Businesses around the world have dramatically increased their use of Chinese AI models in 2026, a trend that has now drawn the attention of U.S. regulators.
According to ITNA, statistics from developer platforms OpenRouter and Vercel show a significant increase in the use of Chinese AI models on these two platforms.
Lower prices and strong performance of these models, particularly on programming tasks and agent-driven work, are identified as the main drivers of this growth; although leading American models still account for the largest share of users' spending.
This development has also raised concerns in Washington, and U.S. lawmakers are examining the expanding use of Chinese AI; concerns range from technological competition to security issues and Beijing's global influence.
The topic also became one of the main points of discussion during the recent meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Competitive performance of Chinese models
While the most advanced American models still lead in most benchmark tests, Chinese companies such as DeepSeek, Z.ai and Alibaba have released new models that have made notable progress in some tasks, such as programming.
Harpreet Aurora, head of agent infrastructure at Vercel, told CNBC that Chinese models have gradually become capable of performing a wider range of tasks at much lower cost; in her words, when a model meets the necessary quality standards for a task, the price difference becomes an attractive factor.
However she emphasized that companies still prefer leading American models for more complex tasks.
Global South countries, the largest users
According to OpenRouter data, businesses located in countries that the platform classifies as the “Global South” have had the highest use of Chinese AI models in recent weeks, with 67 percent of the tokens used by these companies attributed to Chinese models.
By contrast, nearly half of all tokens consumed on OpenRouter are used by American companies.
An security expert said that especially Southeast Asia, given its close economic and cultural ties with China and growing digital infrastructure, could see a significant increase in the use of Chinese AI models.