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China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

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Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#191

Post by kamranjon »

apparent wrote: post #163
tyleo wrote: post #6

I’m suspicious of some quotes here, “80% of startups using Chinese models,” doesn’t seem quite right to me. I just interviewed at several startups and they were all using the US models. Maybe they have some minor use of Chinese models but the bread-and-butter of most of these businesses model use is the Claude and Codex subscriptions.

The full quote: > When entrepreneurs walk into the offices of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a big American venture-capital firm, the odds these days are that their startups are using AI models made in China. “I’d say 80% chance [they are] using a Chinese open-source model,” says Martin Casado, a partner at a16z. This is very different from what the author portrays. It may be the case that many pre-funded startups are u…

I don't really think the author is misrepresenting the quote in any way, it just seems like many people are reading it as a hard statistic instead of a reference to a properly attributed quote.

Just anecdotally though, my company is not a startup, well established and well known and has already started investigating, purely for dev purposes (not product), using Chinese models - this was spurred by costs rising much faster than expected.

So while I agree that I don't think it's anywhere near the 80% level across the board - I wouldn't be surprised if it starts moving that way.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#192

Post by apparent »

apparent wrote: post #163
tyleo wrote: post #6

I’m suspicious of some quotes here, “80% of startups using Chinese models,” doesn’t seem quite right to me. I just interviewed at several startups and they were all using the US models. Maybe they have some minor use of Chinese models but the bread-and-butter of most of these businesses model use is the Claude and Codex subscriptions.

The full quote: > When entrepreneurs walk into the offices of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a big American venture-capital firm, the odds these days are that their startups are using AI models made in China. “I’d say 80% chance [they are] using a Chinese open-source model,” says Martin Casado, a partner at a16z. This is very different from what the author portrays. It may be the case that many pre-funded startups are u…

Found the narrative, it was right there at the bottom. Now I remember reading some of his other stuff and it's very much in the same vein.

> I care about having open technology that can be run in the public interest, aligned with the public’s values. Threads like public AI, federated services, and open research have traction but need backing. Getting there in the US needs more nuanced strategy and support than we’re seeing today.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#193

Post by adrian_b »

tokai wrote: post #59
satvikpendem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Download the models yourself such as DeepSeek and you will see the censorship is at the API layer, not the model weight layer.

My local Qwen3.6-35b-a3b model would not use the function name. It did the work though, while telling me the the slogan is against the One China principle. So for Qwen it seems to be baked into the model.

Yes, but it is easy to find and download many Qwen3.6 variants from which the censorship has been removed.

This is one of the advantages of being an open weights model.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#194

Post by pmontra »

parineum wrote: post #168
verdverm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this comparison sound if we use cloud provider? The Ai is writing code, not executing a startup. The code was never the hard part of startups

Deciding to use open models over closed models is a business decision.

Using the cheaper model is also a business decision. We don't know why they are using the Chinese models: openness or money or both or a third one?

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#195

Post by kube-system »

kirtivr wrote: post #164
furyofantares wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There very little reason to use OpenRouter to access closed models, instead of just using the provider directly.

One big reason I can think of is to avoid vendor lock-in. This is why most enterprises use a multi-cloud setup, despite the increased complexity.

Most enterprises are multi-cloud in that they have multiple direct contracts with different cloud providers.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#197

Post by jerf »

bigyabai wrote: post #122
postalcoder wrote: post #47

This is a very strange article considering that Llama, the mother of all open-weight models, has led to anything but success for Meta. Also, enterprises don't give a rip if models are open. They care about zero data retention (and sticking with whatever vendor they're already using). This blog post is suspiciously close to being a restatement of what Alex Karp recently said on CNBC[0]. It's important to remember he's…

> considering that Llama, the mother of all open-weight models, has led to anything but success for Meta. This is also a strange way of framing it, though. Llama was released as a research project, it was never intended to create some vast ARR revenue stream or reframe the way people look at AI. If Meta wanted to exploit it for personal success then they had lots of opportunities to do so. With OpenAI and Anthropic's…

It seems to me that the US AI industry has bet the farm on the idea that AI will enhance AI itself, so any small advantage will magnify recursively into an unstoppable advantage. Therefore it is vital that they spend as much as is necessary to be the first to that small advantage.

At the moment, I can't say that I see this happening. It's hard to know whether it may happen in the future.

From what I see it seems like we're hitting the top of a sigmoid curve in the model's utility for coding assistants. Going from "it does 90% of the job" to "it does 94%" of the job is a legitimate improvement, but it's not a phase change, and it's probably not worth paying multiples more for. And coding assistants have turned out to be the killer app for AI; it still isn't really working out in a lot of the rest of the industries of the world.

At any moment, theoretically, someone could find some new way of making AIs that breaks this sigmoid and propels us into a new one. But that's not a great thing to bet the farm on.

I'm not sure I'd say "China" wins if this particular strand of American AI fails. Falling back to an open weights model and making money on the serving of the models wouldn't take all that much economic realignment for the US and would be the natural outcome of any sort of fire sale of current AI assets. However the devastating effect on the stock market if the market comes to the conclusion that this current round of AI can't be profitable without falling back to such an economic posture and some more years of people adjusting to it can hardly be overstated.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#198

Post by moduspol »

tyleo wrote: post #6

I’m suspicious of some quotes here, “80% of startups using Chinese models,” doesn’t seem quite right to me. I just interviewed at several startups and they were all using the US models. Maybe they have some minor use of Chinese models but the bread-and-butter of most of these businesses model use is the Claude and Codex subscriptions.

Our small team (~6 devs) is still using Claude Code because we're still on the cost-per-seat-month plan. If we were being pressed to pay per token, we'd be re-evaluating for sure.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#199

Post by adrian_b »

anvuong wrote: post #190
ttul wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the weights are open, censorship can be easily trained out of the Chinese models. But if you’re sending your tokens to China, all bets are off!

Not really. The gpt-oss models were notoriously hard to remove the built in safety. It totally depends how it was trained.

Also from the recent Kimi models it seems that it was difficult to remove the censorship.

But in both cases, eventually uncensored variants were published, even if it took more time than for other models.

Re: China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

#200

Post by Varelion »

I do not understand the logic going into these companies. Flagrantly violate all IP in Human history, essentially claiming domain over the heritage of Humanity... And... Try to privatize it? When the technology -- and data -- are both public domain to begin with?

It is ming-boggling stupidity. If there is talk of bailouts as the dust settles, there it would just be further evidence the system is ethically, financially, and intellectually bankrupt.

EDIT: Spelling mistakes

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