{"slug": "enterprise-ai-costs-hit-2026-low-driven-by-price-wars-chinese-open-source-models", "title": "Enterprise AI costs hit 2026 low driven by price wars, Chinese open-source models: research", "summary": "Enterprise AI inference costs hit a 2026 low, with average prices ranging between US$1.16 and US$1.18 per million tokens from August 6 to 8, according to investment bank Jefferies, citing data from US research firm Silicon Data. The decline, from US$2.04 on May 31 and US$1.45 in late July, is driven by a global price war and adoption of low-cost Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek.", "body_md": "# Enterprise AI costs hit 2026 low driven by price wars, Chinese open-source models: research\n\nAverage inference prices ranged between US$1.16 and US$1.18 from August 6 to 8, according to Silicon Data’s index\n\nThe cost for businesses to run AI models has fallen to a yearly low, according to research by investment bank Jefferies, driven by a heated global price war and a surge in adoption of low-cost Chinese open-source tools, such as those from DeepSeek.\n\nAverage inference prices – measured per million tokens, or chunks of data handled by a model – ranged between US$1.16 and US$1.18 from August 6 to 8. That marked the lowest level recorded this year, Jefferies said on Monday, citing data from US research firm Silicon Data. Average unit costs have plummeted from US$2.04 on May 31 and US$1.45 in late July.\n\nSilicon Data’s index tracks pricing across business application programming interface (API) providers and open-weight inference platforms used by software developers.\n\nThe price decline coincided with an “increasing emphasis on cost efficiencies” across both the US and Chinese tech ecosystems, Jefferies analysts led by Thomas Chong noted.\n\n[by up to 80 per cent.](https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3362568/openai-blinks-face-chinese-rivals-drops-pricing-some-models-80?module=inline&pgtype=article)Similarly, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 delivered performance comparable to its flagship Fable 5 model at half the price, Jefferies said in a report last month.\n\nOn the open-source front, Chinese firms are pushing the boundaries of affordable computing.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enterprise-ai-costs-hit-2026-low-driven-by-price-wars-chinese-open-source-models", "canonical_source": "https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3363549/enterprise-ai-costs-hit-2026-low-driven-price-wars-chinese-open-source-models-research?utm_source=rss_feed", "published_at": "2026-08-10 13:30:06+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-10 13:48:43.561109+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Jefferies", "Silicon Data", "DeepSeek", "Anthropic", "Claude Opus 5", "Fable 5", "Thomas Chong"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enterprise-ai-costs-hit-2026-low-driven-by-price-wars-chinese-open-source-models", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enterprise-ai-costs-hit-2026-low-driven-by-price-wars-chinese-open-source-models.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enterprise-ai-costs-hit-2026-low-driven-by-price-wars-chinese-open-source-models.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/enterprise-ai-costs-hit-2026-low-driven-by-price-wars-chinese-open-source-models.jsonld"}}