20VC: OpenAI and Anthropic Threatened by Kimi? | Should the US Ban Chinese Open-Source Models | Should Openrouter Sell & Value in the Routing Layer? | Stripe Buying Paypal: What You Need to Know

**Jason Lamkin** (0:00)
The quest for equivalent models at a cheaper price is just going to keep going up.

**Rory O'Driscoll** (0:05)
Is the open weight, low cost LLM business a good business?

**Jason Lamkin** (0:10)
I think it's a great time for OpenRouter to sell. All the good investments sure seem to be in the infrastructure.

**Rory O'Driscoll** (0:14)
At some point, the people spending a trillion dollars a year are going to want some apps to pay for all this. The only thing that matters is the open AI and anthropic growth rate in 26 and 27 If you're growing 10X year on year, and you have any kind of positive and improving growth margin, it just covers all the nut. Growth for the last two or three years has been a very attractive place to make money.

**Harry Stebbings** (0:36)
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings. It is my favorite show of the week. Rory O'Driscoll, The OG, Jason Lamkin, the total AI nerd analyzing the biggest news in tech this week. So kicking us off, yep, we're heading to the model layer. China ships two near frontier open models in a week, with Kimi absolutely crushing it. And yep, Washington moves to wall off, you guessed it, Chinese models. Next, Databricks raising $3 billion, a Series M, I love this, a Series M, at a $188 billion valuation. And then on top of that, we have Ramp, releasing an OpenRooter competitor, just as OpenRooter are supposedly about to get bought. This and so much more in the conversation this week. But before we dive into the show today, you have the idea, but with most AI tools, you hit a wall, the setup, the config, the gap between what you pictured and what you actually ship. Well, Base 44 is where that wall disappears. You describe it? Yeah, Base 44 builds it. Apps, websites, AI agents, real working products, built in minutes, using nothing but plain language. And it's all batteries included, the backend, the database, the authentication, the hosting, the heavy lifting is handled, so you just really stay in the flow. This doesn't just take the busy work off your plate, it gives you an advantage and pushes you past what you thought you could build alone. So in this market, fast is the baseline. To win, you just have to be first. Base 44 is that edge, the move that skips the troubleshooting and gets you straight to the breakthrough. Build your next thing at base44.com. That's base44.com.
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**Rory O'Driscoll** (4:27)
You have now arrived at your destination.

**Harry Stebbings** (4:30)
Guys, I'm looking forward to this. There has been a lot, as always, going down. I remember when news cycles were so much shorter. I don't know if you remember this, but 100 million around, it would be like the thing for a week.