China's AI models catch up, global firms adopt more

Since June, nine Chinese AI companies have released 10 models, closing the gap with top US models in reasoning, coding, and agents. These include MiniMax M3, Zhipu GLM-5.2 and 5.3, Meituan LongCat-2.0, Tencent Hunyuan Hy3, Moonshot Kimi K3, ByteDance Seedance 2.5, DeepSeek V4 series, and Alibaba Qwen3.8-Max. Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters, the first open-source model at that scale. DeepSeek V4 Pro performs close to GPT-5.6 and Claude Opus 5 but costs 1/39 per task. US chip restrictions have sped up Chinese innovation. IDC says European firms adopt Chinese AI mainly for security, compliance, and performance, not price. Chinese firms focus on open-source models, making them widely accessible. Counterpoint expects Chinese tech to expand in EVs, batteries, robotics, and more.