# Vercel reports open-weight models hit 62% of AI Gateway traffic in August > Source: > Published: 2026-08-23 23:14:55+00:00 Via bleepingcomputer.com # Vercel reports open-weight models hit 62% of AI Gateway traffic in August Open-weight models nearly tripled their share of Vercel's token volume in two months, reshaping how enterprises think about AI spending Two months ago, open-weight AI models were a minority player on Vercel’s infrastructure. Now they’re running the show, at least by volume. Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch reported on August 22 that open-weight models accounted for 62% of all tokens processed through Vercel’s AI Gateway, up from 28.4% on June 24. ## How fast is fast? Open-weight models held just 11% of Vercel’s token volume in April. By June they were at 29%. By late August they crossed 62%. Vercel’s AI Gateway acts as a routing and traffic management layer for AI-powered applications, meaning its data reflects real production workloads from real companies, not benchmark experiments or lab conditions. The structural thing happening here is cost. Open-weight models can run at roughly one-tenth the price of their closed-source counterparts, and enterprises have figured out that not every AI task needs a premium model to get the job done. ## The spending paradox Despite commanding 62% of token volume, open-weight models are not commanding 62% of the money. Anthropic’s closed models captured between 61% and 65% of total expenditure on the gateway in recent reporting periods. Claude is processing a minority of tokens but collecting a majority of the revenue. DeepSeek has climbed to the top, or near the top, of Vercel’s token volume leaderboard, overtaking Google in processing share. ## What this means for AI deployment broadly Major companies including AT&T and Coinbase have been noted among those emphasizing cost-reduction strategies in AI deployment, which aligns with exactly the kind of workload routing the Vercel data describes. **Disclosure:** This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our [Editorial Policy](https://cryptobriefing.com/editorial-policy/).