The US Needs an Open Source AI Intervention to Beat China

Since 2022, America has had a solid lead in artificial intelligence thanks to advanced models from high-flying companies like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and xAI. A growing number of experts, however, worry that the US is starting to fall behind when it comes to minting open-weight AI models that can be downloaded, adapted, and run locally.

Open models from Chinese companies like Kimi, Z.ai, Alibaba, and DeepSeek are now rapidly gaining popularity among researchers and engineers worldwide, leaving the US as a laggard in an increasingly vital area of AI innovation. “The US needs open models to cement its lead at every level of the AI stack,” Nathan Lambert, founder of the ATOM (American Truly Open Models) Project, tells WIRED.

The most advanced models from US companies can only be accessed through a chatbot interface or by sending queries to companies’ servers through an application programming interface, or API ...