Deepseek, the Chinese AI lab, became the top trending software vendor on Ramp's platform in June 2026, according to data from the corporate spend management company. The ranking tracks breakout growth relative to company size based on real payments from over 50,000 businesses.
US companies are paying Deepseek directly and sending data through its platform, said Ara Kharazian, Ramp's chief economist. This is not about companies benefiting from self-hosted open-source models, he noted. Kharazian warned about security and competitive risks of using Chinese models directly and expressed doubt that the trend would last.
Deepseek V4: Cheaper but not equal
Deepseek released Deepseek V4 at the end of April 2026. The model does not match the best Western systems in overall performance, but it costs a fraction of the price. The performance gap is far smaller than the price gap, making it attractive for cost-conscious businesses.
This is not the first time Deepseek has seen a spike in adoption. In January 2025, the company had a brief hype cycle, reaching 0.3 percent adoption among US companies according to Ramp's AI Index. That number quickly dropped to 0.1 percent. The index is based on actual transactions, not surveys.
Chinese models gaining ground on price
Western AI labs still lead by a wide margin overall, but Deepseek's strong May and June fit a broader trend. Chinese models are increasingly popular because of their price-to-performance ratio. A December 2025 report showed that Chinese models, including Deepseek and Alibaba's Qwen, surpassed US rivals in Hugging Face downloads for the first time, accounting for over 44 percent of all downloads of popular new models.
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Kharazian believes cost awareness is the main driver behind Deepseek's June surge. Inference platforms such as Fireworks AI, fal AI, and DeepInfra are also growing, as companies use them to run open-source models instead of paying for OpenAI or Anthropic.
Signs of a token economy
Kharazian said these are early signs of a token economy, where companies increasingly pick models based on price-to-performance. There has been debate about AI's return on investment, which many companies struggle to measure. Meanwhile, model prices have climbed across all providers, and it is clear that the age of heavily subsidized flat rates is nearing its end.
Ramp's data does not support the idea of a "SaaSpocalypse" where AI kills established software products. Design tools like Figma and Paper remain in demand, even after Anthropic's Claude launched a design spinoff.
Overall, Deepseek's rise reflects a growing focus on cost in AI procurement, but the security concerns and performance gaps may limit its long-term impact among US companies.
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