OpenRouter Secures $40 Million to Enhance AI Model Aggregation Services

OpenRouter, founded by former OpenSea CTO Alex Atallah, has successfully raised $40 million to enhance its AI aggregator—a service that provides a routing tool for large language models (LLMs).

The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures, with participation from Sequoia and notable industry angel investors. The company’s valuation has reached $500 million, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

OpenRouter serves as a routing platform for LLMs, accessing hundreds of AI models from various developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. It automatically directs user queries to the most suitable model based on cost, speed, accuracy, and privacy requirements.

The company integrates the AI stack via a single application programming interface (API) and contract, explained Andreessen Horowitz general partner, Anjey Midha.

OpenRouter charges for each request made.

“Output is becoming the fastest-growing expense for forward-thinking companies, often requiring four or more different models to fulfill. Advanced organizations have already faced these challenges and created custom internal gateways. However, they are realizing that making LLMs ‘work seamlessly’ is not an easy task. They’re moving away from in-house solutions toward OpenRouter to focus on their application goals rather than on integrating large language models,” noted CEO Atallah.

According to the startup, OpenRouter’s API is utilized by over a million developers.

Atallah co-founded OpenSea with Devin Finzer in 2018, but stepped away from the NFT market in 2022 to pursue the creation of something new.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that in February, OpenSea developers launched a beta version of a new protocol and announced an upcoming distribution of SEA tokens.