Chinese-built AI models are gaining traction among U.S. companies as they narrow the performance gap with leading American rivals while remaining significantly cheaper to use.
Recent model releases from Chinese companies, including DeepSeek and Z.ai, are seen by many as highly competitive compared to leading frontier systems from the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI. Those advances in capability come as token prices for the most advanced models rise at many U.S. AI labs, leaving companies grappling with unexpectedly high costs associated with using the tech.