BEIJING — Chinese companies are accelerating the rollout of new artificial intelligence models as competition intensifies from U.S.-based rivals OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
Just over a year ago, Chinese-made DeepSeek released an AI chatbot with lower usage and production costs than OpenAI’s ChatGPT, shaking up global markets and raising questions about the effectiveness of US technology regulations against China.
On Tuesday, Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI unveiled Kim K2.5, which it claims has video generation and agent capabilities that outperform all three major U.S. AI models. Agent AI broadly refers to AI systems that can perform tasks on behalf of humans. The ultimate goal is to have sophisticated agents that operate autonomously with minimal user interaction.
This update comes just about three months after Moonshot released the K2 model.
A few hours ago, e-commerce giant alibaba We announced our latest generative AI model that can create text, images, and videos based on user commands. Alibaba claimed that its Qwen3-Max-Thinking outperformed its major US rival in an extensive benchmark test dubbed “mankind’s last test.”
According to Alibaba, this new model can automatically select the best AI tools for different tasks and use past conversations as context to generate new responses more efficiently, all at little additional cost.
A week earlier, on January 19th, Z.ai released a free version of its recently released GLM 4.7 model. Two days later, the company restricted new subscriber registrations to its AI coding tool as demand strained available computing power.
Also traded in Hong Kong last week Chinese technology giant Baidu It rose to its highest level in about three years after the release of Ernie 5.0, the latest generative AI model. The company claimed the update outperformed Google’s Gemini-2.5-Pro, but did not compare it to Google DeepMind’s latest Gemini 3 Pro.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told CNBC this month that China’s AI models may be just “months” behind those developed in the United States.
try to compete in other ways
Beyond deployment, Chinese companies are also promoting the adoption of domestic technology by making it more affordable for emerging countries.
Unlike many major AI models developed by the United States, Chinese AI models tend to be open sourced, typically accessible for free or at low cost, and the code underlying the models can be customized.
“We hope that countries outside of China will use these models and that a large amount of applications will be built on these Chinese models,” said Alex Lu, founder of LSY Consulting. “This is one way for Chinese companies to enter the market.”
There are signs that this trend is already happening. Earlier this month, Microsoft pointed to estimates that DeepSeek usage in Africa is two to four times higher than in other regions.
Paying too much attention to AI benchmarks can mask the true value of the technology when it is integrated into existing gaming and entertainment ecosystems. Tencent’ssaid Morningstar senior equity analyst Ivan Hsu in a note.
The Chinese tech giant operates the country’s popular messaging app WeChat, as well as other popular gaming and video streaming apps.
Tencent announced on Sunday that it will distribute 1 billion yuan ($140 million) in prizes through its AI chatbot app “Yuanbao” during the Lunar New Year festival in February. The promotion mimics the early “red envelope” campaign that helped WeChat become one of the two leading mobile payment apps just a decade ago. It is customary for families to give cash in small red envelopes to their relatives during the holidays.
ByteDance and Baidu are also running AI-related promotions for the upcoming holiday season to keep users engaged with their AI applications.
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Earlier this month, Alibaba updated its Qwen AI app to integrate with the company’s existing e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, allowing users operating the chatbot to shop, order food, and pay without leaving the app. Qwen claims to have over 100 million monthly active users.
The integration could generate more revenue for Alibaba, based on the assumption that the more people use Qwen, the more they will use Taobao and shop there, Lu said. That could offset the costs of developing and running the underlying AI model, he said.
He said Chinese companies primarily compete for user traffic rather than developing cutting-edge models.
