MIT Technology Review AI reporting · 14h ago · 3/5
China’s open-source bet ↗
Chinese AI companies including DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, Moonshot, and MiniMax are releasing open-weight models as an alternative to proprietary US APIs, reportedly at lower costs. A MIT and Hugging Face study found Chinese open-weight models accounted for 17.1% of global AI model downloads by August 2025, narrowly surpassing the US share of 15.86%. The strategy is gaining adoption in the Global South, with Singapore and Malaysia choosing Chinese models for sovereign AI initiatives, though concerns remain about content moderation and alleged model distillation practices.
That model matched the performance of the best American systems, reportedly at a fraction of the cost.
Chinese models carry the imprint of China's content moderation regime and are trained to avoid outputs that conflict with government policy.