The Hidden Winner Behind OpenClaw: From Exiting OpenSea at the Peak, He Quietly Profits by "Selling APIs"

Original Author: David, TechFlow

OpenClaw is trending, but the one quietly making money from this wave is a company you might not have heard of:

OpenRouter.

To use OpenClaw, you need to connect to various AI models to get things done. Claude, GPT, DeepSeek each have their own fees and APIs. What OpenRouter does is bundle these models together. You use them through its unified interface, and it makes money from the spread.

The person behind this business is Alex Atallah. His company just raised $40 million led by a16z, and is now valued at $500 million.

What you might know even less is that his previous company was OpenSea, the world's largest NFT marketplace, which once reached a peak valuation of over $13 billion.

However, he chose to leave at the peak of the NFT craze. A few months later, the NFT market crashed.

Now, he's making money again in this wave of AI.

From Liquidity Aggregation to Large Model Aggregation

Alex Atallah, a Stanford Computer Science graduate.

In 2018, he co-founded OpenSea with Devin Finzer. The idea was simple: others mint NFTs, they provided a place for people to buy and sell, taking a 2.5% cut on each transaction.

OpenSea didn't produce NFTs, didn't trade NFTs, it just provided the shelves, aggregating liquidity.

When the NFT boom hit in 2021, with breakout projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club becoming cultural icons, OpenSea's monthly trading volume peaked at over $5 billion. Forbes estimated his and Finzer's combined net worth at $2.2 billion.

In July 2022, he stepped down as CTO, saying he wanted to "build something new from scratch."

What happened next is well known: NFTs crashed, the market entered a deep freeze, and OpenSea's own business faced turmoil. However, someone always pays for the party, and Alex left before the music stopped.

In 2023, he started working on something called OpenRouter. In a nutshell:

It's an aggregation and routing platform for large models, putting the APIs of hundreds of models behind a single interface. Developers call it, and it takes a 5% fee each time.

You might ask, why not just go directly to OpenAI, Anthropic, to call Claude or GPT?

Of course you can.

But nowadays, hardly anyone uses just one model. You might use Claude for coding, Gemini for research, and toss cost-saving tasks to DeepSeek. Registering, topping up, and dealing with different API formats for each provider separately is a hassle...

Not to mention many users who want to use Claude or GPT can't directly connect to their APIs from within certain regions.

Thus, OpenRouter becomes the path of least resistance. One interface, over 500 models, unified format, automatic switching, one key to rule them all.

You might not have noticed when using OpenClaw, but the default provider (API provider) in its configuration file was OpenRouter.

Image source: Zhihu user Feng 控炼丹师

When you call Claude or DeepSeek, the request goes to OpenRouter first, then gets routed to the model provider. Even OpenClaw's documentation states:

If the system doesn't recognize your API key format, it defaults to using OpenRouter.

How fast is this business growing?

In October 2024, the monthly volume flowing through OpenRouter was $800,000. By May 2025, that number became $8 million.

Seven months, tenfold growth.

Over a year, the money passing through his hands exceeded $100 million. He takes a 5% cut, netting $5 million, with a team of less than ten people.

Image source: sacra.com

a16z used his data to write an industry report titled "The State of AI: 100 Trillion Tokens"; Stripe built a custom billing system specifically for him.

And with the explosion of OpenClaw this year, more developers and enthusiasts are pouring in, finding creative ways to burn tokens, inevitably requiring calls to various large models. This has completely fueled OpenRouter's business.

Moreover, a16z led the investment in this company, valuing it at $500 million.

A shovel seller has once again become a shovel seller.

Different Trends, Same Model

If you look closely at Alex's two businesses, their structure is essentially the same.

OpenSea's business was not minting NFTs, but putting NFTs minted by others in one place. Buyers and sellers come to trade, and it takes 2.5%. OpenRouter's business is not training models, but putting models trained by others in one place. Developers come to call them, and it takes 5%.

This playbook seems to have become his comfort zone. Whether it's NFTs or AI, the market structure shares very similar characteristics:

The supply side is extremely fragmented, the demand side (buyers) doesn't know where to find the supply, and he stands in the middle as the shelf.

