FT: China's data centres hit 24GW vs US 56GW as token usage gap widens
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-10-24
FT reports China is rapidly building data centres in its energy-rich hinterland: 24GW of operational compute, more than the rest of Asia combined but under half of the US's 56GW, with another 50GW under construction or announced. Chips remain the bottleneck.
- teortaxesTex argues OpenRouter data is over-indexed by enthusiasts: DeepSeek alone serves 155T tokens/day, with Americans in the quadrillions
- Cited data: Oct 5–11 saw 172T tokens processed globally — 86.74T by Chinese models vs 18.97T by US models, the 24th straight week China led
- LLM Token Expenditure Index has fallen by more than half since summer, raising unit-economics questions for US hyperscalers
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