China's Open-Source Model Downloads Surpass U.S. for First Time Globally

According to a joint report by MIT and Hugging Face, China's share of global open-source model downloads reached 17.1% in 2025, surpassing the U.S. at 15.8% for the first time and ranking first worldwide. Meanwhile, OpenRouter platform data shows that in February 2026, Chinese AI models' weekly token usage reached 5.16 trillion, growing 127% in three weeks and exceeding U.S. models' 2.7 trillion tokens for the first time. Chinese models occupy four of the top five spots in global usage rankings: MiniMax M2.5, Moonshot AI's Kimi K2.5, Zhipu's GLM-5, and DeepSeek V3.2. Chinese models have rapidly gained recognition among global developers through extreme cost-effectiveness (inference costs only 1/16-1/22 of top U.S. models), rapid iteration, and open-source strategies. Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Lecheng confirmed this achievement during the "Ministers' Corridor" session.

Keywords: open-source models, China, downloads, token usage, cost-effectiveness