The Trump family is also eyeing the AI relay station business

Original Author: Curly, TechFlow by Shenchao

Spend ten thousand dollars on an API Key, and get a dinner party invitation as a bonus. The venue is Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and your dining companion is Donald Trump Jr.

This is not a joke.

On May 5th, the official account of World Liberty Financial (the crypto project co-founded by the Trump family, hereinafter referred to as WLFI) announced a new product called WorldClaw, which was subsequently shared by Donald Trump Jr. on his social media.

WorldClaw claims to be the first AI project within the WLFI ecosystem, positioning itself as an "AI Agent Operating System."

Experience has shown that to gauge how hot a business is, you just need to see if the big players in the industry are participating. At its core, this project is essentially an AI relay service business.

The core feature currently launched by WorldClaw is called WorldRouter. What it does is bundle the APIs of various AI large language models like Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Qwen behind a single interface. Register an account, get one API Key, and you can switch between and call all these models.

According to the official website, it has already integrated over 60 models, with plans to cover more than 300 in the future.

According to the WorldClaw official website, the pricing for WorldRouter is about 30% lower than the public prices of model providers and OpenRouter.

Take Claude Sonnet 4.6 as an example. Anthropic charges $3 per million tokens for input, while WorldRouter charges $2.1. As for how they achieve this lower price, the official website does not explain...

No KYC, no need for an overseas phone number or credit card. To use their relay service, they only accept one payment method: WLFI's own dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD1.

Furthermore, the product's purchase packages are divided into 4 tiers:

The cheapest is $9.9 for 1000 AI credits, the Standard version is $99 for 10,000 credits; and the most expensive Max package costs $9,999 (or a lock-up of 2.5 million WLFI tokens) for 1 million AI credits, plus a hardware device with undisclosed brand and specifications. Below the product image on the official website, there is a small note: "Image for illustration purposes only. Actual product may vary." Estimated delivery is Q3 2026.

We are not even entirely sure what this hardware is for.

However, the most attractive aspect is that purchasing the Max package also enters you into a lottery. The prize is a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago, giving you a chance to dine with the Trump family.

The AI relay service business model is not new. According to the TokenNav navigation site, there are at least 84 similar domestic and international products combined. But WorldClaw is the first to bundle AI credits with a dinner invitation involving a presidential family.

In such a crowded赛道 (track/field), how much of a moat can a single dinner ticket build?

Intense Competition

How much money can an AI relay service make?

The current recognized benchmark in this track is OpenRouter, founded by former OpenSea CTO Alex Atallah. According to public reports, a16z led a $40 million investment round last year, giving it a $500 million valuation. The team has fewer than ten people, with an annual revenue exceeding $100 million, taking a 5% cut on each API call.

OpenRouter has proven this business can scale. But beneath it, the competition is far fiercer than most imagine.

In March this year, when TechFlow reported on the Token gold rush driven by OpenClaw, it mentioned that some relay station operators were making millions in monthly profit. According to an investigation by Tencent News, the profit sources for relay stations are threefold: the premium for access, the management of credits/quota, and the profit from information asymmetry.

Domestic relay station operations are much more aggressive than OpenRouter.

According to relay station reviews on Zhihu, some sites offer Claude Sonnet 4.6 at 0.3% of the official price, equivalent to about 0.45 RMB per million tokens.

How do they do it?

By bulk purchasing subscription accounts, using browser automation and reverse engineering to wrap the web interface's chat functionality into an API. Users think they are calling the official API, but behind the scenes, it might be a rotating pool of cookies.

This type of operation obviously has compliance issues. According to public reports, the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center has repeatedly warned about multiple legal risks associated with AI relay stations. However, demand is too strong, and the prices are just too cheap, so users continue to flock in.

First, there was Justin Sun's B.AI also doing relay services. Now even Fu Sheng has entered the game. Cheetah Mobile's EasyRouter was launched this year, offering a blanket 15% discount, with some models going as low as 75% off...

Let's look back at WorldClaw.

