One-sentence summary
At the 2026 Wuzhen Summit, data showed the top five global LLM models by weekly calls were all Chinese, totaling 93.54 trillion tokens versus 22.47 trillion for US models, extending a 26-week lead.
Background
On November 1, 2026, Guangming Online and CNR reported observations on open source during the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit. Monitoring from the global model aggregation platform OpenRouter shows Chinese open models continue to lead in real developer usage.
This Week's Usage Landscape
This week the top five models by global usage were all Chinese, totaling 93.54 trillion tokens, while US models stood at 22.47 trillion. On this measure, Chinese models have now outpaced US models for 26 consecutive weeks.
What Is Driving It
Reports note developers are voting with real money. Many overseas teams and independent developers have limited budgets and cannot afford high inference costs, favoring Chinese open models that offer usable performance at lower inference cost.
The Open-Source Consensus
During the Wuzhen Summit, voices called for open source and shared development. China's model rise is seen as riding the flywheel of open-source ecosystems and a Born Global consensus aimed at worldwide developers.