Chris Clark

Co-founder & COO @OpenRouterAI

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@pingToven OpenRouter

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@SaaiArora It's coming soon (weeks). Want to make sure we get it very right. As it sounds like you know, it's nontrivial to make sure the environment and infra is compliant.

[Peter Walker @PeterJ_Walker]

The drought is over, big model launches back on the menu

[Peter Walker @PeterJ_Walker]

A chart is worth a thousand words.

A chart with no y-axis is worth an indeterminate amount of words.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@spakhm That seems somewhat plausible. A tremendous amount of enterprise baggage gets dragged along to do the simplest thing. Progressive disclosure it ain’t.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@technovelist @spakhm The azure portal makes the AWS portal look like iOS

[Chris Clark @cclark]

"There go my people, I must follow them, for I am their leader."

[JD Vance @JDVance]

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.

So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."

Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.

There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.

But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.

Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel

Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)

In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.

The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.

If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.

But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.

I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@martin_casado @willdepue I don't think it knew anything about the weights per se; it was legitimately figuring out what the weights did. But it was using mechanical interpretability techniques that it *did* know from training.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@martin_casado @willdepue If you read the prompts...I'm not sure it's really quite so "emergent". It's more or less brute-force searching through the weights. It's impressive but a far cry from "it's reading the matrix!". E.g.:
- https://t.co/5rRjtkrkQs
- https://t.co/RjafrtXqRC
- https://t.co/3d9KNOq2mf

[Chris Clark @cclark]

Did we ever find out what YouTube did to make the comments a totally lovely place? They solved internet toxicity like a decade ago. If @nikhilbd ever wants to do a proper write-up, I'm sure we'd all love to learn!

[Alex Atallah @alexatallah]

The biggest lie in AI is that the future belongs to one winner.

Every technology wave starts with one company promising that one walled garden is all you'll ever need. And every time, market forces and creativity break the walls down.

I cofounded OpenSea and now OpenRouter around the opposite bet: humanity will refuse to be locked in.

Intelligence was never meant to belong to one lab, one model, or one gatekeeper.

The future of AI is open, plural, and yours to choose.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

Excited about all the work that went into this!

[Alex Atallah @alexatallah]

We've announced OpenRouter's first major APAC partnership: KT Telecom, Korea's largest telecom company.

Around 80 media outlets took part. KT will become a provider of sovereign Korean models on OpenRouter. Launch will be anchored by KT Mi:dm K 3.0 Pro, Upstage Solar and Motif, with plans to expand 10-15 models in 2027.

OpenRouter will power KT's Token Factory, which will be available to KT's enterprise clients.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

Working my way through this. WOW!!

[Nick @nickcammarata]

interpretability might be the most important scientific problem in the world right now, as I don't think we can solve alignment if we don't know what we're building. I think I have good news about it. I co-authored early work in mechanistic interpretability at OpenAI and came away pessimistic, because neural networks appeared to fold into arbitrary tangled knots. years later, I started openai's first large-scale automated interpretability project, finding about 2% of neurons legible with the primitive tools we had

with modern agentic tools and a much closer look, the picture looks totally different. the vast majority in models up to trillions of parameters are legible, and their circuits beautiful. many famous examples of tangled neurons turned out to be misunderstood. The roadblocks I expected mostly aren't there. I now think ambitious interpretability will be solved by the time we need it most, and possibly quite soon, as automated scientists keep improving. it may be a bitter lesson for interpretability: the simple thing, at absurd scale, works

https://t.co/zHij5zwKGT

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@pwguler @OpenRouter Private endpoints are private to your account and traffic from other customers never reaches it. If you want to fail over from the fine tune to a public model, you can certainly configure your routing to do that. Fully supported.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@mmurph @modal @bernhardsson Amazing! The neocloud I am perhaps most bullish on.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

I’ve been thinking of this as “intelligence saturated” vs “not” - but this is more nuanced and also includes “we over scaffolded” which is not something I’ve thought much about.

I'm not sure that “too thin” is entirely fair though. You might just have a product that only needs “so much” intelligence. I don't think that necessarily leads to it failing / being too thin. I could be wrong!

The advantage to NOT needing frontier intelligence (or reaching a point where your agentic product stops improving with the frontier / is intelligence saturated) is that you can flip to using open weight models / cheaper tokens and start generating real gross margins.

Great post!

[Rajiv Ayyangar @rajivayyangar]

As CEO of Product Hunt, I see hundreds of launches a week. One trait separates winners from losers.

Every few months, new models come out. Some products become better, effortlessly. Some don't improve, or become irrelevant.

This property needs a name. I'm calling it Buoyancy.

Buoyant startups rise with model improvements the way a boat rises with the tide.

Anti-buoyant startups come in two flavors: over-scaffolded (which hinders the new, smarter models) and too thin - which makes them redundant when models improve.

To be buoyant, you need a "hull" - usually proprietary data, a vertical-specific harness, network effects, or distribution advantage. This hull keeps you buoyant as models improve.

Hulls are the new moats.

My number one advice to startups in 2026: Be buoyant. Find your hull.

(Full essay on my blog)

[Chris Clark @cclark]

You would enjoy brothers k. Start with that. Not obvious from Patrick’s post, but it’s also quite funny. There’s a page all about how if you have a roommate, it all starts out great, but then after a year you are like I CANT STAND THE WAY THIS PERSON CHEES THEIR FOOD I AL GOING TO KILL THEM. Very relatable.

[Chris Clark @cclark]

@conormyhrvold @PeterJ_Walker I get it (and have lived it) but navigating that while not causing a ton of problems is part of the job.