"Fears Turned Reality!" Sweeping Up to the 5th Spot... Caught Off Guard by Their Signature Low-Price Strategy

Chinese AI companies are rapidly expanding their influence in the developer market.

According to data compiled by the AI model platform OpenRouter, Xiaomi's Mimo V2.5 was the most used AI model by global developers over the past week.

While models from Chinese companies such as DeepSeek and Tencent swept the top tiers in usage, the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic still maintained an advantage in AI performance evaluations.

According to the latest AI model rankings released by OpenRouter, Xiaomi's Mimo V2.5 ranked first in API token usage over the past week.

Mimo V2.5 processed 10.8 trillion tokens over the week, accounting for approximately 15% of the total usage.

DeepSeek V4 Flash took second place, Tencent's Hunyuan 3 took third, and the fourth and fifth spots were also occupied by DeepSeek V4 Pro and Z.ai's GLM 5.2.

This means Chinese companies claimed all of the top five AI models most frequently used by developers.

However, this ranking is based on API token usage actually processed on the OpenRouter platform.

While it does not represent the total user count of ChatGPT or Claude, it is evaluated as an indicator showing which models companies developing AI services are actually choosing.

Industry insiders analyze that Chinese AI companies are rapidly expanding in the developer market by leveraging API usage fees cheaper than those of U.S. cutting-edge models and high cost-performance ratios.

On the other hand, U.S. companies maintained their dominance in AI performance.

In the OpenRouter comprehensive benchmark, Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 ranked first with 60.7 points, followed by Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Max.

Among Chinese models, Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 achieved the highest rank at fourth place with 57.1 points.

Analysts note that the divide is becoming even more pronounced: Chinese AI maintains an advantage in the developer market driven by price competitiveness, while U.S. AI maintains the lead in the top-tier performance competition.

Reported by Kim Minjeong | Video by Zhang Yujin | Graphics by Yang Hyemin | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.