Anthropic’s Fable fiasco leaves the door open for open-source AI, particularly cheaper models from China

The U.S. government’s decision to stop Anthropic from offering its Mythos and Fable 5 models to non-U.S. nationals may end up providing a big boost to the adoption of open-source models, including those from Chinese AI labs like Deep Seek and Moonshot AI. Users can download open-source models and run them on their own computers or cloud networks, effectively sidestepping the ability of both AI developers and governments to control access. These models can also be more easily fine-tuned by developers to tailor them for specific needs. Chinese labs are already claiming a public relations win from the Anthropic controversy. Shares in Knowledge Atlas, a Chinese AI lab better known as z.ai, surged by over 30% in Hong Kong trading on Monday after it released the latest version of its open-source model, GLM-5.2. (Knowledge Atlas’s shares are up more than 800% since they debuted in January) “At a time when some frontier models can suddenly become unavailable, we choose to believe in a different path,” Knowledge Atlas posted on social media, according to the South China Morning Post. In a clear reference to the Anthropic news, the company added that “frontier intelligence should not belong to only a few people, nor be subject to withdrawal by a handful of rules at any moment.” Demand for Chinese models has already overtaken that for U.S. models on OpenRouter, a popular platform for accessing different AI models. Last week, the top four most-used models came from Chinese companies: DeepSeek, MiniMax, Tencent and Xiaomi. The Chinese open source models have proved popular not just within China but also in many other developing countries around the globe, where they are seen as a good trade off between price and performance. The U.S.’s ban on Fable and Mythos may also end up vindicating China’s broader move towards tech self-sufficiency, which picked up in 2022 after the Biden Administration placed controls on the sale of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment. “It’s a great mov