[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Major U.S. AI companies are speeding up price cuts as part of efforts to check Chinese AI firms, accelerating a shift in the global AI market toward price-driven competition.

The Financial Times reported on Aug. 15 that OpenAI recently cut the price of GPT-5.6 Luna, the fastest and cheapest among its models, by up to 80 percent. It also lowered the price of its mid-tier model, Terra, by 20 percent.

Anthropic, which touts frontier intelligence, released Opus5 at about half the price of Fable5, its top-performing model.

The FT cited Silicon Data's token price index as saying the moves have led customers to cut by nearly a quarter the costs they pay for models from leading U.S. AI companies since mid-July.

The price cuts show U.S. AI companies are changing after previously putting emphasis on performance in closed models. The rise of Chinese open models that developers can download for free and modify has pressured U.S. companies to lower prices. Chinese AI startups such as Moonshot AI, DeepSeek and Z.ai are strengthening their positions in the U.S. and European markets, beyond their home ground of China, with low-cost AI models. At the same time, costs have risen for corporate AI users as Anthropic and OpenAI shift from flat-rate subscriptions to usage-based billing.

Some companies are responding to rising costs by setting limits on AI use for employees or testing cheaper alternatives. The FT reported that large U.S. internet service companies such as DoorDash and Airbnb have also started using Chinese AI models as part of efforts to cut costs.

Mantas Lukauskas (만타스 루카우스카스), head of AI technology at web hosting company Hostinger, said prices for top-performing models are "flat or rising" and that recent price changes will be the first real test of whether companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI can hold the line on prices for advanced models.

The price-cut moves are also drawing attention because they come as OpenAI and Anthropic pursue initial public offerings valued in the trillions of won. Investors want to see whether the huge investments AI companies have made can translate into profit. Price cuts could fuel concerns that already weak profitability will deteriorate further.

For now, however, usage growth appears to be outpacing the price declines.

Business Insider reported that OpenAI's revenue increased after it sharply lowered prices for its AI models. After OpenAI cut the price of GPT-5.6 Luna by 80 percent and Terra by 20 percent, OpenAI usage rose sharply among customers.

TD Cowen analysts said, based on usage data from OpenRouter, a service that provides access to various AI models, Luna's effective price fell to about one-tenth after the price cut while usage rose about 14 times. Terra's effective price fell to about one-third, and usage increased about fivefold. TD Cowen estimated Luna revenue rose about 34 percent and Terra revenue about 45 percent, compared with the seven days before the price cuts.

Ramp, a corporate card and business spend management platform, said OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model accounted for a larger share of corporate spending in July than Anthropic's top model, Fable5. Its relatively lower price was cited as a factor driving the rise.

Business Insider also described the trend as similar to the Jevons paradox, in which coal consumption increased even as coal-use efficiency improved. The paradox was proposed by 19th-century economist William Stanley Jevons.

Business Insider also reported that the cost of producing AI tokens itself is falling, making further price cuts likely. It added that TD Cowen's survey period was only about two weeks after the price cuts, so it remains to be seen whether the revenue rebound will persist.