Chinese AI models have overtaken US models in Europe on one of the leading AI platforms for developers. In July and August 2026, Chinese models accounted for 58 percent of token consumption in the European Union on OpenRouter, one of the world’s largest AI gateways. Their share reached 61 percent in Germany and 58 percent in France. In the United Kingdom, Chinese models accounted for 53 percent of token consumption.
These are the findings of a new study by the Global Innovation Hub of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Taipei, “China’s AI Sweeps Into Europe”. It provides the first country-level analysis of how widely Chinese AI language models are used. The study analyses token consumption data from the major AI platform OpenRouter and download figures from Hugging Face. Tokens are a unit of measurement in AI. They indicate how much text a model processes and generates.
OpenRouter is primarily aimed at developers and companies integrating AI models into their applications. The data therefore provides insights into the adoption of AI models in application development. The direct use of services like the ChatGPT app is not captured. Consequently, the results do not reflect the entire AI market."
The study shows how rapidly Chinese AI models are gaining ground. Just a year ago, they accounted for only around 15 percent of token consumption on OpenRouter across EU countries. In Germany, too, they played only a marginal role on the platform at the time.
While acknowledging that their low cost and increasingly competitive performance can accelerate the diffusion and adoption of AI, the authors, Valentin Weber and Céline Nauer, warn that many users might underestimate the risks associated with Chinese models. “Europe needs competitive alternatives and a Plan B,” says Valentin Weber, Senior Research Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Chinese models accounted for the highest shares in Luxembourg, where they represented 71 percent of token consumption, followed by Croatia at 67 percent, Cyprus at 65 percent, Austria and Greece at 64 percent, Poland and Slovakia at 63 percent, and Germany at 61 percent.
Please find the full study by Valentin Weber and Céline Nauer here.
