Is China Quietly Taking the Lead in the Global AI Showdown?

Pinterest is a popular website where millions of people go every month to find new ideas for fashion, crafts, and more. If you scroll through Pinterest, you might see creative things like Crocs turned into flower pots or makeup that looks like a cheeseburger. What many users do not realize is that the technology behind these recommendations is not always American. Pinterest has started using artificial intelligence, or AI, from China to improve the way it suggests ideas to users. Bill Ready, the CEO of Pinterest, explained that their site is now powered by AI, making it a smarter shopping assistant. While Pinterest could use AI from American companies, they have chosen to use Chinese AI models since January 2025, especially one called DeepSeek R-1. Bill Ready described the launch of DeepSeek as a breakthrough moment for Pinterest. DeepSeek is open-source, which means companies can download and change it for free. This has led to a wave of other open-source AI models from China, such as Alibaba's Qwen and Moonshot's Kimi. Even ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, is working on similar technology.

Matt Madrigal, Pinterest's Chief Technology Officer, said that the advantage of these Chinese AI models is that they are open-source. This means companies like Pinterest can customize them to fit their needs, which is not possible with most American AI models like ChatGPT from OpenAI. Madrigal also said that the open-source techniques they use to train their own AI are about thirty percent more accurate than the best ready-made models. Plus, using these Chinese models is much cheaper, sometimes costing ninety percent less than using American proprietary models. This cost savings is a big reason why more companies are interested in Chinese AI.

Pinterest is not alone in using Chinese AI. Many large American companies are starting to rely on it. For example, Airbnb uses Alibaba's Qwen AI to power its customer service chatbot. Airbnb's CEO, Brian Chesky, said that Qwen is very good, fast, and cheap. On Hugging Face, a popular website for downloading AI models, Chinese models are often among the most downloaded and liked. Jeff Boudier, who works at Hugging Face, said that the low cost is a big reason why start-ups and big companies choose Chinese AI. Sometimes, four out of the five top trending models on Hugging Face are from Chinese labs. In September, Qwen became the most downloaded large language model on Hugging Face, beating Meta's Llama, which used to be the top choice. Meta, the company behind Facebook, released its Llama AI models in 2023, but some developers were disappointed with the latest version. Now, Meta is working with Alibaba, Google, and OpenAI to create a new model. Airbnb uses several different AI models, including American ones, but keeps its data secure and does not share it with the AI developers.

Experts say that Chinese companies are catching up to, or even passing, American companies in AI. A report from Stanford University found that Chinese AI models are now just as good as, or better than, their global competitors, both in what they can do and in how many people use them. Sir Nick Clegg, who used to be the head of global affairs at Meta, said that American companies are focused on creating AI that might one day be smarter than humans, but this goal is not very clear. He pointed out that China is actually doing more to make AI available to everyone. The Chinese government supports open-source AI, while American companies like OpenAI are under pressure to make money. OpenAI has released some open-source models, but most of its resources go into making proprietary models that it can sell. CEO Sam Altman said that OpenAI is investing heavily in more computing power and new models. In the end, China is becoming a leader in open-source AI, and more companies around the world are starting to use Chinese technology.