As someone who actively monitors the Chinese internet as well, I believe we are heading toward a world split into two distinct AI spheres.
Coming from South Korea—a nation outside the US-China dichotomy—the fundamental issue I see is the closed nature of the American AI ecosystem. Products like Gemini, GPT, and Claude are API and subscription-based, meaning their pricing and access terms can change at any moment. If that volatility increases, developers desperate to escape vendor lock-in will inevitably turn to local models.
Chinese open-source models like Qwen and DeepSeek are already exerting massive influence over our domestic AI ecosystem. While the US still revolves around CUDA, China has built its own CANN ecosystem. Most impressively, Chinese local models are incredibly accessible, even for a foreigner like me.
I believe that while the US will retain dominance over the cutting-edge frontier inside Silicon Valley, the logical ecosystem—the models that individuals can actually download, run, modify, and build upon—will increasingly be dictated by China. Closed American models may lead in absolute performance, but open Chinese models will act as the foundational anchor against price resistance. If US companies attempt excessive price hikes, these powerful open models will cap those increases.
This feels remarkably parallel to the history of Linux servers. Data centers chose Linux because, at scale, avoiding licensing costs, maintaining deployment control, and escaping vendor lock-in are critical. Windows Server still plays a role where vendor accountability and specific enterprise integrations are required, but in large-scale infrastructure, open systems overwhelmingly won.
We are likely to see the exact same phenomenon in AI. A
n open local model doesn't have to be the absolute bset. If it is 'good enough,' cheap, easy to deploy, and free from volatile vendor pricing, it will become the core of the infrastructure layer.
If that happens, the foundational 'layer of thought' embedded in our systems might no longer be based on American cognitive frameworks, but on Chinese ones
I am certain that AI will be deeply integrated directly into our infrastructure. The reason is simple: spending time memorizing YAML syntax just to configure a CI/CD pipeline is a complete waste of time. Because of this, we will inevitably see a surge in services that orchestrate small, domain-specific agents tailored for these exact niches.
When that happens, are we really going to integrate expensive American model APIs to run them? Or will we just rent small GPU servers and spin up local models? I strongly believe the latter is far more likely.