Chinese AI Models Capture 30%+ of U.S. Developer Token Usage as OpenAI, Anthropic Costs Rise
Chinese AI models including DeepSeek and Z.ai have captured over 30% of weekly token usage by U.S. companies on OpenRouter since February 2025, up from 4.5% in the first half of the year. The shift comes as companies seek alternatives 60-90% cheaper than leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, while Chinese models close the performance gap to within 6-9 months of U.S. frontier systems.