Chinese AI Models Surpass US in Global Token Usage for First Time

Chinese artificial intelligence models have overtaken the United States for the first time this month in open-source usage on global AI platforms. The global market landscape, long dominated by American AI, is being reshaped by China's offensive led by price competitiveness.

According to Hong Kong's Sing Tao Daily on the 28th, data from Open Router, a global AI model service platform, showed Chinese AI models recorded 4.12 trillion tokens in usage during May 9-15, surpassing the US (2.94 trillion) for the first time. The gap widened further during May 16-22, with Chinese model usage soaring to 5.16 trillion tokens while US usage declined to 2.7 trillion.

Chinese models also swept four of the top five positions in global token usage. MiniMax's 'M2.5' ranked first, followed by Moonshot AI's 'Kimi K2.5,' Zhipu AI's 'GLM-5,' and DeepSeek's 'V3.2.'

Token usage rankings on Open Router, which has more than 5 million users, are considered a key indicator for gauging global AI adoption trends.

As of last year, US users accounted for 47.17% of the platform's user base, while Chinese users represented just 6.01%.

China's AI surge has been driven by overwhelming cost efficiency. According to Open Router's published pricing, MiniMax M2.5 costs approximately $1.1 per million tokens. In contrast, US-based Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 costs approximately $25 per million tokens—more than 20 times more expensive than Chinese models.