Technology

China wants to dominate in AI — and some of its models are already beating their U.S. rivals

Published

7 months ago

December 16, 2024

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China is focusing on large language models (LLMs) in the artificial intelligence space.

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China’s attempts to dominate the world of artificial intelligence could be paying off, with industry insiders and technology analysts telling CNBC that Chinese AI models are already hugely popular and are keeping pace with — and even surpassing — those from the U.S. in terms of performance.

AI has become the latest battleground between the U.S. and China, with both sides considering it a strategic technology. Washington continues to restrict China’s access to leading-edge chips designed to help power artificial intelligence amid fears that the technology could threaten U.S. national security.

It’s led China to pursue its own approach to boosting the appeal and performance of its AI models, including relying on open-sourcing technology and developing its own super-fast software and chips.

China is creating popular LLMs

Like some of the leading U.S. firms in the space, Chinese AI firms are developing so-called large language models, or LLMs, which are trained on huge amounts of data and underpin applications such as chatbots.

Unlike OpenAI’s models which power the hugely popular ChatGPT, however, many of these Chinese companies are developing open-source, or open-weight, LLMs which developers can download and build on top of for free and without stringent licensing requirements from the inventor.

On Hugging Face, a repository of LLMs, Chinese LLMs are the most downloaded, according to Tiezhen Wang, a machine learning engineer at the company. Qwen, a family of AI models created by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is the most popular on Hugging Face, he said.

“Qwen is rapidly gaining popularity due to its outstanding performance on competitive benchmarks,” Wang told CNBC by email.

He added that Qwen has a “highly favorable licensing model” which means it can be used by companies without the need for “extensive legal reviews.”

Qwen comes in various sizes, or parameters, as they’re known in the world of LLMs. Large parameter models are more powerful but have higher computational costs, while smaller ones are cheaper to run.

“Regardless of the size you choose, Qwen is likely to be one of the best-performing models available right now,” Wang added.

DeepSeek, a start-up, also made waves recently with a model called DeepSeek-R1. DeepSeek said last month that its R1 model competes with OpenAI’s o1 — a model designed for reasoning or solving more complex tasks.

These companies claim that their models can compete with other open-source offerings like Meta‘s Llama, as well as closed LLMs such as those from OpenAI, across various functions.

“In the last year, we’ve seen the rise of open source Chinese contributions to AI with really strong performance, low cost to serve and high throughput,” Grace Isford, a partner at Lux Capital, told CNBC by email.

China pushes open source to go global

Open sourcing a technology serves a number of purposes, including driving innovation as more developers have access to it, as well as building a community around a product.

It is not only Chinese firms that have launched open-source LLMs. Facebook parent Meta, as well as European start-up Mistral, also have open-source versions of AI models.

But with the technology industry caught in the crosshairs of the geopolitical battle between Washington and Beijing, open-source LLMs give Chinese firms another advantage: enabling their models to be used globally.

“Chinese companies would like to see their models used outside of China, so this is definitively a way for companies to become global players in the AI space,” Paul Triolo, a partner at global advisory firm DGA Group, told CNBC by email.

While the focus is on AI models right now, there is also debate over what applications will be built on top of them — and who will dominate this global internet landscape going forward.

“If you assume these frontier base AI models are table stakes, it’s about what these models are used for, like accelerating frontier science and engineering technology,” Lux Capital’s Isford said.

Today’s AI models have been compared to operating systems, such as Microsoft’s Windows, Google‘s Android and Apple‘s iOS, with the potential to dominate a market, like these companies do on mobile and PCs.

If true, this makes the stakes for building a dominant LLM higher.

“They [Chinese companies] perceive LLMs as the center of future tech ecosystems,” Xin Sun, senior lecturer in Chinese and East Asian business at King’s College London, told CNBC by email.

“Their future business models will rely on developers joining their ecosystems, developing new applications based on the LLMs, and attracting users and data from which profits can be generated subsequently through various means, including but far beyond directing users to use their cloud services,” Sun added.

Chip restrictions cast doubt over China’s AI future

AI models are trained on vast amounts of data, requiring huge amounts of computing power. Currently, Nvidia is the leading designer of the chips required for this, known as graphics processing units (GPUs).

Most of the leading AI companies are training their systems on Nvidia’s most high-performance chips — but not in China.

Over the past year or so, the U.S. has ramped up export restrictions on advanced semiconductor and chipmaking equipment to China. It means Nvidia‘s leading-edge chips cannot be exported to the country and the company has had to create sanction-compliant semiconductors to export.

Despite, these curbs, however, Chinese firms have still managed to launch advanced AI models.

“Major Chinese technology platforms currently have sufficient access to computing power to continue to improve models. This is because they have stockpiled large numbers of Nvidia GPUs and are also leveraging domestic GPUs from Huawei and other firms,” DGA Group’s Triolo said.

Indeed, Chinese companies have been boosting efforts to create viable alternatives to Nvidia. Huawei has been one of the leading players in pursuit of this goal in China, while firms like Baidu and Alibaba have also been investing in semiconductor design.

“However, the gap in terms of advanced hardware compute will become greater over time, particularly next year as Nvidia rolls out its Blackwell-based systems that are restricted for export to China,” Triolo said.

Lux Capital’s Isford flagged that China has been “systematically investing and growing their whole domestic AI infrastructure stack outside of Nvidia with high-performance AI chips from companies like Baidu.”

“Whether or not Nvidia chips are banned in China will not prevent China from investing and building their own infrastructure to build and train AI models,” she added.

Technology

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Published

1 day ago

July 11, 2025

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Technology

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Published

2 days ago

July 11, 2025

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Published

2 days ago

July 11, 2025

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.