Analysis: Overseas developers are turning to Chinese AI models like DeepSeek to cut costs

According to Odaily, as the cost of using AI continues to rise, a growing number of overseas startups and developers are adopting Chinese AI models such as DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI to reduce inference costs. Data shows that DeepSeek's share of AI traffic on the cloud platform Vercel has increased from less than 1% in May this year to 17%. AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter stated that DeepSeek's usage doubled in the first half of 2026, making it the most popular model on the platform. It also noted that the token usage share of open-source models from Chinese companies including Xiaomi, MiniMax, and Tencent continues to rise, while the shares of Google and OpenAI have declined. (Bloomberg)