OpenRouter | He sold his 2.2 billion fortune before the NFT crash and then quickly moved into the hottest AI track

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Author: Diya Fan

In 2022, a Stanford graduate’s net worth once exceeded $2 billion.

He created OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, valued at $13.3 billion.

Just a few months before the NFT bubble burst, he made a more critical decision to leave.

Two years later, his new company grew tenfold in seven months, securing investments from a16z, Sequoia, and Menlo, with a valuation of $500 million.

His name is Alex Atallah. His new company is OpenRouter.

This is a story about timing and methodology replication.

Who is OpenRouter? What does it do?

If you are an AI application developer, you must know the name OpenRouter. Its main function is to help developers solve the pain of model switching:

Want to code with Claude but find it often lacks capacity

Want to analyze with GPT but the cost makes you hesitate

Want to try open-source models but find you need to rewrite a new API integration

Each model vendor’s API is different. Every time you switch models, you have to modify your code.

OpenRouter’s function is similar to Ctrip, bringing all airlines into one app.

One API, access to 300+ models. 60+ providers. Switch models? Change one line of code.

OpenRouter as a multi-model aggregation layer

Two startups, same methodology

Before starting his entrepreneurial journey, Alex Atallah already had a hardcore software background: Stanford Computer Science, Palantir engineer, co-founder and CTO of OpenSea…

Alex Atallah (left), co-founder of OpenSea, with Devin Finzer (right)

He explained the commonality of his two startups on a podcast:

“OpenSea organized this very heterogeneous inventory and put it together in one place… You see a lot of those similarities with how AI works today.” (OpenSea consolidated a chaotic NFT inventory… AI today is similar.)

What is his methodology?

Find a “fragmented ecosystem,” then build an “aggregation layer.”

NFT era: different metadata standards → OpenSea aggregation

AI era: different API standards → OpenRouter aggregation

Alex once said in a podcast that left a deep impression on me: if you can train a large AI model for only $600, then in the future, there could be tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of models. At that point, they will need their own ‘market.’

Early 2023, this was an extremely contrarian view. The mainstream narrative then was: OpenAI is far ahead, and other models are just followers.

But Alex was right.

Today, there are over a thousand open-source models alone. Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek… new players emerge every few weeks.

In a world of explosive model growth, an “aggregation layer” is needed. That’s exactly where OpenRouter fits.

An underestimated huge market

Behind OpenRouter’s success is the visible trend in the AI market: “reasoning” will replace “training” as the main force.

The difference between reasoning and training, and the future trend of this market, was clearly explained in Groq’s recent analysis. Feel free to check it out.

COO Chris Clark’s perspective for reference:

“We believe that inference costs will eclipse salaries as the dominant operating expense for most knowledge-based companies over the next five to 10 years.” (We believe that in the next 5-10 years, inference costs will surpass wages, becoming the largest operational expense for knowledge-based companies.)

This can actually be seen from OpenRouter’s own data.

OpenRouter’s token consumption approaching 8 trillion

The well-known AI model “public review”

As an early participant in this track, OpenRouter has an exclusive advantage: a leaderboard.

After processing over 100 trillion tokens, they know:

Which model is best at coding

Which model offers the best value

Which model suddenly excels at specific tasks

This leaderboard has become an important industry reference and is highly recognized in the developer community.

What’s even more incredible? In April 2025, a mysterious model called “Quasar Alpha” was launched on OpenRouter.

A few days later, everyone found out: it’s GPT-4.1, exclusively launched by OpenAI on OpenRouter.

Because OpenRouter has a killer asset: the largest multi-model usage dataset on the internet.

Every day, millions of developers call different models here. OpenRouter knows:

Which model performs best for which task

Which provider is most stable

When is the cheapest time

These data have made the most authoritative LLM leaderboard in the industry. According to Menlo Ventures, even Andrej Karpathy (former Tesla AI director, co-founder of OpenAI) has publicly recommended it.

Once the data flywheel starts, it’s hard for latecomers to catch up.

Andrej Karpathy mentioned OpenRouter LLM rankings on X

How does OpenRouter make money?

OpenRouter’s business model is relatively simple: you spend $100 on models, they take $5.

The pricing from model vendors is passed directly; they earn “toll fees,” not “margin.”

This model aligns with Western intermediary business practices:

Maintain neutrality: if OpenRouter has its own models, would you trust its leaderboard?

Grow naturally with the market: the bigger the AI market, the more revenue they generate

Network effects: more users → more data → more valuable leaderboard → more users

Alex’s words: “We want developers to not feel vendor lock-in. We want them to feel like they have choice and they can use the best intelligence, even if they didn’t before.” (We don’t want developers to be vendor-locked. We want them to have choices and access to the best intelligence at any time.)

Financial data (disclosed)

8 people, nearly $100 million GMV annually.

This person’s efficiency is among the top in similar startups.

Large market, small space

After highlighting the advantages, it’s necessary to discuss some issues with this model:

OpenRouter’s core strengths are “data” and “community,” and the flywheel has started turning (more users → better data → more valuable leaderboard), but this model also means its ecosystem’s prosperity depends heavily on the growth of small and medium developers.

This business cannot thrive without more small and medium developers because they lack the time for aggregation development and the scale to negotiate prices with AI vendors, so they need an intermediary.

For large companies, it might have some value during testing, but once scaled, they will surpass it.

In fact, even medium-sized projects with larger usage will want to bypass it, such as an open-source alternative called LiteLLM, which is free and self-deployable.

Cost-sensitive developers will ask: “Why give you 5%?”

If competition intensifies, this commission rate could drop to 3%, or even 2%.

Whether it can sustain the currently disclosed 100x high valuation remains uncertain.

Of course, it is still in early stages and will continue to grow rapidly; its upper limit is a question to consider in analysis.

One-minute overview of OpenRouter

Q1: What is OpenRouter?

OpenRouter is a large language model (LLM) API aggregation platform. Through a single API interface, developers can access over 300 models (including GPT-4, Claude, Llama, etc.) without integrating each vendor’s API separately.

Q2: How is OpenRouter different from LiteLLM?

Both provide LLM API aggregation, but with different models. OpenRouter is a managed SaaS charging a 5% commission; LiteLLM is open-source, deployable by oneself, with no fee. OpenRouter’s advantage is its public model leaderboard and broader provider coverage.

Q3: Who is the founder of OpenRouter?

Alex Atallah, Stanford Computer Science graduate, former co-founder and CTO of OpenSea (the world’s largest NFT marketplace). He left OpenSea in 2022 and founded OpenRouter in 2023. His personal net worth once exceeded $2 billion.

Q4: How much funding has OpenRouter raised?

In June 2025, OpenRouter completed a total of $40 million in funding (seed + Series A), led by a16z and Menlo Ventures, with Sequoia participating, and a valuation of about $500 million.

Q5: Why does OpenAI test new models on OpenRouter?

According to OpenRouter, OpenAI has tested new models anonymously on its platform to gather unbiased developer feedback. This indicates that the OpenRouter community has some influence in the industry.