Chinese open-weight models outpace US proprietary AI on cost and adoption
Chinese AI labs are releasing open-weight models—DeepSeek, Z.ai, Moonshot, Alibaba Qwen—that developers can download, fine‑tune, and run locally. A MIT‑Hugging Face study shows these models captured 17.1% of global AI model downloads in 2025, edging out US counterparts and shifting enterprise AI toward cheaper, customizable tools, especially in the Global South.