America needs to stop getting shocked by Chinese AI
Last week, two Chinese AI companies unveiled models they say can credibly compete with the best systems from OpenAI and Anthropic. America needs to stop...
Key points
- Last week, two Chinese AI companies unveiled models they say can credibly compete with the best systems from OpenAI and Anthropic.
- America needs to stop getting shocked by Chinese AI Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 should come as no surprise.
- US and Chinese companies train almost all of the world’s most-used AI models, and six of the top 10 AI tools on OpenRouter’s leaderboard tracking token consumption and benchmarks were Chinese.
- Chinese models are also significantly cheaper to use, and reports suggest US companies are increasingly turning to Chinese tools as the cost of using domestic providers surge.
What happened
Last week, two Chinese AI companies unveiled models they say can credibly compete with the best systems from OpenAI and Anthropic. America needs to stop getting shocked by Chinese AI Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 should come as no surprise. US and Chinese companies train almost all of the world’s most-used AI models, and six of the top 10 AI tools on OpenRouter’s leaderboard tracking token consumption and benchmarks were Chinese. Chinese models are also significantly cheaper to use, and reports suggest US companies are increasingly turning to Chinese tools as the cost of using domestic providers surge. Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI, one of China’s leading AI model developers, unveiled a new flagship model on Friday, claiming it outperforms nearly every US model, trailing only OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5. There’s the whole unsettled debate over whether, and to what degree, Chinese companies are — as American firms accuse — using US models to train their own, which could improve performance at a fraction of the cost.