-velocity environment. OpenRouter (OR) is a startup so might move fast, but unsure if OR can handle the velocity with corporate guardrails put in place already.

Any companies that are bought go through culture crashes, and I am interested in how this plays out.

aleqs 17 hours ago||
In what way is Stripe a 'high-velocity environment' ?
yipinwong 16 hours ago||
I was saying, they grill you hard in a nicest possible way
aleqs 16 hours ago||
They grill their engineers for the mistakes of their incompetent leadership, that's true.
jambalaya8 18 hours ago||
man, whatsapp was sure something in early 2017 though.
ceroxylon 12 hours ago||
The service has been 10/10, everything has felt easy and natural since the start and continually improving. I often learn about new models from OR, and have been a happy customer for years. Kudos for getting the proper recognition, $8B is a fair price in 2026 imo.
Exoristos 17 hours ago||
Routing seems to face a similar future as the ever-changing trends in controlling coding agents: you know, context engineering, loop engineering, etc. --Which is that OpenAI and Anthropic quickly seem to release a better way of doing it, in their own products' harnessing, and which third-party and personal solutions will only conflict with.
temp7000 3 hours ago||
"inference is quickly becoming the largest line item for every company." — not really?

"that will remain essential in a post-AGI economy." — ooof. The magical future economy

dwa3592 18 hours ago|
I guess this makes sense for the scenario when we will use machine intelligence as a currency, maybe 15-20 years from now? - like I can pay 15 minutes of inference for a dozen bananas? and the banana seller uses those 15 minutes to do banana shelling or removing weeds from their farms or whatever i guess when robots are doing everything. right??
yipinwong 18 hours ago||
This won't work because you consider humans as a logical being (Homosapiens is a misnormer).

People will revolt first should one have to trade physical goods (such as food that we need for daily lives) with computing power.

It only takes a few people to incite.

dwa3592 18 hours ago||
i like what you did with misnormer. it's like pobody's nerfect.

you are right, there will be revolt definitely. i think computing power will replace a lot of things though.

yipinwong 16 hours ago||
I agree that the computing power will replace not just softwares and also as many phycial work via robots. I am not smart enough to see further what else are disposable or replaceable
jonahx 18 hours ago|||
I think this is exactly the bet they're making.

I was totally confused by what connected the two companies until I realized "tokens" are basically a nascent, and rapidly growing, "currency".

rossdavidh 18 hours ago|||
Overthinking it. "You have money and need to seem AIish for the stock market, we want real money". You notice they don't do this deal in tokens, they do it in fiat currency.
mbreese 18 hours ago|||
Except that tokens aren’t completely fungible yet. But, I think we’re approaching the point where it is close enough to be a “proof of work” analog.
bluefirebrand 18 hours ago||
I hope we aren't on track for this future and if we are I hope a substantial number of people rebel.

This is among the more hellish futures I can imagine. Our worth as people reduced to how much access we have to compute. Gross.

dwa3592 18 hours ago|||
I hope not;

there are a few assumptions in this future- the biggest one is - we will have to attain a baseline intelligence which is useful for everyone which is not true today. even fable fumbles hard!!

second is that everyone will have to own a medium to use this intelligence (aka robots). like a currency is useless if you can't use it.

to me this is the least daunting scenario. all other scenarios lead to mass slavery.

bluefirebrand 18 hours ago||
> the biggest one is - we will have to attain a baseline intelligence which is useful for everyone which is not true today

That's not the biggest assumption.

The biggest assumption I see is that the population will have the baseline understanding of how to operate in this new paradigm, which seems impossible given how useless many people still are with computers

Incidentally, this is also why I think Bitcoin is such a non-starter for most people

heurist 17 hours ago||||
It doesn't make much sense as compute isn't all that scarce (relative to other commodities) and will be less so in 15 years.
dwa3592 17 hours ago||
Does it have to be scarce for it to become a currency? It just needs to be regulated which I think it will be.
nemomarx 18 hours ago|||
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