Mozilla report: open-weight models 4 months behind frontier, Qwen hits 942M downloads
rohanpaul_ai · x · 2026-09-18
Mozilla's 91-page report says open-weight AI is now only 4 months behind the frontier. Qwen reached 942M Hugging Face downloads, more than the next eight organizations combined, while Chinese open-weight models grew from under 2% to over 45% of OpenRouter tokens; DeepSeek became the first open model to lead OpenRouter in weekly requests and appears in 58% of new AI-startup stacks. Yet economics are inverted: open models handled 20% of measured OpenRouter usage but captured only 4% of model-layer revenue, attributed to closed models costing 6x more per call at 90% capability parity.
Related event: Mozilla Report: Open-Weight Models Just 4 Months Behind Frontier(3 posts)→
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