Why OpenRouter is worth $7.5B: a 5.5% toll on every model API call
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-10-21
A Chinese finance video breaks down why AI API router OpenRouter is valued at $7.5B: the money flows through it. Every dollar spent calling models passes through OpenRouter, which takes a 5.5% cut.
- Peer Portkey, which doesn't handle the money, made only $117M (Palo Alto 10-K) — a 60x+ gap
- 5x valuation on money flow, 150x on revenue (investor/media estimates); 200x growth in 18 months, with shareholders doing the justifying
- The founder reports tokens, not revenue
- Cloudflare (5%) and Vercel (0%) have copied the pricing; traffic hasn't followed yet
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