Why does China open source their AI models?

A curious approach to AI competition

Why does China open source their AI models? A curious approach to AI competition Jason Hausenloy and Sophie Kim Jan 30, 2026 26 2 3 Share It’s a bit weird that anyone would open-source their models. 1 You are just giving away a thing cost millions of dollars and many researcher tears. Even Meta doesn’t do it anymore . Why does China? 1. Lack of inference capacity U.S. export controls on advanced chips have made it hard for China to develop enough inference capacity to serve hundreds of millions of global users quickly. Earlier this week, the Chinese AI company Zhipu AI restricted sign-ups for

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