Why it matters
It pairs a venture investor with an OpenRouter infra insider on the question that drives every AI bill: when frontier models justify their cost versus when a smaller model quietly matches quality for far less.
The tokenmaxxing angle
OpenRouter's whole business is routing prompts across hundreds of models and providers, so per-token price shopping is now table stakes. If you default to a frontier model without benchmarking cost-per-token, you're overpaying.
From the organizers
Hosted by Dasha Shunina, presented by OpenRouter Events at Salesforce Tower, SF; speakers Deedy Das (Partner, Menlo Ventures) and Shashank Goyal (Founding Engineer & Head of Provider Ecosystem, OpenRouter).