Vercel published its October AI Gateway Production Index on Oct. 15, 2026, reporting a gap between the share of tokens handled by open-weight models and their share of estimated spending. The findings give technology buyers a platform-specific view of usage, not a measurement of the entire AI market.
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Usage and spending are different measures
The report says open-weight models accounted for 71.5% of gateway tokens and 23% of spending in September. Its spending figures are estimates calculated using published list prices; actual customer bills may differ.
The report’s token measure includes input, output, reasoning and cached-token categories. Its classification of open-weight models follows the current AI Gateway model list, which Vercel describes as broader than the definition used in earlier reports. Those qualifications matter when comparing monthly results.
The sample is a gateway, not the market
Vercel’s data explanation separately states that its figures cover activity on AI Gateway and do not represent the whole AI market. It defines a team as an account workspace used by an individual or group; one company can have several teams.
The explanation also distinguishes a group’s share of active teams from its share of token volume. Heavy use by a smaller number of teams can produce a large token share without representing equally broad adoption.
Readers should not combine the methodology page’s rolling geography and organization breakdowns with September’s monthly report as though every figure used the same reporting window.
What business readers can take from it
The practical distinction is between activity, adoption and cost. A model’s large token share does not automatically mean it generates a similar share of supplier revenue or produces better results for customers.
For an enterprise evaluating its own model mix, comparable measures would include the work completed, quality of the result and actual charges. Vercel’s report supplies evidence about its gateway traffic; it does not establish which model an individual business should choose.