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Comment by orangedog | Hacker News Reader

7B for a wrapper.

Stripe isn’t exactly a dumb company. When someone smart does something seemingly super dumb, more likely than not you’re the one missing something, not them. It’s an opportunity to ask, “what am I missing?”, and learn from it.

I didn't say it was super dumb, it was more of a reflection on that's how much a wrapper is worth today.

> I didn't say it was super dumb, it was more of a reflection on that's how much a wrapper is worth today.

Are you sure that the value is in the wrapper and not rather in the fact that investors who invested into OpenRouter also invested into companies that can buy OpenRouter? ;-)

It is not just the software. Let's not forget the existing customer base, an opportunity cost to build something as mature as openrouter (even with LLMs). Perhaps it is worth it for them.

> Stripe isn’t exactly a dumb company.

I guess hardly anybody claims that. I think the suspicion is rather about whether there exist some other "puppetmasters" (e.g. venture capitalists) who pressured Stripe into buying OpenRouter.

Stripe is a wrapper too. Single API key and unified DX atop a world of divergent providers.

Adding support to yet another LLM API provider is order of magnitude easier (at least) than adding anything in finance domain

For a wrapper that collects a bunch of data. Think of this purchase like Zucks investment in ScaleAI.

For traction...

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