Major US Tech Companies Switch to Chinese AI Models to Cut Costs

Coinbase, Airbnb, Uber and others are adopting Chinese AI models—DeepSeek, GLM 5.2, Kimi 2.7—to reduce inference costs as spending on OpenAI and Anthropic strains budgets. Open-weight distribution lets firms self-host models, bypassing API fees. The shift accelerated through 2026 on OpenRouter. Enterprise procurement outpaces policy restrictions.