We just killed OpenRouter. AI routers made $100+ million last year charging 5% markups on every dollar. Today that ends. Introducing Straitly the world’s first AI gateway that charges 0% markup on your tokens. No Stripe or Credit Card processing fees. With one API key, you can access 142+ models from than 20+ providers. Straitly auto handles handles provider failures via intelligent re-routing achieving a 99.98% success rate while still optimizing for cache hit rates. To celebrate our launch we are giving up to 30% off your first $10k (yes, $10,000) of token spend, plus $100 in free credits upfront. If you are an ambitious builder who's spending lots on tokens we want to hear from you! Comment below what you're building + highest usage model, then head over to straitly.ai and fill out a form with your @x username.

1:00AM launch shoot hits different. Only in SF @frontiertower

Unreal line up fr. Kudos to @trq212 for the flick !

Legends. Was a great event!

All the pg essays on fundraising were true after all

Instinct is better at fundraising then I thought

who can make a banger launch video in sf? like some real creative shit. budget not an issue

it’s crazy how quickly u run into the limitations of new ai models. i swear every time a new one comes out, it impresses u for the first 2 hours, only for u to adjust and inevitably run into a brick wall trying to get it to write an email. gpt-6-astra, fable, mythos all the same

and we're going ballisitic 🚀, just 1 day after launch lfggg

New Merch @ycombinator demo day, shooting content all day with founders and investors all day! Come by and say hi 👋

STOP PAYING FOR TOKENS ! START GETTING PAID INSTEAD Introducing Straitly, the first AI service that PAYS YOU for using tokens Unlike > Openrouter charges 5.5% service fee > Vercel charges 2.9% payment fee > Anthropic gives you low rate limits > OpenAI only lets you use GPT models Straitly: > PAYS YOU 5% CASHBACK on all closed-source models > 10% CASHBACK on open-source models > High rate limits > 177 AI models > 99.8% reliability > ZDR This means that you can save up to 25% on your token bills compared to using services like OpenRouter or Vercel, while still getting the same reliability and model choices Since our waitlist launch 3 weeks ago we have processed ~150B tokens already, and are growing at 35% week over week We're backed by @_LeapYear_, Sand Hill North, pif.co and other incredible angels in our mission to build the utility layer for all future token usage This is just the beginning Today Straitly is live and open for public access Start getting paid today at straitly.ai To celebrate, we are giving out $10k in free AI credits to 400 people Comment below what your are building and what model you use the most, then head over to Straitly and sign up We'll select the winners at the end of September !

We racked up $13.3M in 48 hours after going viral on X, in annualized pledged token spend. Here's the full breakdown of the results + answers to some questions about our 0% markup alternative to OpenRouter. 1. The result, what ~600K impressions on X got us: > ~$1.11M/mo in pledged token spend > 250B+ tokens/month in estimated volume > 14 customers spending $50K+/mo on tokens > 90+ customers doing $2K+/mo, carrying 94% of all pledged dollars > 400+ customers doing $200+/mo > 903 applications total, from 101 countries 2. Key findings on token spend habits: > Where devs route tokens from: 61% OpenRouter, 57% direct from labs (Anthropic / OpenAI / Google), 31% smaller routers. > What they spend on: 47% dev tools + coding assistants, 34% AI agents/automation, 3% data extraction. > Throughput: 5% need 300+ req/min, 20% need 60+ req/min (exactly why the labs' rate limits suck) > Top Regions: 19% USA, 18% India, 4% UK, rest spread across 98+ countries 3. Questions, comments, and concerns > How do you guys make money? This was by far the most asked question. The answer is simple, we buy large volume upfront from providers at below list cost and then sell it at list price w/o any markup. After absorbing the transaction fees we come out around 1.5% model blended margin. At $1.11M/mo of pledged spend, that's about $16K/mo take home. Not bad for our first month of existence. We expect to grow this by at least 50x within the next 12 mo's. >What's ur moat ? What if OpenRouter does this tmr? They're more than welcome to! Matter of fact they should. We're not going to pretend there's some insane technical moat. Routers are a commodity service and switching cost is zero. That cuts both ways: it's how we take their customers with a one-line config change. But they can't match us without deleting the revenue Stripe just paid $7B for. Our job is to grab as much market share as possible while it's open, and 0% markup is the easiest sale there is. > Okay so its race to the bottom and ur gonna die out eventually ? No, also routing is just the beginning! Ultimately, our vision is a marketplace where inference workloads and commit volume can be bid on. Imagine a customer putting up a listing of their projected monthly spend, say 50B Kimi-K3 tokens, and inference providers like Fireworks, DeepInfra, competitively bid on the contract, so the customer gets the fairest possible price. Flip side, where there's tons of demand for dedicated capacity, a provider lists their stock instead, ex: "we can serve 50B GLM 5.3 tokens/mo" and buyers bid on that. Then say you bought $100K in commits and your plans changed, you don't need them anymore, or they're worth more now than when you bought. You just resell them back to the market. Like with all marketplaces though, liquidity is the main concern. Who comes first, sellers or buyers? Our goal with Straitly is to gather that liquidity, and the 0% markup ofc helps that tremendously, every customer we onboard is a buyer already on the book. Once we attain a reasonable amount of liquidity on both sides, we'll bring a whole new dimension to this market. ps. We'd love to meet everyone's demand but we're currently maxed out on capacity, in the process of acquiring more as I write this, so we're onboarding in batches, if you have not heard from us, do not worry we are working hard to get your share. Apply here: > Customers, 0% markup, 30% off your first $10K, $100 upfront: straitly.ai/apply/customers > Providers, if you can serve tokens at scale we want you on: straitly.ai/apply/providers Also: we're hiring engineers, if ur in SF, lets chat.

> Stripe: 2.9% + 30¢ of your revenue > OpenRouter: 5% of your tokens > 7.9% tax just for existing as an AI startup. > Now they're one company. > A cut on the way in, a cut on the way out, and you can only guess what comes next. > Exactly why independent gateways have to exist. > It all changes tomorrow. 12PM EST

08/17/2026

Startups are ultimately a truth seeking exercise at the eod. You form a hypothesis about the world. Then you ruthlessly test it agains the reality of the market. Men lie, women lie, but the market doesn't.

How has no one solved AI writing yet ? Still using the same "its not x... its...y" or "That's it.. that's the whole ..." or "Here's the part that most people miss..." @Intelligence_ai pls come up with a benchmark for this we can vote on !