Model routers just graduated to strategic infrastructure.

Model routers just graduated to strategic infrastructure. With OpenRouter joining Stripe, a single routing layer now sits inside a payments giant, so teams should treat it like any other critical dependency and run one exit drill: can you move high-value traffic to direct providers without rewriting auth, quota, fallback logic, and billing assumptions? If that question fails, the router is a production chokepoint; if it passes, you gain flexibility without vendor lock-in.