Washington is reportedly considering a ban on Chinese open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) models, a move that could cost American businesses up to US$12 billion per year, according to calculations by Daniel Yue, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business.

Yue based his estimate on usage data from OpenRouter, a New York-based large language model (LLM) aggregator that allows developers to switch between AI models via a unified API. He noted that if OpenRouter users were forced to switch from Chinese open-weight models to top proprietary alternatives, their annual costs could increase by about US$2 billion.

The estimate was derived from token usage and price differences between open and closed AI models recorded from July 21 to 27, 2026. When extrapolated to the broader US economy, the additional costs could range between US$3 billion and US$12 billion, depending on the extent of reliance on Chinese open-weight models.

Yue emphasized that these figures are approximations rather than definitive projections, citing challenges in tracking AI model usage beyond centralized platforms. OpenRouter captures only a fraction of the global LLM inference market, indicating that the actual economic impact could vary.

Sources