AI Wars

Signals: Arena text — Claude family holds #1–#4 band (claude-fable-5 ~1507 Elo; opus-thinking variants immediately behind) with large vote bases (tens of thousands). Coding agents — Claude Code ~890K subreddit weekly visitors, ~56% of the desk’s seven-tool weekly-visitor pool (Codex ~440K, Cursor ~104K, Copilot ~92K, OpenCode ~48K). Weights: closed. Stack: preference leader + coding-agent weekly visitors leader in one company — the only US lab with that double.

Positioning 96: frontier preference + developer agent product + enterprise “safe lab” brand + closed-weight lock-in. Weak relative signal: OpenRouter daily tokens often dominated by DeepSeek/Tencent/Xiaomi/MiniMax, not Claude — Anthropic wins quality/agent boards more than cheap routed volume. Concentration risk: Arena + Claude Code move together if either cools.

Heat 96: highest US heat. Drivers — continuous Arena occupancy, Claude Code discourse dominance, every peer forced to answer coding-agent releases. Not driven by OpenRouter share. Net: sets US tempo on preference + agents; does not set global token-price tempo.

Signals: ChatGPT still default consumer/dev surface; Microsoft/Azure distribution intact. Coding — Codex ~440K weekly visitors (#2 on desk board, ~half Claude Code). Arena text — no longer monopoly; Anthropic leads, Gemini/Meta pressing. OpenRouter — not the volume story (DeepSeek/HY3/MiMo/M3 dominate). Weights: closed.

Positioning 84: brand + ChatGPT install + Codex product + partner distribution outweigh missing Arena #1 and missing OpenRouter #1 — still a clear tier below Anthropic’s double (preference + agent weekly visitors). Heat 82: Codex keeps coding narrative hot; preference discourse no longer auto-centers OpenAI on every release.

Cross-pressure: reclaim coding mindshare from Claude Code and SpaceX/Cursor; defend default-frontier status while Chinese labs own cheap tokens. Score logic: #2 US franchise; gap to #1 is structural (Arena ridge + ~2× coding weekly visitors), not a tweak.

Signals: Corporate — xAI merge + Anysphere/Cursor ~$60B all-stock path; Cursor → SpaceX AI coding wedge. Coding weekly visitors — Cursor ~104K (#3 desk board), behind Claude Code 890K / Codex 440K, ahead of Copilot 92K. Compute narrative — Colossus / owned training capacity. Arena/OpenRouter — SpaceX not a token or Elo leader under its own model names yet. Weights: closed.

Positioning 71: IDE distribution to pro engineers + public-company capital + owned supercompute + Grok-adjacent surface — rare vertical, still below OpenAI’s installed franchise and well below Anthropic’s preference+agent stack. Execution risk: mega-acquisition can blunt product taste.

Heat 83: deal + Cursor culture + Composer/Grok Build shipping talk. Heat > Cursor’s weekly-visitor share because narrative amp is corporate, not just subreddit size. Competitive targets explicit: Claude Code + Codex.

Signals: Arena — Gemini 3.x-class models recur in top-10 with very large vote counts (often larger sample than flashy new entries). Distribution — Search, Android, Workspace, Cloud. Coding-agent weekly visitors board — no Google-native row in the desk’s seven-tool set. OpenRouter — not a Google volume story vs DeepSeek/Tencent. Weights: primary Gemini closed (Gemma does not flip the dot).

Positioning 56: distribution + Arena presence + cloud is a real floor, not a frontier-war lead. Missing coding-agent seat and OpenRouter volume keep Google a full tier under OpenAI/SpaceX. Heat 74: durable, low-drama — infra/product updates > culture-war launch cycles.

Score logic: Google can lose most exciting lab and still hold mid-50s positioning. Does not need OpenRouter #1; needs Gemini preference sticky and an agent product that shows up on the weekly-visitor board before it can re-enter the 70s.

Signals: Arena — Muse Spark / Muse Spark 1.1 in top preference band (Meta vendor, closed/proprietary primary). Llama — separate open-weight track (ecosystem fine-tunes/hosts); does not make primary frontier open. OpenRouter — Meta rarely owns daily token podium vs DeepSeek/HY3/MiMo. Coding weekly visitors board — no Meta agent row. Dot: closed (Muse Spark primary).

Positioning 28: research + social distribution + Llama ecosystem gravity, but weakest US seat on this board — no coding-agent weekly visitors, weak OpenRouter, frontier monetization secondary to ads. Heat 64: spikes on Muse Spark / Llama drops, then cedes timeline to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, DeepSeek.

Score logic: open Llama ≠ open primary. Preference signal is Muse Spark (closed). Ecosystem influence ≠ board positioning; Meta can move charts on release week and still sit near the floor until agents or API share show up.

