New AI Infra Decacorns: Fireworks, Baseten, and OpenRouter★ 78
Latent Space6d agoBusinessAI infrastructure startups Fireworks and Baseten have reportedly reached massive valuations, reflecting intense investor interest in developer-focused inference and deployment platforms. OpenRouter, the popular LLM API aggregator, is also on a rapid growth trajectory. This funding wave highlights a major capital shift toward cost-effective, developer-friendly API and hosting solutions.
OpenRouter more than doubles valuation to $1.3B in a year
TechCrunch AI7d agoBusinessOpenRouter, an AI gateway startup founded in 2023, raised a $113 million Series B led by CapitalG. The round reportedly values the company at about $1.3 billion post-money, more than doubling from its estimated $547 million valuation after its June 2025 Series A. The company says it now offers access to over 400 models, has 8 million global users, and processes 100 trillion tokens per month.
Some ideas for what comes next, May 2026
Interconnects (Nathan L.)7d agoCommentaryNathan Lambert argues that 2026 AI progress is becoming higher-stakes, with model capabilities, work patterns, economics, and real-world risks all escalating. He says open models still lack a true Claude Code and Opus 4.5-style agent moment, and Gemini has no clear competitor to Claude Code or Codex yet. The essay also tracks Mythos, American open-model momentum, frontier-lab competition, and mounting intervention from governments and other power structures.