Potential US ban on Chinese AI models could cost businesses US$12 billion a year
Washington is reportedly mulling a ban on foreign open-source AI models, but the move would likely raise costs for a slew of US companies.
Source excerpt
A potential US ban on Chinese open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) models could cost American businesses up to US$12 billion per year, according to calculations by a US-based academic, as technology firms increasingly turn to cost-efficient Chinese solutions.
While the exact economic toll of a ban remains difficult to quantify, usage data from New York-based OpenRouter – a large language model (LLM) aggregator – offers a glimpse into the potential fallout, said Daniel Yue, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business.
If OpenRouter users were forced to migrate from Chinese open-weight models to top proprietary alternatives, they could face an additional annual bill of about US$2 billion, according to Yue.
The estimate was based on token usage and price gaps between open and closed models recorded from July 21 to 27, he said.
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