AI customers reduce bills by optimizing prompts and using cheaper models. Usage of the most advanced, closed-source #Artificial Intelligence models also has been unprecedented this year Open-source AI model usage surged to 65% of OpenRouter tokens processed in June.
A year ago, many of the world’s largest companies “basically wouldn’t touch any Chinese [open-source] models” due to concerns the models would include hidden security vulnerabilities, said Tomás Hernando Kofman, CEO of Not Diamond, a startup backed by IBM and SAP that sells a model router. #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖
Today, many companies, including large financial services firms, are using such models because they are looking to save on costs and haven’t seen evidence of security issues linked to Chinese models, Kofman said.
Even Microsoft has considered using DeepSeek to power its AI agent for white-collar tasks, Copilot Cowork, which customers use to perform tasks in Outlook, Teams and other Office apps. Following the U.S. ban of Anthropic’s Fable model for public use earlier this month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted an essay on X about companies’ desire for choice and flexibility in the models they use.
“The last thing any of us want is a world where every company across every sector is ceding value to a few models that eat everything they see,” Nadella said.
Some companies are taking their time to make the switch from Anthropic. AI startup Amesa is using Anthropic’s less-expensive models, Claude Haiku, to create AI agents that aim to act like junior software engineers. CEO Kence Anderson is testing even cheaper Chinese open-source models such as Kimi 2.5 to develop AI agents as costs tied to Anthropic and other AI tools rise.
“What scares me is how dependent we are on [Anthropic], knowing that the prices are increasing or gonna increase more,” he said.
But making a change is easier said than done, because Anthropic models are better at coding. “We’re taking our time, really prototyping and making sure and testing to make sure that we’re not gonna lose anything in productivity,” he said.
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How AI Customers Are Lowering Their Anthropic and OpenAI Bills
As prices for Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s flagship products soar, some large customers are using cheaper AI models from those companies’ menus as well as from other providers. Ensemble Health Partners, a provider of software for hospitals that plans to spend up to $100 million on AI this year, says ...