Summary
Vercel's June 2026 AI Gateway Production Index reported that DeepSeek rose from less than 1% of token volume in April to 17% in May, while remaining near 1% of spend. The data suggests low-cost models are no longer just experiments: they are entering production routing mixes at meaningful scale.
What changed
Vercel published AI Gateway production data showing DeepSeek V4 models gaining major token share while keeping spend share low.
Why it matters
Gateway-level telemetry is a rare view into real production model routing. The signal indicates that teams are actively mixing premium and low-cost models rather than standardizing on a single frontier vendor.
Evidence excerpt
Vercel reported DeepSeek accounted for 17% of AI Gateway tokens in May while staying near 1% of spend, with volume concentrated in DeepSeek V4 Flash and V4 Pro.