Kai-Fu Lee: China's Open-Source AI Models Worry the US with Better Value

Kai-Fu Lee, founder of 01.AI, said in Beijing that more US companies are adopting Chinese open-source AI models because they offer great value. He noted that OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic's Fable 5 are the strongest AI models, but they're only slightly better than Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI, which costs about 60% less.

Moonshot released Kimi K3 on July 16 with 2.8 trillion parameters. It tops the Frontend Code Arena leaderboard with 1679 points, beating Claude Fable 5. The rise of open-source models has sparked talks about whether they could hurt closed-source systems. OpenAI's strategy chief Dean W. Ball criticized open-weight models, saying they slow down AI investment.