points by root-parent 2 days ago

OpenRouter is the evidence that yes. Its just that the idea is dumb. What you are seeing in VCs salving their own money, buying their investment out with the money they out into more successful ventures.

Look at how the same pools of capital sit on multiple sides of the market: the router, the payment layer, and the model providers... Its all the same club

Investor ---- Economic Overlap

---------------------------------------------------------

Andreessen - OpenRouter, Stripe, OpenAI, Mistral, xAI

Sequoia - OpenRouter, Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI

CapitalG - OpenRouter, Stripe, Google/Alphabet

MenloVentures - OpenRouter, Anthropic

NVentures - OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral

AMP PBC - OpenRouter, Anthropic

vanuatu 1 day ago

Should be easy to build a competitor in a week, pitch to some VCs then have them kingmake you to a $1B exit to another portco then!