On October 12, 2026, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan stated at an industry forum in Singapore that cutting-edge Chinese AI models such as DeepSeek, Kimi and GLM feature low costs, deliver “good enough” performance and are being adopted “extremely rapidly” by the market.
He also emphasized that open technologies help boost efficiency. Over the past few years, major US tech firms have held a dominant position in AI thanks to their advantages in capital, chips and cloud computing.
Closed-source services from companies including OpenAI and Google boast powerful capabilities, yet businesses using them often face recurring fees alongside restrictions on platforms, data governance and customization.
While enhancing model performance, some Chinese AI firms strive to cut usage costs and offer open-weight models, allowing developers to deploy and fine-tune them within licensing terms.
This is more than merely a dispute over technical approaches; it concerns who gets access to advanced technology and how much autonomy users hold.
For many enterprises, AI is not for chasing benchmark rankings but for solving practical tasks such as coding, customer service, document processing and data analysis. Businesses have good reason to choose a model if it can get the job done at substantially lower costs.
Large tech corporations can afford hefty AI spending, but small and medium-sized enterprises, schools and startup teams often lack such budgets. Lower barriers to access for advanced models enable more people to turn AI from a concept into a production tool.
Open weights also bring alternative options. Companies may deploy models and optimize applications according to their own conditions instead of fully relying on one vendor’s online services.
This helps control costs and grants users greater flexibility in managing data and systems. Of course, open weights do not equal fully open-source software, nor does deployment come without requirements for technical staff, computing resources and security governance.
Chinese models still need continuous improvements in reliability, safety and complex task handling. Still, these practical limitations do not negate the value brought by low-cost and open approaches.
This shift carries special significance from the perspective of the Global South. Many developing countries lack the capital and computing power available to big tech corporations.
If advanced AI can only be accessed via premium services, local businesses will struggle with large-scale trials, let alone cultivate their own technical teams. Lower-cost, flexibly deployable models open up more possibilities for local language applications, agricultural services, educational tools and the digital transformation of small businesses.
They will not automatically bridge the digital divide, yet they lower the threshold to participate in AI development, giving more nations a chance to evolve from technology consumers into application builders.
This also reveals another dimension of US-China AI competition. US companies retain critical strengths in frontier research, chips and cloud platforms, and China should not be viewed as leading across all fields.
Nevertheless, Chinese AI enterprises are proving that technological competition does not have to be won simply by pouring more resources into building the most expensive models. Cutting costs, lifting efficiency and expanding accessibility can also create competitive edges.
For developing countries, having technology they can deploy and adjust independently offers an alternative to long-term reliance on a handful of foreign platforms.
The future of AI should not be decided solely by a small number of wealthy nations and tech giants. The advancement of Chinese models brings more choices to the market and creates competitive pressure on high-priced, closed business models.
Truly valuable AI is not just the top-performing model in labs, but technology that solves real-world problems and remains affordable for broader groups.
When advanced AI stops being an expensive resource exclusive to a few corporations, more countries and ordinary businesses worldwide will get to take part in the next wave of digital economic growth.