Chinese AI models overtake ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini in global usage

Chinese artificial intelligence models have outcompeted the US-based AI models in the terms of token usage.

According to OpenRouter data, the Chinese models have been dominating the token consumption landscape because of their energy efficiency and reliability.

These Chinese models, including DeepSeek and MiniMax, charge less than leading US companies for tokens, thereby giving the country a new edge on the AI battleground.

In the list of top five companies, only one US-based tech company, Anthropic, was able to make its place.

Talking about the Chinese models, DeepSeek V4 Flash proved to be the successful one with 4.63 trillion tokens followed by MiniMax M3 with 4.13 trillion tokens and Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.5 with 3.8 trillion tokens.

The final entries in the top 10 list include Tencent's Hy3, Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Owl Alpha, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.

The 12th and 13th position in the terms of global token usage were claimed by Google Gemini 2 and OpenAI’s GPT 5.5.

The difference between the US and Chinese models comes as several US AI firms are moving away from flat-rate subscriptions to token-based billing, a model that tracks the specific volume of data processed by their systems.

Recently, the firms have started to restrict the AI usage as the cost of deploying the artificial intelligence at scale has outpaced their budget. Recently, companies including Uber, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have introduced caps on token consumption to rein in the costs.

Uber and Microsoft are grappling with AI budget overruns. For instance, Microsoft recently has decided to rescind its internal Claude code license along with its Experiences and Devices division ending access by June 30, 2026.

As per Goldman Sachs prediction by 2030 the use of AI agents would lead to 24-fold increase in token consumption, leading to chip supply crunch over the next 12 to 18 months.