With the U.S. government blocking foreign access to Anthropic's latest artificial intelligence (AI) models, "Mythos 5" and "Fable 5," concerns are rising that the move will bolster the spread of Chinese open-source AI models. The action has increased the likelihood that major countries, having realized that "the United States can cut off access to cutting-edge AI models at any time" and accelerating independent AI development, will adopt open-source AI models that carry no "policy risk."
According to the tech industry on the 18th, Silicon Valley figures in the United States have voiced concern on social media such as X since the White House issued export-ban guidance on Anthropic's latest AI models on the 13th (local time), saying the regulation could serve as a major variable that changes the course of the U.S.-China AI power competition.
Aaron Levie, chief executive officer (CEO) of cloud corporation Box, said on X, "The biggest beneficiaries of this situation are open-weight AI models," adding, "As major countries build independent AI development paths, the likelihood of choosing open-weight models has grown, and many of these models are being released outside the United States." The explanation is that the market for open-source models, including open weight, is currently dominated by Chinese AI corporations such as DeepSeek, MiniMax and ZhipuAI, which could, over the long term, nurture China's AI industry and weaken the U.S. competitive edge in AI.
In fact, shares of China's ZhipuAI, which operates open-source AI models, at one point surged 48% intraday on the 16th on expectations that it would benefit from the export controls on Anthropic's latest AI models, and they still closed up more than 12% on the 17th.
An open-source model is an open AI model that discloses key information such as the model's weights, source code (blueprints), and training data so anyone can use it. Corporations can download it directly, customize it, and run it on their own infrastructure for their purposes. An open-weight model discloses only the model's weights, but like open-source models, corporations can download it and further train it with their own data for use.
By contrast, U.S. AI models widely known to the public, such as Anthropic's "Claude," OpenAI's "GPT 5.5," and Google's "Gemini," are closed models that do not disclose core information, including their design approach, to the outside. Because users do not own the models directly and instead "access and use" them as a service, if the corporation operating the AI model suspends service or the U.S. government restricts exports, access by corporations and individuals can be cut off.
With leading open-source and open-weight models now coming out of China, there is a view that this move could have the unintended effect of bolstering China's AI camp. In fact, earlier this month on the global AI model platform OpenRouter, DeepSeek's open-weight model "V4 Flash" was counted as the most used AI model. According to data released in March by the global open-source AI platform Hugging Face, the share of downloads for Chinese open-source AI models over the year from Feb. last year to Feb. this year was 41%, surpassing U.S. models (36.5%) for the first time.
Alibaba's open-source AI model Qwen surpassed a cumulative 700 million downloads on Hugging Face as of the start of the year, establishing itself as the most used open-source model in the developer ecosystem.
On the 15th, ZhipuAI released its latest model, "GLM-5.2," as open source, saying, "Cutting-edge AI should not be the exclusive preserve of a few corporations, nor should it be in a form where access can be blocked at any time under certain rules," and, "It should be open so that anyone can use and build it." The remarks are seen as targeting U.S. controls on AI exports.
Industry watchers say ZhipuAI seized the situation as an opportunity to expand its market and made open source the latest AI model it had planned to apply to its top-tier pricing plan. ZhipuAI is one of China's "six AI tigers," corporations receiving full support from the Chinese government.