特朗普家族也盯上了AI中转站这门生意

Original Author: Curry, TechFlow by Shenchao

Spending $10,000 on an API Key comes with a bonus dinner ticket at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, where your dinner 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, hereafter WLFI) shared a post about a new product called WorldClaw, which was subsequently shared by Donald Trump Jr.'s social media.

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

Experience shows that to gauge the popularity of a business, you only need to see if the industry giants are involved. This project, at its core, is essentially an AI relay station business.

The core feature currently launched by WorldClaw is called WorldRouter. Its function is to package the APIs of major AI 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 currently integrates over 60 models, with plans to cover more than 300 in the future.

According to the WorldClaw website, WorldRouter's pricing is approximately 30% lower than the public prices of the model providers and OpenRouter.

Take Claude Sonnet 4.6 as an example. Anthropic officially charges $3 per million input tokens, while WorldRouter charges $2.1. How they achieve this lower price is not explained on the website...

No KYC, no overseas phone number or credit card is needed. To use its relay service, only one payment method is accepted: USD1, the dollar stablecoin issued by WLFI.

The product's purchase plans are divided into 4 tiers:

The cheapest is $9.9 for 1,000 AI Credits, the Standard plan is $99 for 10,000 Credits; while the most expensive Max plan is $9,999 (or a lockup of 2.5 million WLFI tokens) for 1 million AI Credits, plus a hardware device with no disclosed brand or specifications. A small note under the picture on the official website reads: "Image for illustration only, actual product may differ." Expected delivery is Q3 2026.

We're not even quite sure what this hardware is for.

However, the most attractive part of the Max plan is the chance to win a prize: a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago, giving you the opportunity to dine with the Trump family.

The AI relay station business is nothing new. According to the TokenNav directory, there are at least 84 similar products globally, both domestic and international. But WorldClaw is the first to bundle AI credits with a dinner ticket to the presidential family.

In such a crowded track, how much of a moat can a single dinner ticket provide?

Hyper-Competitive, Brutal Competition

How much money can an AI relay station make?

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

OpenRouter has proven this business can scale. But below it, competition is far more brutal than most imagine.

A TechFlow report this March on the token gold rush driven by OpenClaw mentioned that some relay station operators were making millions in monthly profit. According to an investigation by Tencent News, the relay station's profit comes from three sources: charging for access barriers, managing quotas, and exploiting information asymmetry.

Domestic relay stations play much dirtier than OpenRouter.

According to relay station reviews on Zhihu, some sites have priced 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 purchasing subscription accounts in bulk, using browser automation and reverse engineering to package the web-based chat interface into an API. Users think they are calling the official API, but behind it might be a rotating pool of cookies.

Such operations are, of course, problematic in terms of compliance. According to public reports, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center has repeatedly warned about multiple legal risks associated with AI relay stations. But the demand is too strong, and the price is too cheap, so users keep flooding in.

Before this, Sun Yuchen's B.AI also entered the relay station space. Now even Fu Sheng has joined the fray. Cheetah Mobile's EasyRouter launched this year, promoting a flat 15% discount across the board, with some models discounted up to 75%.

Now, let's look back at WorldClaw.

Claiming to be 30% cheaper than official prices is sincere by legitimate standards, but within the entire relay station market, this price is hardly competitive. A domestic user looking purely for cheap and functional options has dozens of more mature and cheaper alternatives.

WorldClaw is clearly not competing for the same batch of users as these stations. Perhaps its true intention isn't even the relay station itself.

Ulterior Motive: Not the Relay Station, But the Stablecoin

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

This choice itself is the answer.

USD1 is the dollar stablecoin launched by WLFI in March 2025, pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. According to the official introduction, it is custodied by BitGo Trust, with underlying assets being US Treasury bonds, dollar deposits, and cash equivalents. It currently runs on Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana.

Simply put, WLFI aims to create its own USDT.

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

More noteworthy is something called the AgentPay SDK. WorldClaw integrates it into the product, allowing AI Agents to autonomously complete payments using USD1 when executing tasks. If this feature works, it means every automated AI model call and workflow execution will generate a USD1 on-chain transaction.

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

According to public reports, WLFI has submitted an application to the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank trust charter. If approved, WLFI could independently issue, custody, and redeem USD1 under a regulated entity, without relying on third parties. This charter aims to transform USD1 from a project token into a compliant financial infrastructure.

Connecting these dots clarifies WorldClaw's business logic.

All other relay stations compete on the same things: who has more models, lower prices, lower latency.

WorldClaw doesn't compete on these. It competes on the payment layer. Every user who buys AI credits must first hold USD1. The more they use it, the greater the on-chain circulation of USD1.

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

So you should see it this way: WorldClaw is not an AI company adding a crypto payment feature, it's a crypto project finding a distribution channel in AI.

Troubled Times

On April 22nd of this year, Justin Sun formally sued WLFI in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing them of racketeering, 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 orchestrating a "coordinated smear campaign" by hiring influencers and bots to spread false information, aiming to suppress the token's price.

On May 5th, WorldClaw launched.

Beyond the lawsuits, WLFI's own governance structure is a focal point of community controversy. According to a report by the Taiwanese blockchain media Chain News, WLFI's largest single wallet controls nearly 13% of voting rights, 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 a WLFI co-founder, drawing community criticism for being an indirect cash-out.

This is the parent ecosystem behind WorldClaw.

The AI relay station is a pre-paid model. Users deposit money first, then consume services. This means trust is a prerequisite. You need to believe the platform won't run away, the model calls are real, and the deposited funds can be reliably 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, at this moment, is being pulled in two directions by both the plaintiff and the defendant in a federal court in San Francisco and a court in Delaware.

Ultimately, the ability of an AI relay station to wrap APIs and resell them is not scarce; what's hard is earning the trust for users to pay upfront.

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