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Fortune (online)
OpenAI’s open-source pivot shows how U.S. tech is trying to catch up to China’s AI boom
DeepSeek tested that strategy. The Hangzhou-based startup made waves by releasing models that matched the performance of products from Western rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. By making its technology openly accessible, DeepSeek allowed developers around the globe to experience the power of its models firsthand.
Since then, Chinese AI development has exploded, with companies large and small rushing to unveil increasingly advanced models. Most releases are open-source.
“Globally, AI labs are feeling the heat as open-source models are increasingly recognized for their role in democratizing AI development,” Grace Shao, an China-based AI analyst and founder of AI Proem, says.
The Wire China
Rough Times at SenseTime: China’s former AI giant has faded out of the picture in recent years. Can it make a comeback?
Their rise and fall highlights how early is the development of AI, and the many cycles that could come. “You can’t just call a winner at this stage,” says Grace Shao, founder of AI Proem, an industry newsletter.
Shao says that makes it premature to count SenseTime out. “It’s really harsh to say they’re irrelevant now because they have strengths that others don’t have,” she says, pointing to the application of computer vision in healthcare imaging, for instance.
Rest of WOrld
China’s AI frenzy: DeepSeek is already everywhere — cars, phones, even hospitals
The Chinese EV industry will benefit as DeepSeek elevates the consumer experience of its products, making its cars even more attractive globally. China is already competitive in the EV manufacturing chain, including the production of lithium batteries and robotics, Grace Shao, founder of AI-industry newsletter AI Proem, told Rest of World.
“Chinese EV market leaders have all their ducks in a row, and now DeepSeek is accessible to them, perfectly positioning them to excel as the various components come together along the supply chain,” Shao said.
TIME
The Shift East: How China’s EV Boom Powers Its Tech Rise
U.S. policymakers have a hard time squaring this new paradigm, as evidenced by Vice President J.D. Vance’s complaints to Fox News in early April that “we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.” But whereas the first generation of Chinese entrepreneurs grew up poor and were happy to wring a livelihood from cheap imitations, today’s tech graduates were spared the privations of their parents and yearn for something more meaningful. “Before, Chinese were happy to copy others just so they wouldn’t go hungry,” says Grace Shao, a former Alibaba manager turned IT consultant who publishes the AI Proem newsletter. “Now they seek a sense of mission.”
South China Morning Post
Open-source models and fresh funding: China’s AI start-ups scramble to respond to DeepSeek
“Before DeepSeek’s R1, many [Chinese AI start-ups] were starting to pivot and focus on consumer-facing applications, driven by the same monetisation strategy in the mobile internet era,” said AI analyst Grace Shao, founder of industry newsletter AI Proem. “Meanwhile, in the US, AI has been largely diffused as a way to empower enterprises and white-collar productivity.”
Shao pointed out that the divergent approaches are caused by structural economic differences between the US and China markets. She added that strong model capabilities remain the foundation of the AI industry.
As such, other Chinese AI model developers are now moving to narrow the gap with DeepSeek in terms of achieving major AI breakthroughs.
AFP
'Marathon at F1 speed': China bids to lap US in AI leadership
Analyst Grace Shao wrote it was clear AI was still in its "infancy stage".
"You can sense that vibrant energy but also the immaturity of the space," she wrote on Substack.
"There just shouldn't be a definitive conclusion on who is 'winning' yet."
Fortune Magazine
How DeepSeek erased Silicon Valley’s AI lead and wiped $1 trillion from U.S. markets
China’s AI sector, meanwhile, had been hatching waves of new startups. First were the“little dragons,” machine learning and computer vision companies like SenseTime andMegvii that attracted global attention. When energy shifted to generative AI, attentionmoved to the “AI tigers”—Baichuan, Moonshot, MiniMax, and Zhipu. Now, they’ve beenovershadowed by the newest set of “dragons”: six Hangzhou-based startups, includingDeepSeek.
Hangzhou, the home of Alibaba, is the hotbed of China’s AI innovation. “It has the strengthof being far away from Beijing to avoid all kinds of bureaucratic procedures; the benefit ofbeing so close to Shanghai to access international capital and talent; and an extremelystrong talent pool thanks to Alibaba, NetEase, and others,” explains Grace Shao, founder of Proem, an AI consultancy.
BBC: The Artificial Human
Is China getting AI right?
With the world's two AI superpowers adopting radically different approaches to development, Aleks and Kevin ask whose ideology will win: China or the US?
Guest: Grace Shao, AI Proem