US Firms Use Chinese AI as OpenAI, Anthropic Costs Rise

U.S. companies are increasingly using Chinese-built artificial intelligence models. This trend comes as the cost of top American systems from OpenAI and Anthropic rises. On OpenRouter, a marketplace for AI systems, U.S. companies directed over 30% of their token consumption to Chinese models every week since February 8th. This peaked at 46%. Previously, Chinese models accounted for only 4.5% of token traffic in the first half of 2025. The price difference is significant. Open-source Chinese models are 60% to 90% cheaper than their American counterparts. For example, Z.ai's GLM-5.2 model saw its daily token volume grow 27 times and customer usage increase 80 times in its first full week after launch. This model also performed nearly as well as Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on a key benchmark but at about one-fifth the price. One AI startup, Lindy, switched all its requests from Anthropic's Claude to DeepSeek. The CEO, Flo Crivello, noted an immediate and dramatic drop in costs, projecting millions of dollars in savings. The capability gap between Chinese and American AI models is estimated at six to nine months, but this comes with much lower pricing. This shift highlights a growing focus on cost-effectiveness for companies using AI.