Breaking the deadlock: China's large models go overseas with increased volume but no increase in revenue, B.AI builds a value return super hub with "direct connection to the original factory + global aggregated payment."

In 2026, China's large models ushered in the "first year of going overseas," frequently topping the charts in usage on major aggregation platforms due to their open weights and high cost-effectiveness. The "easy to use and affordable" Chinese large models are becoming a realistic option for overseas developers and enterprises.

However, beneath the excitement of the rankings, a more concerning issue is emerging that deserves the industry's attention. Survey data reveals that while the overall usage of Chinese large models on the overseas aggregation platform OpenRouter is increasing, the original manufacturers' Token share is significantly declining. The reason is that when the same model is hosted by numerous third-party providers simultaneously, the usage is diverted layer by layer, diluting the original manufacturer's usage and revenue. Moreover, the default "automatic routing" mechanism of such platforms further amplifies this effect: if users do not make settings, requests are directed to the cheapest service provider based on price or latency. Thus, "increment without revenue" has become the most realistic challenge for Chinese large models going overseas.

When traffic no longer equals revenue, what Chinese large models truly need is a channel that returns value to the original manufacturers.

B.AI, as a new generation of global AI infrastructure, offers a different answer. Unlike the traditional "automatic routing" mechanism, B.AI creates an independent, transparent, and user-chosen dedicated line for the official API, preventing the original manufacturer's Token share from being quietly diluted. It also relies on deep ecological cooperation with large models to release Token subsidies, ensuring that the price of the official channel remains "resilient." Coupled with a multi-currency aggregation payment engine, the friction of cross-border transactions is eliminated. More profoundly, with solid user accumulation, B.AI has successfully captured a massive user base, officially entering the era of trillions in daily throughput. B.AI is no longer just a distribution channel for going overseas; it is a super hub connecting global enterprise demands and the era of intelligent agents.

Behind the Dominance in Usage: The "Increment Without Revenue" Dilemma of Chinese Large Models

The commercial monetization dilemma of "increment without revenue" for Chinese large models going overseas has been visually confirmed in recent industry research data.

According to a tracking report released by the well-known AI think tank Epoch AI, the overall usage of Chinese large models on the overseas API aggregation platform OpenRouter is showing exponential growth, but this massive "increment" has not proportionately converted into "revenue" for the model's original manufacturers. This is not an isolated case but a common phenomenon faced by leading Chinese large models in the process of going overseas.

Taking Zhiyu GLM-5.3 Flash as an example, the diversion caused by homogenous competition is extremely severe. The report points out that the model's weights were released for only one day, and the number of third-party providers has increased to 12, reaching 26 within 20 days, with 8 of them quoting lower than Zhiyu. During this period, the overall usage of GLM-5.3 Flash on OpenRouter increased by 17%, while Zhiyu's daily Token volume decreased by 70%, with its share of model Tokens dropping from 88% to 22%. The total usage of GLM is increasing, but more calls are being handled by other service providers.

Epoch AI's macro estimation data further verifies this structural pain point. Referring to the provided data charts, after compiling customer estimated spending (annualized) on OpenRouter from August 27 to September 19, 2026, it was found that the vast majority of spending directed at Chinese large models flowed to third-party providers rather than the model developers (original manufacturers), with the actual revenue share obtained by the original manufacturers being only a tiny fraction of total spending.

This means that Chinese large model companies bear the core costs of model training and computing power iteration, but in the chain of commercial monetization, they have not been able to capture commercial returns commensurate with their technological contributions, which is compounded by several structural factors.

The first is supply homogenization: when model weights are open and the same model can be deployed by multiple service providers, the inference service itself is highly homogeneous, and the focus of competition naturally falls on price and latency. Epoch AI's research also found that the higher the pricing premium of the original manufacturer for open-weight models, the smaller the share of its own Tokens on OpenRouter.

The second is the further catalysis of the "default routing" mechanism: aggregation platforms typically distribute requests based on the lowest price or latency, and if users do not make additional settings, traffic will flow to the lowest-bidding provider rather than the model's original manufacturer.

The third is the access and payment threshold: overseas users often prefer more convenient aggregation channels due to friction from cross-border payments, currencies, and account systems, making it difficult for the original manufacturer's direct connection to gain scale.

For large model manufacturers, the key to breaking the deadlock is not to stop the widespread distribution of models through multiple channels, as openness and sharing are indeed the "boosters" for Chinese large models to go global. What can truly return value to the original manufacturers is to establish a clear, transparent, low-cost official channel that users can actively choose, while also lowering the usage and payment thresholds for global users. In other words, the industry needs not another "cheaper transit station," but a set of infrastructure that respects user choice and allows value to flow back to the original manufacturers.

Returning Choice to Users: B.AI Makes "Official Direct Connection" a Visible Channel

To solve the industry's dilemma of "increment without revenue," reshaping the connection between users and models is the first step in rebuilding the commercial order. To make commercial value clear, B.AI's solution starts from the lowest level of product architecture, completely returning the "final choice of routing" to the users.

In B.AI's system, "official direct connection" serves as an independent, transparent channel chosen by users. In scenarios with clear requirements for model performance and stability, users can directly choose the original manufacturer's API for a direct connection, ensuring extremely low latency under high concurrency while meeting stringent data security and compliance requirements. For scenarios more sensitive to cost and flexibility, users can also choose other channels as needed. This "user-defined" transparent mechanism brings significant direct bilateral commercial value to the entire ecosystem.

