FEATUREDAI HOT (Curated Pool)· aihot-apiZH00:00 · 06·02
→The Thriving Ecosystem of Open Models
OpenRouter data shows open-weight models generated 69.1% of token usage since 2025, versus 30.9% for closed models, while share leadership shifted across DeepSeek, MiniMax, Kimi, MiMo, Qwen, Tencent Hy3, Alibaba, and Arcee releases.
#Inference-opt#OpenRouter#DeepSeek#Qwen
why featured
Featured · importance 76 · hook + knowledge + resonance
editor take
OpenRouter’s 69.1% is not the whole market, but it says API-first developers now treat open weights as the default shortlist.
sharp
OpenRouter’s numbers puncture the lazy claim that closed models own inference: since 2025, open-weight models produced 69.1% of named token volume, versus 30.9% for closed models. The sample is biased toward API routing. It misses enterprise direct deals, cloud-private traffic, and ChatGPT-style consumer usage, so don’t read it as total market share.
But it captures the most price-sensitive operators: developers routing by cost, latency, context, and task fit every day. DeepSeek’s lead gave way to MiniMax, Kimi, Qwen, Tencent Hy3, and Arcee appearances. That churn is the point. Open weights are winning here because switching costs are brutally low. Closed labs can still defend premium capability, but default API traffic is getting eaten by price-performance tables.
HKR breakdown
hook ✓knowledge ✓resonance ✓