TikTok owner ByteDance and DeepSeek on Thursday announced upgraded AI models.
China is continuing to bring to market new artificial intelligence (AI) models at a breakneck pace, challenging the dominance of Western AI companies like OpenAI and Google.
On Thursday, TikTok owner ByteDance and DeepSeek announced new AI models. ByteDance released three variants of its Seed-OSS-36B open-source AI model, which is known for its long-context window processing and various developer-friendly features.
Chinese AI firms are closing the gap with their U.S. rivals by leaning on an open-source strategy. Most Chinese AI models are open source, enabling developers to use, modify, and distribute the code. The approach is aimed at driving broader adoption across the ecosystem.
Citing recent benchmark tests, ByteDance said the new model either matched or surpassed the capabilities of similar-sized models from Alibaba, Google, and OpenAI, as well as the firm’s own Seed 1.6 model. ByteDance forayed into AI models with its Doubao LLM in May last year.
DeepSeek, which rose to prominence earlier this year with AI models developed at a fraction of the cost compared to Western models, upgraded its flagship V3 model on Thursday.
The version offers faster processing and includes a feature that optimizes V3 for Chinese-made chips. The modification is particularly crucial as China pushed for local development of advanced chips, including those suited for AI workloads.
The developments come amid rapid growth in the Chinese AI industry, led by tech heavyweights Alibaba and Baidu, which have released several iterations of their Qwen and Ernie AI, respectively.
Chinese tech stocks have rallied this year on the back of AI advances, though gains have been tempered by U.S. tariff announcements and a recent surge in investment in the China’s food delivery space.
Still, the iShares MSCI China ETF (MCHI), which tracks Chinese stocks listed in the U.S., and the tech-focused KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB), have risen about 28% year-to-date.
In recent news, Nvidia has reportedly told its suppliers to halt orders for its H20 chips, designed for the Chinese market in compliance with U.S. export controls.
That compares to the 8.3% gain in the benchmark S&P 500 (SPX) index.
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