For the original manufacturers, this effectively prevents the diversion of core Token shares. When enterprise-level clients' high concurrency and high reliability requests reach the original manufacturers through dedicated channels, the Token shares and profit margins that the original manufacturers deserve are effectively safeguarded. For developers, this means extreme business certainty. Choosing the official channel means saying goodbye to performance fluctuations and "dumbed-down" blind boxes, allowing for stable access to the "full-powered" model capabilities.

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that this transparent direct connection mechanism has gained widespread recognition among the leading Chinese large models. Currently, B.AI has established deep ecological cooperation with many top Chinese large models such as Zhiyu, MiniMax, Kimi, Xiaomi Mimo, Qianwen, and DeepSeek, jointly promoting these high-quality "original manufacturer dedicated lines" to global developers. This not only confirms the commercial viability of the B.AI model but also marks a healthy ecological evolution of large models going overseas from "pursuing low prices" to "valuing quality and commercial sovereignty."

However, giving users the choice also raises a practical question: will the official channel be more expensive? On this point, B.AI leverages the platform's massive scale effect and continues to launch a series of limited-time promotional activities in collaboration with large models, continuously releasing ecological dividends. In these activities, the maximum subsidy even reaches completely free. Through genuine ecological benefits, B.AI successfully plays the card of "lower prices without sacrificing intelligence." Developers can obtain 100% native full-powered official model capabilities at a comprehensive cost even lower than that of third-party hosting, completely saying goodbye to the dilemma of compromising between "price and performance."

More importantly, this "direct connection + subsidy" deep cooperation model has commercial value that extends far beyond short-term customer acquisition. In the past, some overseas models were often simply viewed in overseas markets as "cheap computing power alternatives." Now, B.AI is leveraging its strong ecological aggregation power to help domestic large models establish genuine brand loyalty overseas. By binding the high-quality services of the official original manufacturers with extreme cost-effectiveness, B.AI is helping Chinese models shed the stereotype of being "cheap computing power pools," significantly enhancing their strategic position in the global AI industry chain.

Beyond the Channel: Global Settlement, Trillions in Throughput, and Forward-Looking Layout for the Agent Era

For overseas developers, whether the channel can be used smoothly also depends on payment. In its overall architecture, B.AI not only provides connections for computing power and models but also positions itself as an "intelligent global settlement layer," extending its ecological carrying capacity outward based on this core.

As an intelligent global settlement layer, B.AI's payment engine achieves high compatibility within a compliant framework. It not only horizontally connects localized settlement methods such as Visa, Apple Pay, Alipay, and WeChat Pay but also vertically integrates with 7 mainstream blockchain networks, supporting various digital assets. This dual-track parallel design allows traditional Web2 enterprise clients and Web3 native developers to complete recharges, subscriptions, and calls on the same platform with minimal access friction. Currently, payments completed through traditional fiat channels like Stripe account for over 50% on the B.AI platform.

This global settlement foundation, which combines breadth and depth, signifies that B.AI has completely broken the limitations of traditional "technical transit stations," elevating itself to a super hub that reshapes the commercial landscape of large models. It not only allows top AI computing power to seamlessly integrate into the global business cycle but also, with its strong ecological attraction, consolidates dispersed global enterprise demands into a highly explosive value network.

Supporting the efficient operation of this vast settlement network is the platform's deep scale foundation. Currently, B.AI's daily throughput has surpassed 1 trillion Tokens, with a user base nearing 3 million. Notably, it reached the scale level that early aggregation platform OpenRouter took about two years to achieve in just 100 days after launch. Through deep cooperation with large model manufacturers, the B.AI platform now fully supports over 70 mainstream large models, constructing an advanced multi-modal ecological matrix. This massive business volume and comprehensive ecological network mean that B.AI has substantively established its core hub position as a new generation of global AI infrastructure.

When "official direct connection" safeguards the original manufacturer's computing power share, "Token ecological subsidies" build an extreme customer acquisition advantage, and when combined with a trillion-level underlying throughput network and global settlement system, B.AI weaves a complete ecological closed loop from "demand reach" to "commercial monetization" for Chinese large models. Through this mechanism, Chinese large model manufacturers can conquer the "increment without revenue" consumption battle, maximizing overseas value in a stable, transparent, and highly explosive commercial soil.

Finally, on the foundation of payment settlement and scalable throughput, B.AI also sets its sights on the more advanced agent economy. The platform's long-term vision is not only to remain at the model routing layer but to deeply integrate computing power routing, decentralized settlement, and full-stack agent infrastructure. Currently, B.AI has deployed tools such as Agent Wallet and Skills, fully empowering agents to autonomously handle complex tasks across environments. At the protocol layer, the platform integrates the x402 payment protocol and the 8004 authentication protocol, providing standardized trust and settlement support for future high-frequency, micro-amount automatic calls between machines. As the subjects of API calls gradually evolve from human developers to automated agents, the intelligent settlement layer and execution hub that B.AI has laid out in advance will become a key node connecting foundational models and the future trillion-level agent ecosystem.

In this new era driven by large models and agents, B.AI will become the most certain "super router" in China's journey towards globalizing large models. It will not only safeguard the maximization of commercial value for Chinese models but also connect global demand, computing power, and agents, promoting the global AI industry towards the next prosperous cycle with a transparent, efficient, and win-win business closed loop.