China’s Open AI Models Are Challenging Silicon Valley’s Playbook

中国的开源人工智能模型正在挑战硅谷的剧本

The AI industry is not quite experiencing a DeepSeek 2.0 moment, but it feels very close. The leading Chinese AI labs have been on a roll lately, releasing a series of almost cutting-edge open-source models. Z.ai released GLM 5.2 in June, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 last week, and Alibaba released Qwen 3.8 this Monday.

人工智能行业虽然还没有完全经历“DeepSeek 2.0”时刻，但感觉已经非常接近了。中国领先的人工智能实验室近期势头强劲，发布了一系列接近顶尖水平的开源模型。Z.ai 在 6 月发布了 GLM 5.2，月之暗面（Moonshot AI）上周发布了 Kimi K3，阿里巴巴则在本周一发布了 Qwen 3.8。

Silicon Valley and Washington started talking about the models immediately, especially K3, which is widely seen as the best of the bunch. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and AI adviser to President Donald Trump, called the performance of Moonshot’s model “concerning.” Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US might impose sanctions on Chinese AI companies.

硅谷和华盛顿立即开始讨论这些模型，尤其是被广泛认为是其中表现最好的 K3。风险投资家、特朗普总统的人工智能顾问大卫·萨克斯（David Sacks）称月之暗面模型的表现“令人担忧”。本周早些时候，商务部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）暗示美国可能会对中国人工智能公司实施制裁。

On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, alleged that the Trump administration has “information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” which he said amounted to “stealing proprietary US technology and undermining American research” and was “unacceptable.” (Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

周三，白宫科技政策办公室主任迈克尔·克拉齐奥斯（Michael Kratsios）声称，特朗普政府掌握“信息显示月之暗面在开发 K3 模型时蒸馏了 Anthropic 的 Fable 模型”，他称这等同于“窃取美国专有技术并破坏美国研究”，是“不可接受的”。（月之暗面未立即回应置评请求。）

The new Chinese models have a few things in common: Third-party benchmarks show that they perform nearly as well as the best Western models; they are optimized for agentic coding tasks (the hottest thing in AI this year); and they are or will soon be released with open weights, making them accessible and transparent.

这些新的中国模型有几个共同点：第三方基准测试显示，它们的性能几乎与西方最好的模型相当；它们针对智能体编码任务（今年人工智能领域最热门的方向）进行了优化；并且它们已经或即将以开放权重的方式发布，使其具有可访问性和透明度。

But perhaps the biggest parallel between the current moment and January 2025—when the world was shocked by DeepSeek’s R1 model—is that it reaffirms how American and Chinese AI labs are taking diverging paths when it comes to being open or closed.

但当前时刻与 2025 年 1 月（当时世界被 DeepSeek 的 R1 模型所震撼）之间最大的相似之处，或许在于它再次印证了中美人工智能实验室在“开放”与“封闭”路径上的分道扬镳。

When it first burst onto the scene, DeepSeek challenged the premise that only closed-source models built with billions of dollars of investment in compute infrastructure and training could achieve frontier performance. But since then, Western AI labs have continued developing AI the same way, and now American frontier models feel more roped-off than they were a year ago.

DeepSeek 初次登场时，挑战了一个前提：即只有投入数十亿美元用于计算基础设施和训练的闭源模型才能达到前沿性能。但自那以后，西方人工智能实验室继续沿用同样的发展方式，如今美国的前沿模型比一年前显得更加封闭。

Anthropic said for months that its latest Mythos model was so dangerously good at hacking that only approved collaborators could use it. When it was finally released more widely, the White House responded by issuing broad export controls, which forced Anthropic to take Mythos and its less capable sister model, Fable 5, offline temporarily. OpenAI similarly delayed the release of GPT 5.6 after it received a request from the White House.

Anthropic 曾数月声称其最新的 Mythos 模型在黑客攻击方面表现得过于危险，只有获得批准的合作者才能使用。当它最终被更广泛地发布时，白宫通过发布广泛的出口管制措施作为回应，迫使 Anthropic 暂时将 Mythos 及其能力较弱的姊妹模型 Fable 5 下线。OpenAI 在收到白宫的要求后，也同样推迟了 GPT 5.6 的发布。

In China, meanwhile, the situation looks very different. Chinese startups and tech giants have doubled down on open source: Anyone with a good enough computer environment can now download an open-weight model, run it locally, add customizations, and overall enjoy a much greater degree of freedom than OpenAI and Anthropic would ever allow. In many ways, the open versus closed debate is more entangled with the US versus China debate than ever before.

与此同时，中国的情况看起来大不相同。中国的初创公司和科技巨头加倍投入开源：任何拥有足够好计算机环境的人现在都可以下载开放权重的模型，在本地运行，添加自定义设置，总体上享受比 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 所允许的程度高得多的自由。在许多方面，“开放与封闭”的辩论比以往任何时候都更与“中美”辩论纠缠在一起。

There are a lot of reasons why Chinese labs have chosen a business strategy built atop open-source models. Being the newer, smaller fish in the AI field, making their models free and open can help Chinese firms attract more users, collaborators, and media spotlight. It also puts them in a separate lane of competition from the one that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX, and other deep-pocketed giants are in.

