Chinese AI models surge in global popularity — and Washington is worried

Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek and Alibaba have rapidly increased their global market share, with their models now accounting for 55-67% of usage on major developer platforms compared to just 6-13% earlier in the year, driven by strong performance in coding tasks and significantly lower costs than U.S. models. The U.S. government is concerned about this trend, with House Committees investigating how Chinese models could pull countries into Chinese technological influence, and Washington is worried that companies might access advanced chips (like Nvidia processors) remotely through overseas data centers or use distillation (a technique where new AI models learn from and copy older, established models). While U.S. companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have responded by releasing cheaper models of their own, analysts suggest that price and capability will remain the deciding factors for which models businesses choose to use.