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In May 2024, ByteDance’s AI assistant, Doubao, used about 100 billion tokens each day. By March 2026, that number jumped to over 120 trillion. This is a massive 1,000-fold increase in just two years. A token is a small piece of data. Think of it like a single word or even part of a word. Large language models count tokens to measure how much work they do.
This growth shows how fast China is adopting AI. Across the country, daily token use hit 140 trillion in March 2026. This is up from 100 billion in early 2024. Companies are using AI agents to solve hard problems. They automate tasks that used to take humans days to finish. These tools help businesses work faster and smarter.
For companies, the price of tokens is very important. Using AI can be expensive. OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 model charges $5 for every million input tokens. It charges $30 for every million output tokens. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 model has similar prices. These costs add up quickly, especially for coding. When AI writes software, it needs to read and fix large amounts of text. This uses 10 to 50 times more tokens than a simple chat.
However, prices in China are much lower. This makes AI accessible to local businesses. Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen3.7-Max model charges $2.5 for input. It costs $7.5 for output per million tokens. DeepSeek’s V3.1 model is even cheaper. It costs only 2 yuan for input and 8 yuan for output. ByteDance offers a lite version of Doubao for just 0.3 yuan for input. These low prices allow smaller companies to try AI without high risks.