中国实验室选择基于开源模型的商业策略有很多原因。作为人工智能领域较新、较小的参与者，使模型免费且开源可以帮助中国公司吸引更多的用户、合作者和媒体关注。这也使它们处于与 OpenAI、Anthropic、谷歌、SpaceX 和其他财力雄厚的巨头不同的竞争赛道上。

Earlier this year, rumors spread that Alibaba might be considering joining the closed-source race after it rearranged its corporate AI model development teams. But the tech giant announced on Monday that it would again release the latest version of Qwen—its line of open-source models beloved by the global tech community—with open weights, signaling to customers and the public it is not pivoting away yet.

今年早些时候，有传言称阿里巴巴在重组其企业人工智能模型开发团队后，可能考虑加入闭源竞赛。但这家科技巨头周一宣布，将再次以开放权重的方式发布其最新版本的 Qwen（其深受全球科技界喜爱的开源模型系列），向客户和公众表明它尚未改变方向。

Perhaps the strongest validation of the Chinese approach is the models themselves. Chinese labs have produced what are widely considered the world’s best open-source AI models, showing that American companies no longer have an exclusive hold on building the most capable systems.

也许对中国模式最有力的验证就是模型本身。中国实验室已经生产出被广泛认为是世界上最好的开源人工智能模型，这表明美国公司在构建最强系统方面不再拥有垄断地位。

Arena AI, a crowdsourced model evaluation platform, now ranks K3 as the best model when it comes to web development tasks and number four in agentic tasks, just below Anthropic’s Fable and Opus 4.8, as well as OpenAI’s GPT 5.6. Artificial Analysis, an independent AI benchmarking company, ranks K3 in the third spot in its intelligence index.

众包模型评估平台 Arena AI 目前将 K3 列为 Web 开发任务中最好的模型，在智能体任务中排名第四，仅次于 Anthropic 的 Fable 和 Opus 4.8，以及 OpenAI 的 GPT 5.6。独立人工智能基准测试公司 Artificial Analysis 在其智能指数中将 K3 排在第三位。

Shortly after Moonshot AI released a preview version of K3 on July 16, people around the world began rushing to try it out, consuming so much inference computing resources that the company is temporarily restricting new users from signing up.

在月之暗面于 7 月 16 日发布 K3 预览版后不久，世界各地的人们开始争相试用，消耗了大量的推理计算资源，以至于该公司不得不暂时限制新用户注册。

As more people start using open-source Chinese models with capabilities nearly on par with that of their Western competitors, some have started questioning whether paying for OpenAI or Anthropic’s offerings is really worth it. The fact that multiple Chinese labs were able to create capable agentic models and were unafraid to release them to the public is poking holes in the popular understanding that OpenAI and Anthropic are miles ahead of the competition.

随着越来越多的人开始使用能力几乎与西方竞争对手相当的开源中国模型，一些人开始质疑为 OpenAI 或 Anthropic 的产品付费是否真的值得。多家中国实验室能够创造出强大的智能体模型，并且敢于将其公之于众，这一事实正在打破人们普遍认为 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 遥遥领先的认知。

Just like with DeepSeek, K3 fans are now celebrating it as evidence that Western AI models are overhyped and overprotected. “It is absolutely wild how much love Kimi got,” Rui Ma, founder of the independent research firm Tech Buzz China, said in a social media post, referring to the company’s announcement that demand for K3 had overwhelmed its servers. “Only made possible by the poor comms and decisions from [Silicon Valley] labs in the past year,” she added.

就像 DeepSeek 一样，K3 的粉丝们现在将其视为西方人工智能模型被过度炒作和过度保护的证据。“Kimi 获得的喜爱程度简直太疯狂了，”独立研究公司 Tech Buzz China 的创始人马睿（Rui Ma）在社交媒体帖子中写道，她指的是该公司宣布对 K3 的需求已经压垮了其服务器。“这完全是因为（硅谷）实验室在过去一年中糟糕的沟通和决策才成为可能，”她补充道。

“I think Anthropic has overhyped the risks, or described risks that are coming soon but do not currently proliferate,” says Nathan Lambert, an independent AI researcher in Seattle who recently visited Moonshot AI’s office in China. He admits, though, that just like the rest of the general public, he has little firsthand information about how Mythos really performs. “We rely on a few private companies.”

“我认为 Anthropic 夸大了风险，或者描述了即将到来但目前尚未扩散的风险，”西雅图的独立人工智能研究员内森·兰伯特（Nathan Lambert）说，他最近访问了月之暗面在中国的办公室。不过他承认，就像其他公众一样，他对 Mythos 的实际表现知之甚少。“我们依赖于少数几家私营公司。”