In early 2025, the Chinese company DeepSeek released its R1 artificial intelligence model, sending shock waves throughout policy circles in the United States. Despite U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors, the company had managed to develop a customizable open technology that could compete with some of the most advanced proprietary American AI models, and many feared that U.S. leadership in AI might soon be eclipsed. Now, another Chinese company, Moonshot AI, has released a state-of-the-art open model, Kimi K2, that is capable of autonomously achieving complex tasks, prompting some commentators to call it another DeepSeek moment.
But the threat posed by Chinese open models is not simply about China catching up to the United States in the AI race. It is also about the broader global adoption of AI. For the month of January 2025, the DeepSeek R1 app had 33 million active users across the world; by April, that number had nearly tripled to 97 million. Moreover, the CEO of the open-model repository Hugging Face noted that over 500 derivative versions of the original R1 model had been downloaded a combined total of 2.5 million times in January.
In other words, derivative versions of R1, which are customized and tailored specifically from the original model to meet users’ needs, were downloaded five times as often as R1 itself, underscoring the value users saw in R1’s adaptability. Given this extraordinary interest, it has become clear that the low-cost, open-model approach favored by DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and other Chinese companies could offer China an overwhelming advantage in meeting researcher demand for cutting-edge models, particularly in developing countries that are eager to access AI’s benefits.
The question of which country’s AI models achieve global preeminence has policy implications that extend beyond market competition or military applications. Open models such as R1 and Kimi K2 offer users around the world a chance to develop AI systems that can be customized for local needs, including in areas such as health care, education, and the workforce, at a lower cost than their American counterparts. In this sense, the greatest advantage open models could offer China may be in the realm of soft power.
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