some correction here: 
Alby Extension is free and open source and always will be, obviously.
Alby Hub is our upcoming, fully NWC focused, self-sovereign wallet. free and open source as well. You can run it anywhere. (for example work hard to make it even run on  $20 pi zero, which I am super excited about) 
As a company we are going to offer lightning and Nostr/NWC cloud services and additional value added services that had been request quite often. 
Our cloud service for Alby Hub is probably the fastest and easiest way to get a full lightning node running for you and fully supports the nostr and webln ecosystem.
 
We hope that people like our plans and value and support the work that we do. 

 Do you need a lightning node with channels and liquidity to use the Alby Hub? Will it be released for Start9? 

 It will be released on Start9 and can use either the LND on Start9 if you have one, or an inbuilt lightning node. There’s basic channel management but we’re trying to make it as simple and fun! as possible 

 Do you have a start9? - there is an early StartOS package: https://github.com/horologger/albyhub-startos 
(you can download the .s9pk file from here if you're logged in at github: https://github.com/horologger/albyhub-startos )   

 By running Albyhub on my Start9 or on a standalone RPi, will this reveal my IP to Alby and/or liquidity provider, or does it run behind Tor? 

 When you do requests to services like a liquidity provider or Alby it might see your IP if you don't put it behind a VPN or similar - just like any other resource that you load. 
afaik the LSPs do not offer Tor hidden services (at least not all).

 

 So it's king of like a competitor for Voltage basically with the option to run this hub directly on Umbrel or equivalent as well ? 

 Well done, great work. Does Alby manage the traffic channels for the lightning nodes?