TrustedRouter, an AI routing startup, raised $1.25 million from a group of investors, Axios has learned.Why it matters: The interest in the startup is the latest example of Silicon Valley's obsession with routing, and the bet that businesses won't rely on just one AI model. Driving the news: Instead of sending every task to a single AI model, TrustedRouter lets users send queries to the one that fits their needs at the most efficient price.The company, which has been in public beta since May, recently processed more than 1 billion tokens in a single day, founder Joseph Perla tells Axios.The platform gives users access to more than 600 models from more than 81 providers through a single API, while its own code is entirely open-source.Follow the money: The seed round includes Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures, early Zoom and Canva investor Bill Tai, 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey and former Stripe data leader George Xing.On AI adoption, businesses are "struggling with the double-edged sword of how do I get my employee base up to speed so I don't lose, but how do I not blow my annual budget in six weeks?" Tai said. Tai tells Axios that within that environment, the need for routing is "universal." The big picture: Routing is the shiny object getting the AI world's attention at the moment. Stripe agreed to buy unicorn OpenRouter for more than $8 billion, the company announced last week.Meta is reportedly working on an OpenRouter competitor called Switchboard, per The Information. Zoom in: Perla believes his competitive advantage is a focus on protecting customer data. TrustedRouter's pitch is that businesses shouldn't have to choose between model flexibility and data privacy: Its open-source system uses confidential computing. That prevents the router from seeing customers' prompts, while letting them choose which AI providers ultimately receive their data if they want that for certain use cases.What they're saying: Lessin believes routing is an "important" part of the AI story, as it gives customers a "trusted, private, secure way" to use AI tools without "leaking data." Threat level: Routing threatens to turn AI models from destinations into interchangeable commodities. "I see people excited about us and moving to us because they don't like what Anthropic is becoming," Perla said. The bottom line: Routing is "smoking hot," Tai said, and Perla hopes his company can define the next phase of its growth.