OpenRouter secures $113 million Series B as valuation doubles to $1.3 billion
The startup, which provides access to over 400 large language models, reports 8 million global users and a shift in industry focus from training to inference and agents.
OpenRouter, an artificial intelligence model gateway established in 2023, has closed a $113 million Series B funding round led by CapitalG, the growth venture fund of Alphabet. The transaction values the company at approximately $1.3 billion on a post-money basis, according to reporting by The New York Times. This figure represents a significant re-rating of the business, more than doubling the estimated $547 million valuation recorded by Pitchbook following its Series A round in June 2025.
The capital injection underscores the accelerating demand for infrastructure that allows enterprises to navigate a fragmented AI landscape. OpenRouter operates as a unified gateway and application programming interface for large language models, enabling users to select specific models for distinct tasks to manage costs or enhance reasoning capabilities. The platform currently provides access to more than 400 models, including those developed by Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI, and DeepSeek.
Usage metrics indicate rapid expansion across the platform. OpenRouter reports 8 million global users and processes 100 trillion tokens per month, equating to roughly 25 trillion tokens weekly. This volume marks a fivefold increase from the 5 trillion tokens processed per week six months prior, reflecting a broader industry transition from model training to inference and the emerging focus on AI agents.
The funding round follows a previous $40 million Series A in June 2025, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures with participation from Sequoia. The current round, dominated by CapitalG, signals continued institutional confidence in the middleware layer of the AI stack. The company has not officially disclosed its new valuation, with the $1.3 billion figure derived from external reporting and the prior estimate sourced from Pitchbook data.
Market dynamics suggest a move away from vendor lock-in, a common issue in software as a service providers. The growth of OpenRouter indicates that enterprises are prioritising flexibility, treating AI models as swappable engines rather than standardising on a single provider. This multi-model approach allows organisations to optimise for specific outcomes without committing to a sole source, reinforcing the gateway’s role as critical infrastructure in the evolving AI economy.
