DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, jumped to the top of Ramp’s June trending vendor index for first-time payments among US businesses, a sign that cost-conscious companies are shifting away from pricier American rivals. The index, which tracks new vendor payments, shows DeepSeek leading the pack for May. The company’s revenue model is built around cheaper pricing than OpenAI and Anthropic, a gap that’s getting harder for budget-strapped firms to ignore.
The price war heats up
DeepSeek recently slashed the price of its V4 Pro model by 75%. That cut pushed it to the top of benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis’s intelligence-per-dollar rankings. On legal benchmarks, DeepSeek scored just below GPT-5.5 and was deemed clearly viable for professional workloads. For businesses watching every dollar, that kind of performance at a fraction of the cost is hard to pass up.
Anthropic’s incentives are structurally misaligned with cost-conscious buyers: it makes more money when businesses purchase more tokens, pushing users toward expensive models. OpenAI just closed a $122 billion funding round in March at an $852 billion valuation. Anthropic filed for an IPO valued at roughly $965 billion on June 1. Both are betting that premium pricing still works. DeepSeek is betting it doesn’t.
The China data question
US firms paying DeepSeek are sending real business data through its servers in China, rather than self-hosting the company’s open-source models. Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp Economics Lab, noted that companies are looking for cheaper alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic, with some willing to use Chinese models despite sending US data to China-hosted servers. That’s a trade-off that might give regulators pause, but for now, it’s a deal plenty of businesses are making.
Budgets blown, market share small
Uber’s CTO announced the company had already blown through its entire 2026 AI budget. That kind of spending pressure is pushing even large firms to explore cheaper options. Still, DeepSeek’s overall market share remains a fraction of its American rivals. The gap in brand trust and data security perceptions is wide. But with every 75% price cut and strong benchmark score, that gap shrinks a little more.
The next few months will test whether cost savings can overcome the data-sent-to-China concern. No regulator has stepped in yet. But as DeepSeek keeps showing up on more payment ledgers, that may change.
