Chinese AI Models Gain Popularity Among U.S. Developers

On February 24, 2026, OpenRouter released data indicating that the top three AI models favored by developers on its platform are all Chinese: MiniMax M2.5, Kimi K2.5, and Zhipu GLM-5. This trend is largely driven by the attractive price-to-performance ratios, with China's cheaper electricity prices contributing to significantly lower operational costs for model inference. For instance, MiniMax M2.5, priced at $0.30 per million tokens, nearly matches the performance of Claude Opus 4.6, which costs $5 per million tokens. This dynamic demonstrates the appeal of Chinese models for individual developers and start-ups in the U.S.