Reuters: Chinese models charge as little as 18 cents per million tokens versus $4 average for top models, says CitiBank Research.
Open-source processing on OpenRouter rose to 65% in June from 34% in January, while Chinese models such as DeepSeek gained attention by offering much lower token prices. - CitiBank Research.
Cheaper AI has become the new enterprise priority as usage-based bills turn model choice from a capability contest into a cost-control problem.
Gartner estimates AI coding costs will pass the average developer salary by 2028.
OpenAI and Anthropic now face price pressure because enterprise buyers can compare models task by task rather than treat the biggest model as the default choice.
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reuters. com/business/retail-consumer/cheaper-ai-is-better-soaring-bills-are-reshaping-how-businesses-choose-models-2026-06-29/