"the share of tokens used for US models on OpenRouter has collapsed" Bloomberg
Rohan Paul Twitter · Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) · 2026-06-27
Bloomberg and UBS data show US AI model token share on OpenRouter collapsed from roughly 70% to 30% in one year as enterprises facing AI bills of up to $35K per month shift to cheaper Chinese open-source models including Qwen and DeepSeek via model routing strategies.
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Extraction
Topics: ai-model-competitionchinese-ai-modelsenterprise-ai-costopen-source-aimodel-routing
Claims
- US model token share on OpenRouter fell from approximately 70% to 30% in roughly one year.
- 60% of companies monitoring AI budgets are moving to cheaper models including Chinese open-source alternatives, according to UBS.
- Enterprises are adopting model routing strategies, directing simpler tasks to cheaper models and reserving premium models for complex reasoning and long-context work.
- Chinese open-source models including Qwen, DeepSeek, MiniMax, GLM, and Kimi now meet enterprise cost requirements through local deployment or cloud catalog availability.
Key quotes
the share of tokens used for US models on OpenRouter has collapsed
On OpenRouter, US model token share fell from around 70% to around 30% in a year. A clean warning signal.
Companies are not abandoning AI, they are using model routing, which sends easy tasks to cheaper models and saves premium models for hard reasoning, code, and long-context work.