Conceptual diagram of AI Photo: VCG

Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) technology companies are gaining a growing foothold among international users, with their models topping rankings on some leading industry platforms, ahead of their US counterparts.

Chinese AI companies, with their open-source strategies and cost effectiveness, are gaining growing adoption among overseas developers despite the continued US restrictions on China's access to advanced chips and AI technologies, a Chinese veteran industry analyst said, noting that global AI competition should be about innovation capabilities and the ability to build attractive ecosystems, rather than about who can erect higher technological barriers.

The latest weekly large-language model (LLM) rankings from AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter showed that models developed by Chinese companies swept the top four spots and took six of the top 10, the Global Times noted on the platform on Tuesday. DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 topped the ranking with 9.39 trillion tokens in usage, followed closely by Tencent's Hy3 with 8.94 trillion.

From August 3 to Sunday, Chinese AI models recorded 34.25 trillion tokens in usage, up 21.76 percent from the previous week, while US AI models, although up 109.36 percent, only recorded 9.17 trillion tokens, about three times less than that of Chinese models.

Another DeepSeek model, V4 Flash 0423, came in third, followed by Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.5 in fourth place. Zhipu AI's GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4 Pro also made the top 10.

Notably, usage of the top-ranked DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 surged 302 percent over the week. The rankings are based on actual model usage on OpenRouter, highlighting the growing adoption of Chinese AI models among global developers and their strong presence on the platform, Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the latest trending rankings on Hugging Face, the world's largest open-source AI community, also highlighted the growing influence of Chinese AI models among global developers. As of Tuesday, four of the top five models on the platform's Trending Models list were linked to Chinese AI companies, with MiniMax's newly released full modality model MiniMax H3 topping the ranking.

One key reason Chinese AI models are gaining popularity is their combination of strong performance, lower costs and greater openness, Chinese experts said.

"Companies such as DeepSeek, MiniMax and Zhipu AI have released open-weight models that developers can download, customize and use to build their own applications. Many Chinese models also come with relatively low API and inference costs, making them more affordable for start-ups and smaller businesses," Xiang said.

According to UBS estimates cited by media reports, leading Chinese AI models cost about one-tenth as much to train as comparable overseas models, while their API prices are typically only 10 percent to 20 percent of those of foreign alternatives.

"China's strong industrial foundation in power supply, computing infrastructure and data center development also provides solid support for the large-scale deployment of AI," said Xiang.

In contrast to many large US AI companies that primarily offer their flagship models through closed platforms and application programming interfaces, China's are gaining traction among global developers with its open model approach, Ma Jihua, a veteran industry analyst, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The open model approach allows a much broader range of developers, including smaller players, to participate in AI development rather than leaving advanced AI capabilities concentrated in the hands of a few large companies, said Ma. As more developers build on these models, they can create new tools and applications, further expanding the ecosystem around Chinese AI models, Ma added.

China's recently released Action Plan for Global AI Governance explicitly encourages the joint development of international open-source AI communities, greater international exchanges and cooperation among open-source communities, and the sharing of general purpose large models, foundational algorithms and software tools.

Recently, the US government has ramped up its unilateral moves targeting China's AI-related sector, including a plan to ban cutting-edge Chinese AI models, US media outlets have reported.

The growing influence of Chinese AI models shows that technological blockades cannot hold back innovation and industrial development, Ma said, noting that such restrictions could instead backfire by raising costs for US companies and limiting their access to competitive technologies and global AI cooperation.

Chinese AI models are already seeing growing adoption among US businesses. Chinese AI models now consistently account for more than 30 percent of weekly token usage by US companies, with the share peaking at 46 percent, the People's Daily reported, citing data from a third party industry platform.

The US should view the development of China's AI industry objectively, and avoid politicizing or overstretching the concept of national security in normal technological and industrial competition, Ma said. 

"After all, global AI competition should ultimately be about innovation and the ability to build attractive ecosystems, rather than about who can erect higher technological barriers," Ma noted.