Analysis: To lower costs, overseas developers are turning to Chinese AI models like DeepSeek

According to Odaily, as the cost of AI usage continues to climb, 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 risen from less than 1% in May of this year to 17%. AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter stated that DeepSeek's usage doubled in the first half of 2026, making it the platform's most popular model. It also noted that the usage share of tokens from Chinese open-source models, including Xiaomi, MiniMax, and Tencent, has been steadily increasing, while the shares of Google and OpenAI have declined. (Bloomberg)