US tech giant Meta’s purchase of Beijing-founded startup Manus caps a remarkable year for Chinese AI.
The ascendance of Chinese company DeepSeek in February “upended multiple AI narratives,” such as AI companies having to spend hundreds of millions to create a high-performing model, and that the US’ lead in the AI race was widening, a China tech Substacker wrote.
2026 will see Beijing further push for widespread AI adoption — the city of Shenzhen wants AI in “every household” within five years — while companies at home and abroad will increasingly use Alibaba’s open-source model Qwen, a WIRED reporter predicted: The success of the Chinese systems suggests the new metric for AI is “how widely it is used to build other stuff.”