China stopped chasing Silicon Valley

China’s ecosystem now emphasizes open-source models and massive adoption, challenging how the world measures leadership in artificial intelligence

 Emre Aytekin/Anadolu via Getty Images

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The conventional wisdom about China's artificial intelligence sector has always been the same: good, but second place to Silicon Valley. Six months behind. Nine months behind. 

That framing is now collapsing. The race itself has changed shape.

The clearest sign came in a two-week window in April, when three Chinese labs each released AI coding tools that matched the best Western models on standard benchmark tests, offered them as free, open software, and priced them below Western competitors.

The "months behind" gap, it turns out, depends heavily on which test you run and how you set it up.

This is not the story most people expected. A little over a year ago, a Chinese startup called DeepSeek sent shockwaves through global markets when it revealed its R1 model, built nearly as capable as the best American ones at a fraction of the cost. Nvidia $NVDA's stock briefly tumbled. Silicon Valley went into a quiet........

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