OpenRouter

Menlo’s account traces OpenRouter to Window, a browser extension launched on April 5, 2023, for using multiple models in web chat applications. Alex Atallah previously co-founded OpenSea and met Louis Vichy on Discord; Chris Clark is a co-founder and chief operating officer.⁠[1]

The OpenRouter name appeared in an April 2023 code commit, followed by an official rebrand on August 10 as a unified interface for language models. It initially supported four models and added a multi-model playground and rankings. Menlo’s retrospective reported fifty-two models and more than 2,000 applications by November.⁠[1]

Menlo invested in OpenRouter’s seed round through Anthology FundAnthology FundAnthology Fund is a $100 million AI investment initiative launched by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic in 2024 and financed by Menlo. It backs early-stage AI companies with capital, Anthropic resources and company-building support, with scope for follow-on investments.Open the full entry, its initiative with AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry. It subsequently led the Series A in May 2025, with Matt MurphyMatt MurphyMatt Murphy is a partner at Menlo Ventures focused on AI infrastructure and enterprise software. He worked at Sun Microsystems and Netboost and spent about fifteen years at Kleiner Perkins before joining Menlo in 2015. His disclosed investments include Anthropic, OpenRouter, Lovable, Harness, Carta and Legora.Open the full entry joining the board and Deedy DasDeedy DasDeedy Das, also known as Debarghya Das, is a partner at Menlo Ventures investing in AI, infrastructure and enterprise software. Previously an engineer at Facebook and Google and an early builder of Glean and Glean Assistant, he helped launch the Anthology Fund with Anthropic.Open the full entry becoming a board observer.⁠[1]

Menlo announced that it had led OpenRouter’s $40 million Series A after an earlier Anthology investment. The announcement reported 2.5 million developers and access to about 400 models through sixty providers at that time.⁠[2]

OpenRouter announced a $113 million Series B led by CapitalG, with participants including NVentures, ServiceNow Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Databricks Ventures, a16z and Menlo. Menlo’s May 26 account said the round had closed in February at a $1.3 billion valuation. OpenRouter said the proceeds would support infrastructure, enterprise capabilities and intelligent routing.⁠[3][4]

Stripe announced an agreement to acquire OpenRouter, citing its ability to route requests across trade-offs in task complexity, price, speed and reliability. OpenRouter said its name, roadmap and existing integrations would continue. The announcement specified customary closing conditions and did not disclose a transaction price.⁠[5][6]

OpenRouter introduced Security Center to inventory API keys across workspaces, show usage, spending limits and expiration, and support bulk disabling, archiving and caps. The announcement made the core center available on all plans, with IP allowlisting for Enterprise organization administrators.⁠[7]

OpenRouter added nine ElevenLabs text-to-speech models and two speech-to-text models, extending applications into spoken output and transcription. The launch included speaker labels and word timestamps, while realtime WebSocket transcription was outside its initial scope.⁠[8]

OpenRouter provides an access layer between applications or agents and model providers. Developers can select models themselves or use routing, while the platform supports provider failover, price and latency trade-offs and multimodal inference. Its catalog, chat interface and usage data support model comparison; automatic routing is one part of the platform.⁠[3][1]

The platform offers workspaces, spend management, policy controls and zero-data-retention options. Its pricing page, accessed in October 2026, lists Free, Standard, Business and Enterprise tiers. Standard and Business are usage-based with platform fees; Enterprise offers features such as single sign-on, contractual service levels and dedicated support. Availability varies by plan.⁠[3][9]

Website: https://openrouter.ai/ (opens in a new window). X: https://x.com/OpenRouter (opens in a new window). LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: https://www.linkedin.com/company/openrouter/ (opens in a new window). YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: https://www.youtube.com/@OpenRouterAI (opens in a new window).⁠[10][11][12][13]