China’s open-weight artificial intelligence models are taking off globally, but much of the money they generate is flowing to third-party providers rather than the companies that create them, according to a new study.
Developers including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI make their model weights – essentially the “brains” of their AI systems – freely available for download. This strategy, which has accelerated global adoption over the past two years, allows other companies to run the models on their own servers and modify them independently.
While the approach has boosted adoption, it has also exposed developers to intense competition as rival platforms host the open models on their own infrastructure and offer access at lower prices. By contrast, companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic in the United States keep their models closed and maintain tight control over access and pricing.
