DeepSeek enters the fight for token volume, Anthropic continues to dominate spend

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This post details May 2026 AI Gateway production data, showing a 20% MoM growth in tokens and 43% MoM growth in spend. It highlights DeepSeek's rapid adoption, capturing 17% of token volume with minimal cost share, and Anthropic's continued dominance in spend (65%) and high-stakes use cases. The analysis points to increased cost-consciousness and smarter model routing strategies, with low-cost models entering production and frontier models driving increased overall spend.