How China Is Winning the Global AI Race
Key takeaways
- Which artificial intelligence model is the most popular these days?
- This ranking highlights how Western policymakers and CEOs could be fixating on the wrong race as they focus on semiconductor benchmarks and the question of which AI model is the most advanced.
- The mainstream Western narrative is that U.S. export controls are preventing China from getting access to cutting-edge processor chips, slowing down the development of Chinese AI firms.
Which artificial intelligence model is the most popular these days? Ask anyone in America or Europe, and you’ll probably hear about the respective merits of Open AI’s Chat GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s Gemini. All wrong. Over the past two weeks, the most widely used AI in the world was one that few Westerners had ever heard of: Kimi K2.6, an open-source Chinese model that topped the Open Router leaderboard.
This ranking highlights how Western policymakers and CEOs could be fixating on the wrong race as they focus on semiconductor benchmarks and the question of which AI model is the most advanced. China, meanwhile, is quietly building something different: an ecosystem of open-source models that are both cheap and good enough for most use cases. By the time Western capitals notice, Chinese AI models may well have become global standards and prove hard to displace—even by more advanced technology.
Which artificial intelligence model is the most popular these days? Ask anyone in America or Europe, and you’ll probably hear about the respective merits of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s Gemini. All wrong. Over the past two weeks, the most widely used AI in the world was one that few Westerners had ever heard of: Kimi K2.6, an open-source Chinese model that topped the OpenRouter leaderboard.