China Is Shipping More Open AI Models Than US Rivals as Tech Competition Shifts

Chinese companies now produce most of the world's freely available AI models. DeepSeek leads Hugging Face in popularity. Chinese firms like Alibaba receive higher ratings than OpenAI and Meta on LMArena. The site uses blind tests to measure user preferences. Chinese developers ship open models more frequently than American rivals.

Irene Solaiman is chief policy officer at Hugging Face. She said Chinese companies build their user base by shipping frequently and quickly. American companies like OpenAI and Google keep their best models proprietary. Meta once led in open AI models. Mark Zuckerberg argued last year that the world would benefit if AI companies shared their technology freely. He pledged Meta would release its AI openly. The company has since become more cautious. Zuckerberg wrote in a new essay that Meta might need to keep the best models for itself.

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