Chinese AI firms near OpenAI and Anthropic, OpenRouter usage triples
Chinese AI companies are closing the gap with big US names like OpenAI and Anthropic, according to a new report.
The best Chinese open-weight models are now just months behind the top American ones, and their usage on the OpenRouter marketplace tripled in just one month, much faster growth than US models.
Chinese models cheaper and more accessible
Chinese AI models aren't just affordable: DeepSeek's v4 flash model costs only $0.28 per million tokens compared to Fable's $2.75 per job; they're also easier to access.
Because of US restrictions on some American models, many users are switching over.
Even with limited chip access, Chinese firms have made their systems super efficient using smart tech tricks like mixture of experts.
And they're not slowing down: Alibaba launched a new Qwen model to compete with the best from the US right after Moonshot AI dropped its Kimi K3 model this July.