US demand for Chinese AI models triples on OpenRouter
- Source
- CNBC
- Time
- 8:17 AM
- Weight
- 95/100
Demand for Chinese-developed artificial intelligence models among U.S. companies has increased significantly, with data from the developer platform OpenRouter showing that the share of tokens used on these models has tripled. While Chinese AI usage averaged around 11% over the past year, it has recently stabilized above 30%, peaking at 46%.
This shift is driven primarily by the rising costs of advanced models from domestic labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, which has prompted U.S. businesses to seek more cost-effective alternatives for their AI workloads. Models from Chinese firms such as DeepSeek and Z.ai are becoming increasingly attractive because they offer performance levels near the American "frontier" while being 60% to 90% cheaper.