Open Source Model Upside Down: Vercel Token Share Increases from 28% to 62% in Two Months

Insightful AI Newsletter Update: Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch revealed that on August 22, open-source models accounted for 62% of AI Gateway Token traffic. This is a significant increase from the 28.4% recorded on June 24, more than doubling in a little over two months. In contrast, closed-source models decreased from 71.6% to 38% during the same period.

The AI Gateway statistics provided by Vercel reflect the actual model invocation on their platform and may not be indicative of the entire AI market.

Meanwhile, AI usage on Vercel has experienced a surge. In July, the total Token volume grew by 59% compared to the previous month, with open-source models accounting for over one-third of the usage. DeepSeek has even surpassed Google to become the second-largest model provider in terms of Token consumption.

The combined Token volume of OpenAI and Anthropic is also rapidly increasing.

However, closed-source models are still taking the lion's share of the revenue. In July, while open-source models represented about 36% of the Tokens, they only accounted for 8.6% of the expenditure. Anthropic, utilizing around 30% of the Tokens, captured 65.1% of the expenditure.

In the future, closed-source cutting-edge models may only hold 15% to 25% of the Tokens but capture 60% to 90% of the economic value.