Signals: Distribution — Copilot in M365, Windows, GitHub, Azure. Coding weekly visitors — GitHub Copilot ~92K (#4), behind Claude Code / Codex / Cursor. Arena — not Microsoft-branded Elo leadership. OpenRouter — not MS volume story. Weights: primary closed (Phi secondary; dot stays red). Partnership — OpenAI still core to many Copilot paths.

Positioning 38: procurement + seat licenses + Azure is real money, not frontier leadership. ~60 pts behind Anthropic — not a few product tweaks. Heat 52: lowest US heat — weak timeline presence; Copilot weekly visitors real but not discourse-leading.

Score logic: mid-low positioning / low heat on purpose. Microsoft monetizes already installed while builders attention, Arena, and agent weekly visitors live elsewhere. Climbing into the 70s needs preference or agent possession, not another Copilot surface.

Signals: OpenRouter rankings-daily (~90d window) — DeepSeek Flash/Pro lines repeatedly #1 or top-tier on daily tokens; multi-week #1 occupancy in desk samples. Open weight: yes (primary). Arena — present but not the main DeepSeek story vs volume. Coding weekly visitors board — no DeepSeek-native IDE row. US labs win preference/agents; DeepSeek wins routed usage.

Positioning 92: cost/speed leadership + open weights + global builder default for cheap intelligence. Soft spots: Western enterprise trust, consumer brand, regulatory comfort vs Anthropic/OpenAI. Clear international #1 — not a photo-finish with Tencent.

Heat 95: max international heat. OpenRouter moves on ship days; price/speed pressure hits everyone. #1 international on positioning+heat because tokens actually called is the clearest non-US primary metric on this page.

Signals: OpenRouter — HY3 / HY3-preview / free variants recur in top daily token ranks; multi-day #1 streaks in desk window alongside DeepSeek. Open weight: yes. Distribution — WeChat, games, cloud, ads (domestic). Arena — not the HY3 headline vs volume. Coding weekly visitors — no Tencent row on desk seven-tool board.

Positioning 73: platform install base + ability to manufacture usage via pricing/free tiers + cloud. ~20 pts behind DeepSeek — strong #2, not co-leader. Western brand thinner than domestic machine.

Heat 81: bursty — high when HY3 owns/co-owns OpenRouter podium, quieter in English discourse between spikes. Score pair = heavyweight volume + distribution, not continuous Arena/agent possession.

Signals: OpenRouter — M3 repeatedly upper-rank / podium-adjacent across days (consistency > single viral peak). Open weight: yes. Arena/coding weekly visitors — secondary. Consumer myth in West — weak vs ChatGPT/Claude/DeepSeek name recognition.

Positioning 52: API utility + cost/throughput for agent stacks; incomplete Western brand. Mid-pack international — well below Tencent’s platform seat, above Xiaomi’s still-forming model identity. Heat 71: token-chart persistence compounds builder mindshare.

Score logic: keep volume → climb; need sharper product narrative for positioning to catch heat. Currently heat-led international mid-tier.

Signals: OpenRouter — MiMo variants in top token tier over desk window (including multi-day leadership samples). Open weight: yes. Hardware — phones/IoT channel for eventual edge. Arena/coding weekly visitors — not Xiaomi’s primary board signals here.

Positioning 44: usage receipt real; Western AI brand still forming; OpenRouter ≠ full frontier franchise. Hardware loop is upside not yet fully scored. Tier below MiniMax consistency.

Heat 70: > positioning — Xiaomi on the token podium is a high-surprise signal. Sustain vs one-off spike is the watch item for both meters.

Signals: Product ID — Kimi / long-context (named). Arena — intermittent top-band presence. OpenRouter — seats, rarely multi-week #1 like DeepSeek. Open weight: yes. Coding weekly visitors — none on desk board.

Positioning 33: real-lab tier via Arena + API presence + brand clarity, but far from volume kings. Heat 63: release-wave pattern — spikes then settles. Long-context moat eroded (table stakes in 2026).

Watch: durable usage wedge or coding/agent beachhead required to climb. Intact franchise, not agenda-setter — gap in score terms to DeepSeek/Tencent.

Signals: OpenRouter — GLM family recurring in broader top ranks (steady calls, not usually the #1 plot). Open weight: yes. Brand string — Zhipu / GLM / Z.ai fragmented internationally. Domestic China base — strong. Arena leadership / coding weekly visitors — not primary.

Positioning 22: lowest international set — consistency without owning preference, tokens, or agents narratives. Heat 61: API-visible, not agenda-setting.

Score logic: respected utility lab. Breakout multimodal/agent release that travels could jump both meters; until then, correctly floor-tier on this board’s positioning scale.