The current balance of power in open models

Since April 2025, Chinese AI companies have become the clear leaders in open-weight models, with systems like GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 achieving a significant step change in commercial viability and agentic capabilities. The author, briefing Congress on U.S.-China competition in AI, distinguishes between open-weight models (publicly available weights with licenses) and true open-source models (which also include complete training code and data), noting that American organizations have led in fully open-source development while China dominates open-weight models. This shift represents a notable change in the global balance of power in accessible AI technology.