China's Lead in Open-Source Artificial Intelligence Jolts Washington, Silicon Valley

Free-to-use models from DeepSeek, Alibaba and others gain users worldwide

- Raffaele Huang

China's ambition to turn its open-source artificial intelligence models into a global standard has jolted American companies and policymakers, who fear U.S. models could be eclipsed and are mobilizing their responses to the threat.

Chinese advances in AI have come one after another this year, starting with the widely heralded DeepSeek and its RL reasoning model in January. This was followed by Alibaba's Qwen and a flurry of others since July, with names such as Moonshot, Z.ai, and MiniMax.

The models all have versions that are free for users to download and modify. This approach, commonly referred to as open source or open weight, is driving global adoption of Chinese AI technology.

American companies that have kept their models proprietary are feeling the pressure. In early August, ChatGPT maker OpenAI released its first open-source model, called gpt-oss.

The history of technology offers many examples where a welter of competitors in an industry's infancy eventually evolved into a monopoly or oligopoly of a few players. Microsoft's Windows operating system for desktops, Google's search engine, and the iOS and Android operating systems for smartphones are just a few of the examples.

History also teaches that the battle to become an industry standard isn't necessarily won by the most technologically advanced player. Easy availability and flexibility play a role, which is why China's advances in open-source AI worry many in Washington and Silicon Valley.

In an AI action plan released in July, the Trump administration said open-source models "could become global standards in some areas of business and in academic research." The report called on the U.S. to build "leading open models founded on American values."