Report: Alibaba Eyes Revenue Share for Open-Source AI System
Is the U.S. winning the AI race through infrastructure dominance or is China rewriting the rules with cost and innovation?
Above: Alibaba's office building in Shenzhen, China, on Jun. 27. Image credit: Cheng Xin/Getty Images
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
The U.S. still runs the AI race because it controls the infrastructure that makes AI possible: data centers, undersea cables and NVIDIA's dominant chip ecosystem. China can cheaply copy systems, but it cannot escape its dependence on American hardware and cloud networks. These core limitations ensure that Chinese AI will never overtake its American counterpart.
Pro-China narrative
China is no longer playing catch-up, but rather changing the game. Systems like Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8-Max are matching frontier U.S. systems at only a fraction of the cost, while China is simultaneously making breakthroughs of its own. Focusing solely on benchmark scores ignores the crucial fact that China is winning on cost, deployment and global adoption.