Why China’s Affordable AI Is a Worry for Silicon Valley
Chinese AI models are cheaper and more adaptable than the preeminent US platforms, and studies suggest they’re now almost as proficient. How did that happen?
Illustration: Nico H. Brausch
Chinese artificial intelligence companies can't match the financial firepower of their American rivals, and the US government has deprived them of the most cutting-edge chips to train their AI models. Yet China is encroaching on US leadership in the field.
Chinese developers such as DeepSeek and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. have focused on devising systems that perform almost on a par with the top-performing AI models without needing the most powerful hardware. And China is making a bet on “open-weight” AI software — where the internal parameters are made available for developers to share, study and tweak — as a way to foster rapid adoption of AI across the national economy. All this challenges the dominant US business model that’s predicated on investing billions and getting users paying top-dollar for the most powerful, proprietary AI technology.