Open-weight models win hearts, minds, and wallets

Open-weight models more than quadrupled their share of spending through Vercel's AI Gateway between June and September, when they processed more than seven in 10 tokens. "In August, open-weight models processed the majority of AI Gateway token volume for the first time," the biz said. "The money is now following. Open weight's share of spend has more than quadrupled over the last three months, from one in twenty gateway dollars in June to nearly one in four in September." AI Gateway, like OpenRouter, acts as an intermediary that allows customers to purchase tokens from different AI providers through a common interface. While it works with popular harnesses like Claude Code and Codex and provides access to proprietary and open-weight models, it doesn't see usage through other gateways or from customers who access AI models directly from vendors or through on-premises hosting. …