# How Tailscale built a customer-facing model router on AI Gateway

DevFeed: [How Tailscale built a customer-facing model router on AI Gateway](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-tailscale-built-a-customer-facing-model-router-on-ai-gateway-751.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://vercel.com/blog/how-tailscale-built-a-customer-facing-model-router-on-ai-gateway>)

Author: Susan Aziz

Published: 2026-09-11T04:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Vercel News](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/vercel-news.md>)

Topics: [AI Platform](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-platform.md>), [networking](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/networking.md>), [API keys](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api-keys.md>)

Tags: [ai-gateway](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-gateway.md>), [ai-models](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-models.md>), [api](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/api.md>), [model-routing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/model-routing.md>), [sandbox](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sandbox.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [vercel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/vercel.md>)

## AI overview

Tailscale describes using Vercel AI Gateway and Sandbox to deliver customer-facing access to hundreds of AI models through tailnet identity. The article explains that provider integration and secure agent execution were complex enough that Tailscale chose managed routing and sandboxing instead of building those layers in-house.

## Source excerpt

Tailscale on Vercel Hundreds of AI models shipped to customers in-product Model access granted and revoked by tailnet network identity Went from model routing prototype to paying customers in months Tailscale connects a company's laptops, servers, cloud instances, and personal devices into one private network called a tailnet. Remy Guercio, who leads product for Aperture by Tailscale, describes it simply: "It's basically like a VPC that can span any cloud, on-prem, your house, and your phone." Aperture takes that same idea and applies it to AI. Instead of giving every employee, agent, or tool a separate provider API key, Aperture lets companies control model access through the tailnet itself. Add someone to the network, and they can immediately use approved models. Remove them, and access disappears. Under the hood, Aperture is built on Vercel AI Gateway and Vercel Sandbox. AI Gateway gives Tailscale one API for hundreds of models. Sandbox gives agents a safe place to run. Together, they let Tailscale offer model access and agent execution inside a customer's private network, without their team building every piece of AI infrastructure from scratch. Model routing is harder than it looks Tailscale is an infrastructure company, so building the routing and execution layers in-house was the obvious first option. But once they took a deeper look into the engineering effort required, they chose not to. The provider layer looked deceptively simple from the outside. "You would think all of the endpoints are the same," Remy says. "They are not." David Carney, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, has the receipts, because Tailscale still maintains that plumbing for a few customers who haven't migrated to Aperture yet. "There are a lot of things the big providers don't do that blow my mind that the gateway does, like simply putting the cost in the response," he says. "We initially built those systems for customers ourselves, and the complexity is insane." Agents raised the s