The usage of Open-weight AI models from China hit a record high on a popular US web development platform, driven largely by DeepSeek’s latest lightweight model, as business demand for Anthropic’s cutting-edge Fable 5 stalls due to high costs.Open-weight models accounted for 54 per cent of token volume on Vercel’s AI Gateway on Tuesday, surpassing the 46 per cent consumed by Proprietary models, according to data on its website.Open models reached a record share of 62 per cent on the platform on Saturday, dwarfing closed systems’ 38 per cent, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch said on social media.
SRCSouth China Morning Post
LANGEN
LEANCenter-Right
WORDS97
ENT9
TUE · 2026-08-25 · 10:30 GMTBRIEF NSR-2026-0825-105709
NSR-2026-0825-105709News Report·EN·Technology
DeepSeek leads surge in low-cost Chinese open-weight models on US platform
Open-weight AI models from China, particularly DeepSeek's new lightweight model, have seen a record surge in usage on the US web development platform Vercel's AI Gateway. On Tuesday, these open models accounted for 54% of token volume, exceeding proprietary models which made up 46%.
Minxiao Chang,Xinmei ShenSouth China Morning PostFiled 2026-08-25 · 10:30 GMTLean · Center-RightRead · 1 min
South China Morning PostFIG 01
Reading time
1min
Word count
97words
Sources cited
1cited
Entities identified
9entities
Quality score
100%
§ 01
Briefing Summary
AI-generatedNEWSAR · AI
Open-weight AI models from China, particularly DeepSeek's new lightweight model, have seen a record surge in usage on the US web development platform Vercel's AI Gateway. On Tuesday, these open models accounted for 54% of token volume, exceeding proprietary models which made up 46%. This trend reached a peak on Saturday when open models captured 62% of the platform's share, compared to 38% for closed systems, according to Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch. This shift is attributed to business demand for cost-effective solutions, as demand for Anthropic's expensive Fable 5 model has stalled.
Confidence 0.85Sources 1Claims 4Entities 9
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Article analysis
Model · rule-basedFraming
Technology
Economic Impact
Tone
Measured
AI-assessed
CalmNeutralAlarmist
Factuality
0.90 / 1.00
Factual
LowHigh
Sources cited
1
Limited
FewMany
§ 03
Key claims
4 extracted01
Open models reached a record share of 62% on the platform on Saturday.
statisticGuillermo Rauch
Confidence
1.00
02
Open-weight models accounted for 54% of token volume on Vercel's AI Gateway on Tuesday.
statisticVercel's AI Gateway data
Confidence
1.00
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Usage of open-weight AI models from China reached a record high on Vercel's AI Gateway.
factualarticle
Confidence
1.00
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Business demand for Anthropic's Fable 5 is stalling due to high costs.
factualarticle
Confidence
0.80
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Full report
1 min read · 97 words§ 05
Entities
9 identifiedKey playerOppositionContextPositiveNeutralNegative
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Keywords & salience
8 termsopen-weight ai models
1.00
deepseek
0.90
chinese ai models
0.80
vercel ai gateway
0.70
low-cost ai
0.70
proprietary models
0.60
token volume
0.50
anthropic
0.40
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Topic connections
Interactive graph Network visualization showing 30 related topics
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