America’s AI labs are under threat from cheap Chinese rivals
Chinese startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a model slightly less capable than Anthropic's Fable or OpenAI's Sol, with weights publicly available at no cost.
Alibaba unveiled a preview version of its Qwen model family, claiming it is second only to Fable.
According to Epoch AI, the most powerful open-weight models, typically from China, trail the frontier by months.
In May 2026, use of Chinese AI models tripled in June while American model use rose by two-thirds, per OpenRouter data.
Some within the Trump administration are pushing measures like trade blacklists or warnings against Chinese models to slow their spread.
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Hindustan Times
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