Why China is giving away its best AI models

People visit the booth of Kimi, an LLM developed by the Chinese startup Moonshot, during the World AI Conference in Shanghai, China, July 20th. | Image: LONG WEI/ Feature China/Future Publishing via Getty Images Silicon Valley has spent much of the past week on red alert, digesting the arrival of Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, a Chinese AI model that can allegedly beat some of the best systems built by US companies at a fraction of the cost.

Its performance alone would have been enough to intensify the rivalry between the US and China. But Moonshot's plan to release the model's weights for free - and its clear targeting of US users - has fueled deeper unease about whether closed American models can continue to dominate as increasingly capable open alternatives enter the market.