Overview
- On the Moonshots podcast, the former Google CEO said many governments could standardize on Chinese models because they are free while leading U.S. systems remain closed and paid.
- Schmidt called the divergence a potential geopolitical fault line, stressing that affordability—not superiority—may drive adoption in countries with constrained budgets.
- Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen3 have surged this year, prompting worries over data privacy, national security, and U.S. competitive positioning.
- Calls for “sovereign AI” intensified earlier in 2025 as Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Mistral’s Arthur Mensch urged nations to build independent domestic systems.
- New reporting shows Chinese open-weight models gaining traction in U.S. tech, with Airbnb opting for Qwen, Social Capital using Moonshot’s Kimi K2, and data indicating lower costs and rising usage across developer platforms.