A research report published by Lyon indicates that data from OpenRouter shows a rapid growth in demand for artificial intelligence models. As of the end of September, these models consumed over 146 trillion token per week, with the total annual recurring revenue ( ARR ) exceeding 1.5 billion US dollars. In September, Chinese models accounted for approximately 65% of the usage and 30% of the expenditure, benefiting from prices that were about 80% lower than those of their American counterparts; the lower pricing drove revenue growth based on usage, which is consistent with the Jaynes Paradox ( Jevons Paradox ).

This line states that OpenAI has the largest increase in expenditure share, while among Chinese suppliers, Zhipu (02513.HK) leads, followed by DeepSeek and Moon's Dark Side. The progress of Zhipu in AWS Bedrock may be a key indicator of the monetization potential of the open-source weight model.

This line indicates that in September, the top models from large language model providers in the United States and China accounted for token of consumption, at 31% and 65% respectively, which is a significant change from 65% and 22% in January. In terms of dollar expenditure, U.S. and Chinese providers accounted for 70% and 30% in September, compared to 94% and 6% in January. Chinese models' weekly expenditure has increased by 27 times so far this year, driven by a 67-fold increase in the usage of token, while the price of the mixed token has almost halved.

It is estimated that OpenAI has seen the largest increase in expenditure share among OpenRouter, with its weekly expenditure share rising by 20 percentage points to 27% so far this year, closing in on Anthropic's 28%. On the side of Chinese suppliers, as of the week ending September 27th, Zhipu (02513.HK), DeepSeek, and Yuezhi Danmian led in expenditure share, at 10.5%, 7.1%, and 3.9% respectively. Tencent (00700.HK) also benefited, with its preview version recording a 3.9% share. The revenue share of open-source weight models reached 29%, highlighting the monetization opportunities for Chinese laboratories through distribution by computing power partners. Zhipu's GLM progress at AWS Bedrock remains a key signal for potential increases in revenue and profit margins.