OpenRouter data reveals that US companies' token share for Chinese models has consistently exceeded 30% weekly since February 8, peaking at 46%, a substantial increase from 11% the prior year. AI startup Lindy shifted all traffic from Anthropic's Claude to DeepSeek, achieving millions in cost savings. Zhipu's GLM 5.2 experienced a 27x daily token volume jump and an 80x customer count increase on Vercel in its first full week, with performance within one percentage point of Anthropic's Opus 4.8 at one-fifth the price.
US enterprises are rapidly adopting Chinese AI models for cost savings and near-parity performance, shifting compute demand and intensifying price competition for US model providers.