Chinese AI models take 48% of OpenRouter requests as price war escalates

Chinese AI models accounted for about 48% of requests on OpenRouter from Oct. 5 to 11, versus 40.3% combined for OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. DeepSeek led with 24.5%, followed by Zhipu AI at 13.4% and Qwen at 5.4%, as U.S. firms respond with cheaper models and discounts.

• DeepSeek held 24.5% of OpenRouter requests, Zhipu AI 13.4% and Qwen 5.4%
• DeepSeek input tokens start at $0.15 per million versus $2–4 for top U.S. models
• OpenAI launched GPT-6 Luna at roughly $0.10 per million tokens
• DeepSeek has had 44 outages this year, including five in October