Openrouter

• Data from the API routing platform OpenRouter reveals that Chinese-developed language models now account for approximately 61% of token consumption among the top 10 models. • This shift indicates that thousands of American AI startups are quietly migrating their traffic away from US-based models in favor of Chinese alternatives. • The trend is significant as it suggests Chinese LLMs are becoming more competitive in performance or cost, potentially challenging the dominance of Silicon Valley AI firms.

• Chinese AI models, specifically DeepSeek, are currently leading in traffic on OpenRouter, a popular platform used by global developers to access various LLMs. • The trend highlights a shift where open-weight models from China are performing competitively, though they introduce significant data privacy and security risks. • Several nations, including the U.S., South Korea, Italy, Australia, and Taiwan, have already implemented regulatory bans on using DeepSeek on government devices.