OpenRouter's staggering token chart is the AI bubble debate in a single image

On OpenRouter, weekly token consumption has surged more than 25,000 percent since January 2025, from 0.5 to 126.2 trillion tokens. The number looks impressive, but it says less about actual AI usage than about token-hungry reasoning models and a growing number of unoptimized AI agents that burn…

On OpenRouter, weekly token consumption has surged more than 25,000 percent since January 2025, from 0.5 to 126.2 trillion tokens. The number looks impressive, but it says less about actual AI usage than about token-hungry reasoning models and a growing number of unoptimized AI agents that burn through tokens at staggering rates. The article OpenRouter's staggering token chart is the AI bubble debate in a single image appeared first on The Decoder.

Source: The Decoder — Published September 17, 2026 at 10:24 UTC — Category: Models