Chinese AI models surge in global popularity — and Washington is worried

AI was a major focus as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met this week.

The most advanced U.S. models lead most benchmarks, but Chinese companies like DeepSeek, Z.ai and Alibaba have released new models with major performance gains in tasks such as coding.

According to usage data shared with CNBC, the global adoption of Chinese models by companies has increased substantially in 2026.

Chinese AI models have gone from a relatively small share of usage to a majority on two major developer platforms that provide gateways for companies to access models from different providers. On OpenRouter, they accounted for 57%-67% of tokens used in the week of Sept. 14, up from 6%-13% in February. On Vercel, their share rose to 55% in August from 11% in January.

OpenRouter's data related to companies in the U.S., Europe and what it defines as the "Global South" — 82 countries across Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. Vercel did not specify its data's geographical breakdown.

Concern is growing in Washington, where two U.S. House Committees are investigating the impact of rising adoption of Chinese models.

The U.S. has sought to preserve its AI lead by restricting Chinese AI companies from buying the most advanced chips through export controls.

Washington is concerned about them accessing Nvidia chips remotely, via overseas data centers, and gaining ground by using "distillation" where new models mimic older, more established ones.

Chinese AI represents "real economic and security risks for the United States," said Daniel Remler, a senior fellow in the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank.

"The ultimate concern is that the integration of Chinese AI models pulls countries into a Chinese technology sphere of influence that hardens into geopolitical alignment," he told CNBC.

Peter Walker, head of insights at OpenRouter, told CNBC, Chinese open source models released this year "can credibly perform in advanced agentic use cases, especially in regards to coding, in a way that was just not true in late 2025."

They're also "incredibly cost-effective compared to most models from American labs," he added.

Earlier this week, OpenAI and Anthropic both announced new, cheaper models. Dianne Penn, head of product management, research and labs at Anthropic, told CNBC that the company was trying to make its models answers "more efficient, so it uses less tokens depending on your effort setting."

Price is key in rising adoption of Chinese models, Harpreet Arora, head of agentic infrastructure at Vercel, told CNBC. "Chinese models are becoming capable enough for more tasks at a much lower cost. Once a model meets the quality bar for the job, that price difference becomes compelling."

But he added that companies still want to use frontier U.S. models for some more complicated tasks.

Businesses in what OpenRouter defines as "Global South" have been the biggest users of Chinese AI models on the company's system in recent weeks.

More than two-thirds — 67% — of the tokens these companies use are on Chinese models. About half the tokens on OpenRouter are used by companies in the U.S.

"Southeast Asia in particular may see significant uptake of Chinese AI models given the close economic and cultural linkages [with China] plus growing digital infrastructure," said CNAS' Remler.

"Anywhere from Lagos to São Paulo to Jakarta where entrepreneurs and governments are looking for cheap, open models, will look first to Chinese AI."