Cheap Chinese AI models are quickly gaining customers across the US market: 'This changes things'

Affordable Chinese AI models are rapidly attracting users across the United States, prompting warnings that America’s lead in artificial intelligence could be at risk. One example is an open-source coding model, GLM-5.2, released by z.AI on June 16, which the company says matches the capability of some top models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch and former Meta and Google DeepMind executive Mat Velloso both posted on X that the model is highly capable for coding. The piece notes US concern about China’s “industrial-scale” efforts to extract AI technology, and prior accusations from OpenAI and Anthropic involving “distillation.” It also cites OpenRouter rankings showing six of the 10 most popular models are Chinese, from firms including DeepSeek, Tencent, Xiaomi and MiniMax. As token costs rise, some US companies limit employee usage, while Microsoft has been reported as considering a version of DeepSeek for Copilot.