American companies have a new favorite AI vendor, and it’s not OpenAI or Anthropic. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that rattled Silicon Valley earlier last year, just claimed the top spot on Ramp’s trending software vendors list for June 2026. It’s the first time DeepSeek has reached number one on the index, overtaking competitors like PheedLoop and Fireworks AI.
From open-source tinkering to direct payments
The most telling detail in the Ramp data, released around June 4, isn’t just that DeepSeek topped the list. It’s how companies are using it. For the first time, US firms began making direct payments to DeepSeek, a meaningful departure from the previous pattern of self-hosting DeepSeek’s open-source models on their own infrastructure.
In English: companies used to download DeepSeek’s models and run them in-house, essentially getting the AI for free (minus their own compute costs). Now they’re paying DeepSeek directly for hosted services. Ramp CEO Ara Kharazian noted that this transition marks a departure from earlier patterns of self-hosted models, showing a shift toward reliance on DeepSeek’s hosted infrastructure.
The shift is striking given how small DeepSeek’s footprint was just months ago. In April 2026, adoption among US businesses sat at roughly 0.1%. And yet by June, enough companies had opened their wallets to push DeepSeek past every other trending software vendor in the country.
This follows a pattern that’s become familiar with DeepSeek. Back in January 2025, there was a brief adoption spike to around 0.3% after the startup released its R1 model and briefly sent Nvidia’s stock into a tailspin. But that surge normalized quickly.
The price pressure on OpenAI and Anthropic
The Ramp data reflects what amounts to a growing corporate demand for cheaper AI options. Companies aren’t necessarily abandoning OpenAI or Anthropic entirely. But they’re diversifying, hedging, and in some cases swapping out their primary provider for something that costs less.
What this means for investors
For investors watching the AI infrastructure space, the transition from self-hosted open-source to direct payments is worth tracking closely. It suggests that DeepSeek is building a real commercial business in the US, not just giving away free models and hoping for mindshare. That commercial relationship creates recurring revenue, customer lock-in, and a foundation for upselling.
There’s also a geopolitical dimension that can’t be ignored. A Chinese AI company processing data for American businesses will inevitably attract regulatory scrutiny, particularly given the ongoing tensions around technology transfer and data sovereignty. The same forces that led to TikTok’s legislative battles could easily turn their attention to enterprise AI vendors with headquarters in Hangzhou.