The fact that they put "every model" repeatedly, then don't actually support even close to "most mainstream models", makes me highly doubtful their service will be more honest and forthcoming once I'm signed up.
The domain was previously owned by Innovation HQ (innovationhq.com) who own tens of thousands of domains, some of the best in the world (they sold robot.com not long ago, owns/runs whatismyip.com). Innovation were asking ~$5 million for it earlier this year. Given the huge money flowing into AI router projects, I expect Ramp paid very close to asking, or perhaps a little more. So, $5 million +/- $1 million is my guess. I assume Ramp will announce the price in a few weeks to generate some more press for the project.
There are domain name investment companies, yes. HugeDomains owns over 5 million domains!
As for product companies, like Ramp, buying domains as an investment is generally a terrible idea. Domains are not liquid, the (hypothetical) $5 million that Ramp paid is not a price Ramp could achieve when selling the domain tomorrow. The previous owners owned Router.com for over 20 years before Ramp came along, willing to pay a lot of money for it.
Sometimes a company will buy a domain, use it, shut down whatever it was, then end up with the domain on their balance sheet for years, even decades, before someone tracks them down and offers to buy it. In those cases, the company can make money off the domain, but for every time that happens, there’s thousands more domains on balance sheets that nobody wants to pay a good amount for.
More broadly, domain name investors make their money by buying lots of domains and holding them over the long term, making their money from the very small number that sell. Part of why good domains are so expensive is that 1 sale needs to cover the cost of hundreds of even thousands of other domains that don’t sell.
I think you mean landlords, not squatters. Squatters are the people who occupy owned property without permission, landlords are the people who hold property, do nothing, and collect profit.
In the context of domains, a domain squatter would be more like someone who holds and keeps a domain without any intention of actually using it or taking it knowing someone else might have use of that exact name, they just want to sell it later for more money. In real-life I agree with your definition though, I guess it not 100% comparable, bad name that got stuck.
Yes, that’s how you know they’re rich rich. They’re so rich they don’t care about having a website. The reputable brokers know who they are, the serious buyers will get a message to them.
It’s also so strange how they all play the exact same game. Everybody creates pretty much the same products. Every software company will have a chatbot, an agentic harness, a model router, and whatever will be the next trend. It’s not an ecosystem where we see lots of different ideas with some crazy, some failing, some succeeding, it really feels like it’s a single same bet and all SF companies are sort of acting like one homogeneous meta company
Same happened at the start of the cloud era; everyone created a YT competitor, Twitter clones, MySpace clones, a cloud platform to host on (though it was just a wrapper around AWS like wrappers we see around OpenAI [looking at you Heroku])
Big tech emails leaked during a trial over a decade ago; C-level types agreed they need not truly compete and see each other as one big company.
Screen based filter bubble living has kept the digital generation ignorant; it's all built on the same physical principles. No point pretending, at their level, they're doing anything truly different
"Router itself stores model inputs, outputs, and metadata and uses this data to improve the service, but users may turn this off in settings."
Why is it that every AI-product think dark UX with default data harvesting of proprietary data is a great idea? I mean it's rhetorical, stealing for training is the norm, but it's still just as disappointing every time I see it.
Indeed, probably not cheap. Ironically, they see themselves as the ones that should help others "stop overpaying for things" and "help companies make better spending decisions":
> Wait, Ramp bought router.com? We did. It was either this or spend the next year spelling out a longer URL on podcasts. More importantly, we build tools that help companies make better spending decisions and stop overpaying for things.
Indeed. Also, ramp.com is shorter than router.com, so I don't really understand the "spelling out a longer URL on podcasts". I guess router.com is just clearer for customers?
Otherwise I think they just meant chinese models not mainstream models.
Like Hy3, Mimo, etc. Also gemini models but not sure if they are mainstream anymore.
Save for GLM 5.3 - coming soon once it percolates through our providers.
That said the current models ain't bad!
Yeah, this was my hunch too, which honestly doesn't bode great for the future, but I'm always up to being pleasantly surprised.
As for product companies, like Ramp, buying domains as an investment is generally a terrible idea. Domains are not liquid, the (hypothetical) $5 million that Ramp paid is not a price Ramp could achieve when selling the domain tomorrow. The previous owners owned Router.com for over 20 years before Ramp came along, willing to pay a lot of money for it.
Sometimes a company will buy a domain, use it, shut down whatever it was, then end up with the domain on their balance sheet for years, even decades, before someone tracks them down and offers to buy it. In those cases, the company can make money off the domain, but for every time that happens, there’s thousands more domains on balance sheets that nobody wants to pay a good amount for.
More broadly, domain name investors make their money by buying lots of domains and holding them over the long term, making their money from the very small number that sell. Part of why good domains are so expensive is that 1 sale needs to cover the cost of hundreds of even thousands of other domains that don’t sell.
Their site is a totally blank HTML page, it seems?
A few years ago, companies buying random companies from a completely different sector was frowned upon by stakeholders
Big tech emails leaked during a trial over a decade ago; C-level types agreed they need not truly compete and see each other as one big company.
Screen based filter bubble living has kept the digital generation ignorant; it's all built on the same physical principles. No point pretending, at their level, they're doing anything truly different
Mirror neurons are a helluva drug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron
Society evolves slowly as generational churn is not fast
https://engineering.ramp.com/post/thompson-sampling-model-ro...
https://x.com/RampLabs/status/2087163448513765449
Why is it that every AI-product think dark UX with default data harvesting of proprietary data is a great idea? I mean it's rhetorical, stealing for training is the norm, but it's still just as disappointing every time I see it.
Hmmm
Indeed, probably not cheap. Ironically, they see themselves as the ones that should help others "stop overpaying for things" and "help companies make better spending decisions":
> Wait, Ramp bought router.com? We did. It was either this or spend the next year spelling out a longer URL on podcasts. More importantly, we build tools that help companies make better spending decisions and stop overpaying for things.
Blog post: https://ramp.com/blog/router-launch