It claims to be 30% cheaper than the official rate, which is decent within legitimate channels. But placed in the wider relay station market, this price has no competitive edge. If a domestic user only cares about low cost and convenience, there are dozens of more mature and cheaper options available.

WorldClaw is clearly not competing for the same user base as these stations. Perhaps its real intention isn't even about the relay service itself.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: The Real Aim is the Stablecoin

OpenRouter accepts credit cards; domestic relay stations accept Alipay and WeChat Pay, and some even accept USDT. WorldClaw only accepts one payment method: USD1.

This choice alone is the answer.

USD1 is a dollar-pegged stablecoin launched by WLFI in March 2025. It is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, reportedly custodied by BitGo Trust, with underlying assets being US Treasuries, dollar deposits, and cash equivalents. It currently runs on Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana.

Simply put, WLFI wants to create its own version of USDT.

WorldClaw's payment design revolves entirely around USD1. Buy AI credits with USD1. If you don't want to spend money, you can lock up WLFI tokens in exchange for credits. The Pro package corresponds to locking up 250,000 tokens, and the Max package corresponds to 2.5 million tokens. Both paths lead to the same destination: locking users into WLFI's token ecosystem.

More noteworthy is something called the AgentPay SDK. WorldClaw has integrated this into its product, allowing AI Agents to autonomously complete payments using USD1 when executing tasks. If this feature works, it means that every instance of an AI automatically calling a model or executing a workflow will generate a USD1 on-chain transaction.

Machines don't discriminate between payment tools; whoever integrates first becomes the default option.

According to public reports, WLFI has already submitted an application to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank trust charter. If approved, WLFI can independently issue, custody, and redeem USD1 under a regulated entity, no longer relying on third parties. This charter aims to transform USD1 from a project token into compliant financial infrastructure.

Connecting these dots clarifies WorldClaw's business logic.

The relay stations on the market all compete for the same thing: who has the most comprehensive models, the lowest prices, and the lowest latency.

WorldClaw does not compete on these fronts. It competes on the payment layer. Every user who comes to buy AI credits first needs to hold USD1. The more they use it, the larger the on-chain circulation of USD1 becomes.

AI demand is the entry point, but stablecoin adoption is the key metric WLFI truly cares about.

So, you should view it this way: WorldClaw is not an AI company adding a crypto payment feature; it is a crypto project finding AI as its distribution channel.

An Eventful Period

On April 22nd of this year, Justin Sun officially sued WLFI in the San Francisco Federal Court, accusing them of extortion, claiming WLFI was "on the verge of collapse," and publicly questioning whether USD1 had sufficient reserve backing.

On May 4th, WLFI countersued, accusing Sun of launching a "coordinated smear campaign," hiring influencers and bots to spread false information aimed at depressing the token's price.

On May 5th, WorldClaw was launched.

Beyond the lawsuit, WLFI's own governance structure is also a point of controversy within the community. According to a report by the Taiwanese blockchain media Chain News, WLFI's largest single wallet holds nearly 13% of voting power, while the top four wallets collectively control about 40%.

Previously, the WLFI treasury used 5 billion of its own tokens as collateral to borrow $75 million in stablecoins from Dolomite, a lending platform co-founded by its team members, which was criticized by the community as an indirect way to realize value.

This is the parent ecosystem behind WorldClaw.

The AI relay business operates on a pre-paid model. Users deposit money first and then consume the service. This means trust is a prerequisite. Users must believe that the platform won't run away, that the model calls are genuine, and that the deposited funds can reliably be exchanged for services.

For a small domestic relay station, this trust relies on the operator's reputation and community oversight. For WorldClaw, it relies on the credibility of the WLFI ecosystem. And WLFI's credibility is currently being pulled in two directions – by both the plaintiff and the defendant – in federal court in San Francisco and courts in Delaware.

At the end of the day, the ability to wrap and resell APIs is not a scarce skill for an AI relay station. The real challenge is earning the trust required for users to pre-pay their money.

WorldClaw's answer is the name of the presidential family and a dinner ticket to Mar-a-Lago. Whether this answer is sufficient is something everyone can judge for themselves.