How fragmented were NFTs in 2021? Dozens of chains, hundreds of project teams, tens of thousands of new collections daily. If you wanted to buy a Bored Ape, you couldn't possibly check each project's official website one by one. OpenSea aggregated them; you come to browse and buy, and a counterparty offers to sell to you.

How fragmented are large models in 2025? OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, DeepSeek, Mistral, 01.AI... just the mainstream ones number over a dozen, plus hundreds from the open-source community.

Today Claude might be best for coding, tomorrow Gemini releases a new version better for search, the day after DeepSeek cuts prices by half. Each switch requires changing the API integration.

Atallah himself said something that explains this logic very clearly:

"OpenSea took a very fragmented inventory and put it all in one place. AI today looks a lot like that."

He doesn't need to know which NFT will rise, nor which model will win. He only needs to know one thing: the more fragmented the supply, the more valuable the middleman.

And, interestingly, the timing.

When he left in July 2022, OpenSea's valuation was still high. Although NFT monthly trading volume had fallen from its peak, no one thought it would crash. He said he wanted to "build something new from scratch." Six months later, ChatGPT was released, and the era of large models began.

Did he see something, or was it just good luck?

I don't know. But one thing is certain:

When he registered OpenRouter in early 2023, AI large model routing products barely existed in the market. By the time everyone realized the need for a unified interface, he was already there.

Last time, he did the same thing in the NFT space. By the time everyone crowded in, he was already the largest platform.

Does It Matter If It's AI That's Hot?

In every hype cycle, most people ask: What will be hot?

In 2021, it was which NFT would rise. In 2024, which meme coin would 100x. In 2025, which AI application would break out. In 2026, what can be done with crayfish.

Atallah probably asks a different question. I think his thought process is: No matter what gets hot, where will the money flow through?

These two questions seem similar but are actually completely different bets.

Betting on "what will be hot," you have to guess right once. Bored Apes will rise, PEPE will 100x, a certain AI product will be the next ChatGPT. Guess right and get rich, guess wrong and go to zero. Most people's experience is the latter.

Betting on "where the money flows through," you don't need to guess any single one right. NFTs rise, transactions happen on OpenSea, he collects fees. The more fierce the AI model wars, the more developers need a unified interface to switch between them, the busier OpenRouter gets.

Don't bet on who wins, bet that the war will last a long time.

Looking back, in every cycle, those who make the most money, in any industry, are basically platforms in this position.

Gold diggers come and go, the water seller keeps collecting money.

But I think just saying "selling water" or "selling shovels" isn't enough. Many shovel sellers also fail. Atallah did one more specific thing right: He positions himself at the aggregation point every time.

Not just any tool can collect tolls. You have to be the one that consolidates fragmented supply. The more fragmented the supply, the higher the switching cost, the more pricing power the aggregation layer in the middle has.

This also explains why he enters so early both times. Because aggregation businesses have a characteristic:

The first mover signs up the supply, making it very hard for latecomers to catch up.

So Atallah's exceptional skill, I summarize in two sentences:

First, don't guess who wins, just find the intersection everyone must pass through. Second, build the road before others even realize they need an intersection.

Exceptional People Don't Pick Tables

Right now, I feel two voices are particularly loud around me.

One says AI Agents are toys; installing OpenClaw is useless except for burning tokens. The other says this is just another wave of AI hype, forgotten in three months.

Both views might be right.

But for someone like Alex Atallah, it doesn't really matter.

Whether OpenClaw is useful or not, he's still collecting money. You might think crayfish are boring and uninstall it today, but the tokens burned over the past two weeks have already passed through his hands.

Some think NFTs are dirty, a Ponzi scheme, a scam. He built a $13.3 billion company on it. Some think AI Agents are a bubble, hype, with no visible business model. He built a $500 million company on it...

Exceptional people might not really need us to respect the field they're in.

At the NFT table, he made money. At the AI table, he's making money again. What the next table will be, nobody knows.

But I guess, he'll still be at the door collecting tickets.