alt Hacker NewsThey already sell API access to the model on Google/Microsoft/Amazon cloud. OpenRouter is the same deal. Note that the labs are not giving out model weights to OpenRouter. They are just selling tokens.
They already sell API access to the model on Google/Microsoft/Amazon cloud. OpenRouter is the same deal. Note that the labs are not giving out model weights to OpenRouter. They are just selling tokens.
OpenAI/Anthropic/etc don’t establish the direct customer relationship.
And OpenRouter can steer traffic away from those labs over to their own model.
The major labs don’t get personalized data about the user to train on, since it’s aggregated.
Which is just some of the reasons why strategically it doesn’t seem in their best interest to allow a middle person.