---
title: "The Thriving Ecosystem of Open Models"
description: "OpenRouter token data shows open-weight models overtaking closed models as provider leadership fragments across Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, OpenAI, \u0026 a long tail."
categories: ["AI","data analysis"]
keywords: ["OpenRouter market share","open models vs closed models","open-weight AI models","DeepSeek market share","AI provider fragmentation","model routing infrastructure","AI token volume"]
ai_summary: "Open-weight models reached 69.1% of named model-level OpenRouter token volume in the latest week, while provider leadership fragmented across Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, OpenAI, \u0026 a large long tail."
date: 2026-06-02
lastmod: 2026-07-17
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/the-thriving-ecosystem-of-open-models/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---


> Competition is a discovery procedure.
> — Friedrich Hayek

And developers are discovering the value of open models.

OpenRouter offers a useful view into the model market.[^1] It is not the whole AI economy. But it is close to the API frontier, where developers can switch models quickly, compare price-performance daily, & route each request to the best available option.

{{< email_image src="pgrtbnrcmuh2kafp1oi3" alt="Stacked chart of open versus closed model token share on OpenRouter" width="540" height="304" >}}

Since 2025, open models have grown sharply on OpenRouter. In the latest model-level snapshot, open-weight models generated 69.1% of named open-versus-closed token volume. Closed models produced 30.9%.

{{< email_image src="e9ygofyo8luvha2peyf6" alt="Open-model demand jumps with launches" width="540" height="304" >}}

New models attract developer attention & large scale testing, after which token use surges. Each new clustered release of different models sustains a new plateau of token volume.

{{< email_image src="rtbwjm5pleqmxdfzvzfy" alt="Open-model leadership keeps changing hands" width="540" height="304" >}}

Just as in the closed-model ecosystem, the competition among open models means rapid innovation & leaderboard changes.

DeepSeek's early lead gave way to MiniMax & Kimi models in late 2025 & early 2026. Later, launches from MiMo, Qwen, Alibaba's open-weight model family, Hy3, Tencent's open-weight model release, & DeepSeek reshuffled share again.

Arcee, a US lab focused, makes a strong appearance recently.

Open models still represent a fraction of overall inference, but the thriving competition, increasing usage, & surge of experimentation suggest developers are increasingly willing to route production traffic to them.

[^1]: Source data: [OpenRouter rankings & usage data](https://openrouter.ai/rankings), analyzed from weekly token-volume snapshots in the OpenRouter analysis dataset.