LONDON, November 26. /TASS/. China has surpassed the United States in the global market for open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models, the Financial Times (FT) wrote, citing a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Hugging Face startup.

The total share of downloads of new Chinese open AI models grew to 17% over the past year, while the share of American ones reached 15.8%, according to the publication. Chinese companies have overtaken American developers such as Google, Meta, and OpenAI for the first time, the newspaper wrote.

Open-source models, which creators can freely download, modify, and integrate, allow startups to create products more easily and researchers to improve them. Their widespread introduction will greatly influence the future of AI. China's push for open models contrasts sharply with the approach of most large US tech companies, the FT said. OpenAI and Google prefer to retain full control over their cutting-edge technologies, profiting from them through customer subscriptions or enterprise agreements. In China, open source has become a more common trend.

DeepSeek surprised Silicon Valley by unveiling its AI model, which, despite being cheaper, matched its American competitors, the newspaper wrote. As a result, the US President Donald Trump administration is trying to persuade American organizations to invest in open-source models, the paper added.