Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market.
Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US.
These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected.
Photo: Reuters
In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their needs.
Globally, use of Chinese-developed open models has surged from just 1.2 percent late last year to nearly 30 percent in August, according to a report published this month by the developers’ platform OpenRouter and US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
China’s open-source models “are cheap — in some cases free — and they work well,” said Wang Wen (王文), dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing.
One American entrepreneur, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that their business saves US$400,000 annually by using Alibaba’s Qwen AI models instead of the proprietary models.
“If you need cutting-edge capabilities, you go back to OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, but most applications don’t need that,” the entrepreneur said.
US chip titan Nvidia, AI firm Perplexity and California’s Stanford University are also using Qwen models in some of their work.
The January launch of DeepSeek’s high-performance, low-cost and open source R1 large language model defied the perception that the best AI tech had to be from US juggernauts such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.
It was also a reckoning for the US — locked in a battle for dominance in AI tech with China — on how far its rival had come.
AI models from Shanghai-based MiniMax (上海稀宇科技) and Beijing-based Z.ai (北京智譜華章科技) are also popular overseas, and the country has entered the race to build AI agents — programs that use chatbots to complete online tasks like buying tickets or adding events to a calendar.
Agent friendly — and open-source — models, like the latest version of the Kimi K2 model from Beijing-based start-up Moonshot AI (北京月之暗面科技), released last month, are widely considered the next frontier in the generative AI revolution.
The US government is aware of open-source’s potential.
In July, the administration of US President Donald Trump released an AI Action Plan that said the US needed “leading open models founded on American values.”
They could become global standards, it said.
However, some US companies are taking the opposite track.
Meta, which had led the country’s open-source efforts with its Llama models, is now concentrating on closed-source AI instead.
However, this summer, OpenAI — under pressure to revive the spirit of its origin as a nonprofit — released two “open-weight” models (slightly less malleable than “open-source”).
Among major Western companies, only France’s Mistral is sticking with open-source, but it ranks far behind DeepSeek and Qwen in usage rankings.
Western open-source offerings are “just not as interesting,” said the US entrepreneur who uses Alibaba’s Qwen.
The Chinese government has encouraged open-source AI technology, despite questions over its profitability.
Mark Barton, chief technology officer at OMNIUX, said that he was considering using Qwen, but some of his clients could be uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with Chinese-made AI, even for specific tasks.
Given the US administration’s stance on Chinese tech companies, risks remain, Barton said.
“We wouldn’t want to go all-in with one specific model provider, especially one that’s maybe not aligned with Western ideas,” he said. “If Alibaba were to get sanctioned or usage was effectively blacklisted, we don’t want to get caught in that trap.”
Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, said there were no “salient issues” surrounding data security.
“Companies can choose to use the models and build on them ... without any connection to China,” Triolo said.
A recent Stanford study published posited that “the very nature of open-model releases enables better scrutiny” of the tech.
Gao Fei, chief technology officer at Chinese AI wellness platform BOK Health, agreed.
“The transparency and sharing nature of open source are themselves the best ways to build trust,” he said.
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