As an AI practitioner working with models every day, I have to share some absolutely mind-blowing data that just dropped today (May 25th). The latest industry figures are in, and they are making my blood boil with excitement!
Last week (May 18th – 24th), the weekly token consumption of Chinese large models hit a staggering 9.22 trillion tokens, leaving the US (4.93 trillion) in the dust. This marks the fourth consecutive week that China has dominated the global leaderboard!
What’s even more inspiring is the performance on OpenRouter, the world’s largest AI model aggregation platform. Our domestic models are putting on an incredible show. DeepSeek-V4-Flash took the top spot with a massive 3.43 trillion tokens, while homegrown contenders like Tencent Hunyuan, Xiaomi, and StepFun all squeezed into the top five. Honestly, seeing Chinese models sweeping the charts fills me with so much pride.
🏆 The Leaderboard: Chinese Models Taking Over
Here is the breakdown of the top models by weekly token consumption (based on late May 2026 data):
| Rank | Model Name | Company | Weekly Tokens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 1 | DeepSeek-V4-Flash | DeepSeek | 3.43 Trillion |
| 🥈 2 | Hy3 preview | Tencent (Hunyuan) | 3.07 Trillion |
| 🥉 3 | MiMo-V2-Pro | Xiaomi | 1.49 Trillion |
| 4 | Step3.5 Flash | StepFun | 1.48 Trillion |
| 5 | MiniMax M2.5 | MiniMax | 1.30 Trillion |
(Note: The top of the leaderboard is consistently dominated by Chinese models, with DeepSeek-V4-Flash maintaining a solid lead thanks to its incredible cost-performance ratio.)
Currently, the daily token consumption in China has surpassed 14 trillion, a more than thousand-fold increase compared to two years ago.
🔥 Why are the numbers so insane? Because AI has gone mainstream!
You might wonder, are these astronomical numbers just big tech companies crunching data in the background? Not at all. The real rocket fuel behind this explosion is the nationwide AI craze sweeping across short-video platforms.
TikTok (Douyin) and Kuaishou are no longer just for singing and dancing. You’ll find people from all walks of life using AI to create:
- Maybe it’s the fruit vendor downstairs generating a festive promo animation for their WeChat group.
- Maybe it’s retired uncles and aunts turning old static photos into moving videos.
- Or perhaps it’s a school kid creating a奇幻 fantasy animated story with AI.
Making videos used to require learning complex editing and effects. Now? Just a few taps in a short-video app and a simple text prompt, and AI generates a cool video for you. This “dummy-proof” operation has invited millions of ordinary people—who never touched tech before—into the army of AI users.
Don’t forget, generating a short video can consume thousands or even tens of thousands of times more tokens than a simple chat! When hundreds of millions of users are casually generating and sharing AI content on short-video platforms every day, it’s no wonder the consumption numbers are going through the roof. This isn’t just cold backend data anymore; it’s a genuine nationwide party.
🔮 My Bold Predictions for the Second Half of 2026
Watching this “Token Economy” go wild, I have a few daring guesses about where AI is headed in the second half of this year:
- AI Will Become Completely “Invisible”: By the second half of the year, we might stop emphasizing “I’m using AI.” It will embed itself seamlessly into office software, mobile systems, and even home appliances, just like water and electricity. Users won’t perceive a “chatbot,” but simply a “better tool.”
- The Rise of “Super Individuals”: As Agent capabilities mature, one person plus a set of AI workflows might be able to do the work of an entire team. We will see more individual developers and creators emerging, leveraging AI to unlock massive business value.
- The Explosion of On-Device AI: While compute costs have dropped, cloud inference still has latency. In the second half of the year, with upgrades in mobile and PC chips, more powerful models will run directly on your local device. Not only will it be faster, but it will also better protect privacy. That’s when the AI experience will truly reach a tipping point.
All in all, 2026 is definitely the “Singularity Year” for AI application adoption. Let’s wait and see what new surprises the second half of the year will bring