Analysis: To reduce costs, overseas developers are turning to Chinese AI models such as DeepSeek.
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Some large-scale AI models in China are 90% cheaper than those in the US; Chinese AI's high cost-effectiveness is capturing the US market.
According to a report by CNBC on July 7th, influenced by the continued price increases of models from leading US AI vendors, Chinese AI large-scale models are rapidly expanding their application scale in US enterprises due to their cost-effectiveness advantage. Industry insiders point out that the performance of some leading open-source and open weighted models in China is currently about 6 to 9 months behind the technology of top-tier US models such as OpenAI and Anthropic, while the price is 60% to 90% lower, and they can cover the vast majority of routine AI tasks, thus gaining popularity among US enterprises. According to statistics from the AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, since February 8th of this year, the proportion of Chinese AI models used by US enterprises has exceeded 30% weekly, reaching a peak of 46%; while the average proportion in the previous 12 months was 11%. Another industry statistic shows that in the first week of the launch of Zhipu's latest large-scale model GLM 5.2, the daily average number of word calls increased by 27 times and the number of customers increased by 80 times, making it the fastest-deployed model on the platform in 2026; US AI startup Lindy has significantly reduced costs after switching all its AI business to DeepSeek models, and expects to save millions of dollars within a few months. (CCTV Finance)
With key component prices soaring, PC manufacturers are accelerating the introduction of Chinese memory suppliers such as Changchun and Changxin to reduce costs.
According to a report by the Commercial Times, the soaring prices of key components such as memory and SSDs have significantly increased the cost pressure on equipping mainstream laptops with high-capacity storage. Chinese memory and storage components, with their price advantages, are gradually penetrating the PC supply chain. Brands including Lenovo, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, Acer, and even Apple are accelerating the certification, adoption, and platform calibration of related products. The report points out that Lenovo has expanded its use of Chinese components this year, and recently, flagship laptops equipped with Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) SSDs have appeared on North American cross-border e-commerce platforms. Apple is also reportedly lobbying the US government to purchase CXMT memory to cope with rising prices. Among Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, MSI recently announced that it has become the first to complete the verification and calibration of Changxin Memory's DDR5 chips in the AMD platform's DDR5-8000+. Gigabyte has also adopted Changxin Memory chips in some motherboard models. ASUS and Acer have introduced memory modules from mainland Chinese companies such as BIWIN through their own brand memory certification or OEM models. Industry analysts believe that although the short-term imbalance between memory supply and demand has prompted non-mainland Chinese brands to accelerate relevant certifications, Taiwanese brands still emphasize that their long-term contracted Korean manufacturers remain their main supply partners due to the limited production capacity of mainland Chinese manufacturers.
Sources say China may restrict overseas users from accessing its most advanced AI models.
According to Foresight News , citing three sources familiar with the matter, Chinese authorities have held multiple meetings with top technology companies to discuss potentially restricting overseas users' access to China's most advanced artificial intelligence models, including those yet to be released.
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Polymarket traders estimate a 23% probability that the US will block public access to major Chinese AI models by the end of 2026.
According to Odaily Odaily, Polymarket traders estimate there is a 23% probability that the U.S. government will block public access to major Chinese AI models by December 31, 2026, through legislation, executive orders, export controls, or other formal actions. Several departments within the U.S. Department of Commerce have already banned employees from using Deepseek on work devices due to data security concerns, and Virginia, Texas, and New York have also imposed bans on Deepseek devices for their state employees. (Bitcoin.com News)
OpenAI has reportedly discovered a new optimization method that can reduce inference costs by more than 50%.
According to Odaily Odaily, the OpenAI engineering team recently revealed to some colleagues that the company has found a new system optimization method that can reduce the cost of AI model inference by more than half. Inference cost refers to the computing resource cost consumed by the model when it is actually running and responding to user requests. This optimization mainly comes from improving the utilization efficiency of existing server resources, rather than relying on the investment of new computing chips. This progress reflects that while AI companies are continuously competing for computing resources, they are also improving the utilization efficiency of existing infrastructure through software and system-level optimizations to alleviate the pressure of rapidly increasing model running costs. (The Information)