Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models have claimed the top five spots in the weekly token usage rankings on the global large language model (LLM) platform OpenRouter, demonstrating their overwhelming dominance in the developer ecosystem.
According to OpenRouter, the total number of tokens processed by AI models worldwide from October 5 to 11 reached 172 trillion, a 3.61% increase from the previous week. Among these, Chinese AI models processed 86.74 trillion tokens, significantly surpassing the 18.97 trillion tokens processed by U.S. AI models. The token usage of Chinese models surged by 50.96% compared to the previous week, while U.S. models saw a 17.1% increase. This marks the 24th consecutive week that Chinese models have outperformed their U.S. counterparts.
Leading the usage rankings is the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose V4.1 Flash processed 41 trillion tokens in one week, a 60% increase from the prior week. Z.ai's GLM 5.3 Flash ranked second with 12.2 trillion tokens, followed by Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Flash with 11.5 trillion tokens in third place. StepFun's Step 5 Preview and Tencent's Hy4 Preview ranked fourth and fifth, processing 8.84 trillion and 8.28 trillion tokens, respectively. The top five Chinese models accounted for 47.9% of the total token usage.
OpenRouter connects various companies' AI models through a single API, allowing developers to choose and utilize different models. Therefore, this ranking is based on the actual tokens processed through OpenRouter, serving as an indicator of which AI models developers are using for service development and work.
Notably, the increase in usage of Chinese models suggests that Chinese AI companies, which emphasize low costs and open models, are becoming preferred options for overseas developers. According to CNBC, the share of usage for Chinese models on OpenRouter was only between 6% and 13% in February.
Tian Feng, former head of the Intelligent Industry Research Institute at SenseTime, stated, "The performance, stability, and cost-effectiveness of Chinese models are being recognized in the market."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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