Llm Routing

Stripe is acquiring OpenRouter for more than $7 billion, bringing the world’s largest AI model marketplace into a payments company that already owns the billing and metering infrastructure for the AI era. On the surface nothing changes: OpenRouter keeps its name, product, roadmap, and neutrality promise, and your API calls keep routing exactly as before. But ownership of the layer that decides which model answers your prompt has moved from an independent company to one with a clear commercial agenda — which is precisely why this is the largest acquisition in Stripe’s history and why every developer building on OpenRouter should understand what actually changes. ...

The short answer: Portkey is the best drop-in replacement if you’re running Helicone or evaluating alternatives after the LiteLLM security scare. It covers 200+ providers, adds under 1ms of latency, and gives you routing, caching, and observability in a single package. LiteLLM is still viable for self-hosted open-source use if you pin a pre-compromise version and monitor CVEs actively. Why 2026 Is the Year of LLM Gateway Evaluation The LLM gateway market hit a turning point in early 2026 with two simultaneous events that forced teams to re-evaluate their infrastructure. On March 3, 2026, Helicone was acquired by Mintlify — the documentation platform — and immediately entered maintenance mode, meaning no new features, only security patches and bug fixes. Within the same quarter, LiteLLM suffered a documented security compromise that raised concerns about the supply chain security of open-source proxy deployments. These two events hit simultaneously at a moment when enterprise LLM API spending had already grown from $3.5B in late 2024 to $8.4B by mid-2025 — a 2.4x increase in roughly six months. Teams that had quietly been running Helicone for observability or LiteLLM for routing suddenly had urgent migration decisions to make. Add to this that 37% of enterprises now run five or more LLMs in production, and the case for a robust, multi-provider gateway has never been stronger. This guide evaluates your real options with the current market in mind. ...