Open-weight AI reportedly trails frontier models by about four months

A post summarizing Mozilla’s 91-page report says open-weight AI is about four months behind frontier models. Eight of OpenRouter’s 10 most-used models by August token volume were open-weight.

The post says Mozilla attributes much of the usage–revenue mismatch to pricing, with closed models costing roughly six times more per call at about 90% capability parity. It also relays Mozilla’s warning that the cited 2025 revenue figures are older than its 2026 usage data, so the revenue split may have changed.

A follow-up post from the same author says DeepSeek, Moonshot and Z.ai have raised about $21 billion combined, arguing that open-weight AI is no longer a capital-light alternative.