Rising AI spending and the rise of open-weight models
LIFT Policy Paper 2026-03 — October 2026
Firms’ AI spending is rising even as the unit cost of a token falls sharply: the increase comes from volumes far more than from prices. On OpenRouter, the share of open-weight models rises from 40% to 73% of tokens between January and August 2026, and from 11% to 34% of spending. Users attributed to France devote 31.0% of their spending to open models, compared with 19.3% worldwide. Calls to open models are four times longer than in January, but their average cost is only 3.8 times higher: the cost advantage persists. Reallocation toward open models accounts for 43% of the simulated decline in the cost of a constant French basket; it opens room for wider deployment rather than an automatic saving, which invites organizations to reason in terms of cost per completed task.
ai, france, open models
Firms’ AI spending is rising even as the unit cost of a token falls sharply: the increase comes from volumes far more than from prices. On OpenRouter, the share of open-weight models rises from 40% to 73% of tokens between January and August 2026, and from 11% to 34% of spending. Users attributed to France devote 31.0% of their spending to open models, compared with 19.3% worldwide. Calls to open models are four times longer than in January, but their average cost is only 3.8 times higher: the cost advantage persists. Reallocation toward open models accounts for 43% of the simulated decline in the cost of a constant French basket; it opens room for wider deployment rather than an automatic saving, which invites organizations to reason in terms of cost per completed task.
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