Exclusive: AI startup TrustedRouter raises $1.25 million

TrustedRouter, an AI routing startup, raised $1.25 million from a group of investors, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The interest in the startup is the latest example of Silicon Valley's obsession with routing, and the bet that businesses won't rely on just one AI model.

Driving the news: Instead of sending every task to a single AI model, TrustedRouter lets users send queries to the one that fits their needs at the most efficient price.

• The company, which has been in public beta since May, recently processed more than 1 billion tokens in a single day, founder Joseph Perla tells Axios.
• The platform gives users access to more than 600 models from more than 81 providers through a single API, while its own code is entirely open-source.

Follow the money: The seed round includes Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures, early Zoom and Canva investor Bill Tai, 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey and former Stripe data leader George Xing.

• On AI adoption, businesses are "struggling with the double-edged sword of how do I get my employee base up to speed so I don't lose, but how do I not blow my annual budget in six weeks?" Tai said.
• Tai tells Axios that within that environment, the need for routing is "universal."

The big picture: Routing is the shiny object getting the AI world's attention at the moment.

• Stripe agreed to buy unicorn OpenRouter for more than $8 billion, the company announced earlier this month.
• Meta is reportedly working on an OpenRouter competitor called Switchboard, per The Information.

Zoom in: Perla believes his competitive advantage is a focus on protecting customer data.

• TrustedRouter's pitch is that businesses shouldn't have to choose between model flexibility and data privacy: Its open-source system uses confidential computing.
• That prevents the router from seeing customers' prompts, while letting them choose which AI providers ultimately receive their data if they want that for certain use cases.

What they're saying: Lessin believes routing is an "important" part of the AI story, as it gives customers a "trusted, private, secure way" to use AI tools without "leaking data."

Threat level: Routing threatens to turn AI models from destinations into interchangeable commodities.

• "I see people excited about us and moving to us because they don't like what Anthropic is becoming," Perla said.

The bottom line: Routing is "smoking hot," Tai said, and Perla hopes his company can define the next phase of its growth.