As US battles China on AI, some companies choose Chinese

EVEN as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence, Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market.

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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 OpenAl or Google's Gemini - whose inner workings are fiercely protected.

In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba to DeepSeek, 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% in late 2024 to nearly 30% 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,” Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China said.