OpenRouter raised $113M led by CapitalG, a source says at a $1.3B valuation, and now processes 25T tokens across 400+ models weekly, up from 5T six months ago
New York TimesMichael J. de la Merced
Context & Ripple Effects
OpenRouter’s reported financing follows a 2025 seed and Series A round that valued the company at about $500M, and comes after reports that its annualized revenue rose from more than $10M in October to more than $50M. The new valuation therefore tracks rapid commercial as well as usage growth.
Its network sits at the intersection of two shifts visible in its own data: reasoning models have become a majority of usage, while lower-cost Chinese models have recently surpassed US rivals in token consumption. Processing demand across hundreds of models makes routing and comparison increasingly central to how customers consume AI models.
First-order effects
The reported $113M CapitalG-led round gives OpenRouter more capital to support infrastructure, model integrations, and customer acquisition as weekly token volume rises from 5T to 25T.
Model developers gain access to a distribution channel handling usage across 400+ models, while OpenRouter customers retain a single interface for selecting among those suppliers.
Second-order effects
Providers competing for usage on OpenRouter face greater pressure to differentiate on price, speed, and task performance, since customers can shift workloads among models without rebuilding their integration.
A larger routing intermediary can increase demand for tools that evaluate, route, and combine models—including parallel-model approaches such as OpenRouter’s Fusion—rather than relying on one default provider.
Third-order effects
If multi-model usage continues to grow, the AI application stack may separate further into model makers and neutral access/routing layers that control discovery, traffic allocation, and the customer relationship.
That shift could make token-consumption data and routing policies strategically important: they can influence which model families gain distribution, especially as cost-oriented alternatives compete with frontier offerings.
The trend: This is one data point in the emergence of model-routing platforms as a control layer for an increasingly fragmented, price- and performance-sensitive AI model market.
Today we're announcing our $113M Series B led by @CapitalGVC. Over the last 6 months, weekly volume on OpenRouter grew from 5T to 25T tokens as AI rapidly shifts from experimentation into production. We're excited for what comes next. [image]
Methodology behind comparison: Google / OpenAI report in per minute, which isn't directly comparable (and is usually a peak of a sinusoid number) whereas OR is based on per week. There ofc is double counting because OR serves GPT and Gemini. Google token run rate:
We're seeing a Cambrian explosion of AI models, and it's happening on OpenRouter. The future of AI is neurodiversity: - Agents choosing the most cost-effective model/provider/tool for the task - Agents orchestrating multiple models for the smartest result - Advanced security and
OpenRouter is now serving 1.5 quadrillion tokens/yr! That token run rate is: — 15-30% of Google APIs — 20-40% of OpenAI — >50% of Microsoft Azure Foundry That's 15x larger than when we invested a year ago. Revenue has already doubled since this $1.3B round was done in Feb! [image…
I've had been an insane 16 months here at @OpenRouter. Today we announced our $113M Series B led by CapitalG. We've seen tokens 4x in 6 months, now seeing 25T/week with 8M+ global users, and 400+ increasingly multimodal models. So proud of this team and the work we're doing.
Surprised open router is only at $1.3B given the wild rounds going on. They have more of a business (both present and future) than ~99% of AI companies.