The cost of running sophisticated AI is pushing companies away from American labs toward China, a report has said, claiming that businesses ranging from Silicon Valley startups to European industrial giants are quietly replacing top-tier US AI models with cheaper Chinese alternatives, and integrating them into their business operations.A report by The Financial Times claims that household brands like DoorDash, Airbnb and German engineering giant Siemens have all adopted AI tools built in China. The mass migration is being fueled by a corporate race to solve the industry’s biggest headache: the ballooning cost of using AI caused by a sudden shift from flat-rate subscriptions to usage-based billing.Faced with massive bills, companies appear to have realised they no longer need the absolute most advanced and expensive model to handle everyday business routines. Chinese models from groups like DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and Z.ai have rapidly overtaken their US rivals in text and data processing efficiency, the report claims.Food delivery giant DoorDash revealed it has restructured its entire AI infrastructure to save money. Co-founder Andy Fang noted that the company now delegates “lower-level work” to Kimi K2.6, an efficient model from Chinese startup Moonshot AI, reserving Anthropic’s top-tier model only for the absolute “hardest work”.Other companies are severing ties with US labs completely. San Francisco-based startup Lindy completely replaced its Anthropic tools with China’s DeepSeek V4 model, a move its founder hailed as “transformative” for saving the company millions of dollars while improving daily performance.
AI models’ quality gap is decreasing
US venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently praised the technology, noting that industry insiders consider the Chinese model capable of matching or beating big American lab models with zero compromises.Compounding the cost advantage is the fact that many premier Chinese AI tools are “open-weight”, which means their code is publicly accessible, allowing companies to host the AI entirely on their own secure, private servers and tweak it to their specific data. While American firms are switching to Chinese models to save money, the migration in Europe has taken on a geopolitical edge. Following recent export controls imposed by the Trump administration on Anthropic’s flagship models, European enterprises have realised the extreme danger of relying solely on US technology.