Forget the model wars, Stripe and Ramp just started the router wars
I’m Matt Burns, Chief Content Officer at Insight Media Group. Each week, I round up the most important AI developments, The post Forget the model wars, Stripe and Ramp just started the router wars appeared first on The New Stack .
Forget the model wars, Stripe and Ramp just started the router wars. Matt Burns, Chief Content Officer at Insight Media Group, explains that picking a model has become a runtime decision, as seen by OpenRouter and Ramp's routers. OpenRouter processes over 10 trillion tokens daily, while Ramp's Router claims 40% lower cost for the same output.
Both are targeting the critical layer in the AI stack, as picking a model was previously written into an application. The routers aim to automate model selection, making runtime decisions based on each request rather than developer-configured choices. This shift is driven by AI pipelines costing 10x more than the demo, with token bills generated by code, and engineering decisions like system prompts, conversation histories, and oversized RAG chunks contributing to the high costs.
Stripe and Ramp have different strategies for controlling AI spending. Stripe is targeting the long tail of developers, while Ramp is focusing on its relationship with finance. Both companies see the token expenditure as a burgeoning line item in corporate technology budgets and are pursuing it aggressively.
Written by urgent.news from The New Stack's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
