Chinese artificial intelligence developers are rapidly overhauling their pricing strategies as DeepSeek’s ultra-cheap V4 models trigger a new round of competition, forcing rivals to rethink how they monetise AI in a cutthroat domestic market.

Smartphone and electric-vehicle maker Xiaomi has emerged as one of the latest companies to respond, slashing application programming interface (API) costs for its MiMo-V2.5 model by as much as 99 per cent from previous levels.

Usage of Xiaomi’s MiMo-V2.5 and MiMo-V2.5-Pro models surged following last week’s pricing announcement, with MiMo-V2.5 climbing to sixth place on US-based model marketplace OpenRouter. The model processed 1.7 trillion tokens in the seven days to Monday, representing growth of more than 999 per cent from the previous week.

Other Chinese AI firms are experimenting with different approaches to monetisation.

AI unicorn MiniMax on Monday launched its next-generation flagship model, MiniMax M3, pairing token-based billing with subscription plans ranging from US$7.24 to US$69.28 per month.

The transition has not been without friction.