Chinese AI models lead global token consumption

Chinese artificial intelligence models have outpaced AI models made by the United States in terms of global usage for a fifth straight week, underscoring a growing token economy in China that is defined by scale, pricing and computing infrastructure.

A token is the fundamental unit of data processed by an AI model. The momentum for the growth of the token economy comes as China ramps up efforts to expand its AI infrastructure.

Last week, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said the nation will pilot "computing banks" and "computing supermarkets" to turn computing power into a tradeable, financially linked resource.

According to data recently released by OpenRouter, a platform widely used by overseas developers to access AI models, from March 30 to Sunday, global weekly usage of Chinese AI models reached 12.96 trillion tokens, up 31.5 percent week-on-week, while AI models made by the US logged 3.03 trillion tokens, rising only 0.76 percent.

The expanded usage of Chinese AI models outpaced that of their US counterparts for the fifth consecutive week, data from OpenRouter showed. It highlighted that last week, all the six most-used AI models worldwide were made in China, and that two AI models from Alibaba Group's Qwen ranked among the top three.

Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, noted that Chinese developers account for a little over 6 percent of OpenRouter users, which indicates that a bulk of overseas users are adopting Chinese AI models.

"It shows that AI from China is being widely used, accurately calculated and largely traded, highlighting a new era for AI in the country," Wang said.

Demand for Chinese AI models has been accelerating rapidly. Tan Dai, president of ByteDance-backed Volcano Engine, said the company's Doubao model now hits over 120 trillion tokens daily, doubling in three months and increasing thousandfold compared with two years ago.

The number of Volcano Engine's enterprise clients whose daily token usage of the Doubao model exceeds 1 trillion has risen to 140 from 100 at the end of last year, Tan added.

Industry experts said that the intensifying competition between China and the US is increasingly spanning the full AI stack — from chips and algorithms to applications and infrastructure. The global AI race is no longer just about building smarter models, but about building the infrastructure that can run them efficiently, affordably, and at a global scale, they said.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology outlined a nationwide campaign to make computing resources "more accessible, flexible and affordable" for small and medium-sized enterprises, a group seen as the key to expanding the country's AI ambitions.

Under the plan, policymakers are encouraging experiments with "computing banks", where companies can deposit idle computing capacity and withdraw it later, and "computing supermarkets", a marketplace-style platform for on-demand access to pooled resources.

Pan Helin, a member of the ministry's advisory committee, said: "A 'computing supermarket' allows enterprises to purchase processing capacity on demand, while a 'computing bank' enables credit-based usage or even financing backed by computing assets. These new models essentially financialize computing power."

According to the ministry, by the end of 2028, China aims to establish a broadly accessible computing service system, characterized by wide coverage, low costs, high-quality services, a dynamic ecosystem, and a strong talent base.

Under the plan, at least 10 out of 15 major industry categories designated for SMEs will be covered, with a focus on significantly reducing the cost and complexity of accessing and deploying computing resources.

The effort is also intended to support SMEs in moving up the value chain toward becoming "little giant" enterprises, the ministry said.

Local governments and State-backed companies are already experimenting. Shanghai Telecom has launched a computing marketplace linking its data centers across the city, allowing businesses to purchase a wide range of services. Hangzhou in Zhejiang province has integrated similar features into a broader city-level computing dispatch platform.

chengyu@chinadaily.com.cn