In the fight for dominance in the booming AI sector, China is setting an example with numerous new models and is increasingly challenging AI giants Google and NVIDIA.
• Race for AI supremacy between China and the USA
• Chinese New Year celebrations as a catalyst
• ByteDance, Alibaba & Co. vs. NVIDIA, Google and Meta
The race for supremacy in the AI race is in full swing. In addition to the top dogs from the USA, Google, Meta, NVIDIA & Co., the People’s Republic of China has long since started pursuing them. This became clear as early as January 2025, when chip giant NVIDIA suffered a major setback with the emergence of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek and the associated AI model DeepSeek-R1. DeepSeek claimed that its model could offer a performance that was similar to that of OpenAI, with significantly lower training costs for its technology. At that time, numerous US majors had already announced their intention to invest billions in the AI sector – a fact whose necessity was now in question.
Chinese New Year celebrations as a catalyst
Even though NVIDIA & Co. were able to cope with the DeepSeek shock, China has not rested since then when it comes to AI models. In fact, TipRanks reports, Chinese AI firms have used the time to launch a new wave of AI models, taking advantage of the recent Chinese New Year holiday by further encouraging app usage with cash gifts and rewards.
Video AI in focus
While there are now numerous AI models that work with text robots and image generators, the medium of video is now increasingly moving into AI focus. Just last week, the Chinese TikTok parent ByteDance launched Seedance 2.0, a video AI that, according to the company, can simultaneously generate a video from text, images, audio and video that is in sync with the sound.
Shortly afterwards, ByteDance also launched Doubao 2.0, an extension of the AI chatbot that was launched in 2023 and which is designed for the so-called “agent era” and acts more independently instead of just reacting to input.
ByteDance was also caught off guard by the surprise success of DeepSeeks. As Reuters estimates, it is probably no coincidence that the launch of Doubao 2.0 took place before the highly anticipated launch of the new DeepSeek model.
The Pro version of the model includes complex reasoning and multi-stage task execution capabilities equivalent to those of OpenAI GPT 5.2 and Google Gemini 3 Pro, while reducing usage costs by about an order of magnitude, according to the company, the news agency writes. With 155 million weekly active users, Doubao leads all AI chatbot apps in China, followed by DeepSeek with 81.6 million, according to the latest data from information provider QuestMobile released in late December.
The Chinese AI company Kuaishou Technology is also using the Chinese New Year celebrations to launch new products. The company has launched Kling AI 3.0, a generator that can create video and audio together. The special features include that the camera angle adjusts independently and the clips can be up to 15 seconds long. As the accompanying company announcement shows, “anyone could become a director”.
Alibaba is expanding text robots
Amazon’s Chinese rival Alibaba is not sitting out of the AI trend either, but is still expanding its text robot. According to Bloomberg, the company has launched RynnBrain Robotics AI at its DAMO Academy, an open source robot AI model that is intended for tasks in the real world. The model can help machines move through confusing spaces and resume work after interruptions. This is made possible through the use of memory and spatial skills. As Alibaba itself says, the model would have outperformed Google’s Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5 and NVIDIA’s Cosmos-Reason2 in benchmark ratings, writes BingX.
Additionally, Alibaba announced on February 6 that it would launch a large-scale coupon promotion aimed at attracting more users to its Qwen AI app, allowing them to use the incentives to purchase food and drinks directly from the chatbot. As a result, Qwen’s daily active users jumped from 7 million to 58 million, according to QuestMobile, just 23 million less than Doubao’s numbers on the same day, Reuters reports.
Race for Large Language Models
The race for Large Language Models (LLMs) also continues. Last week, Zhipu AI launched a flagship model GLM 5, which, according to the company, achieves top results in the areas of programming and agent work. As The Decoder writes, from China’s point of view it is also an advantage that the model not only runs on NVIDIA GPUs, but also on chips from the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, which benefits the issue of US export restrictions.
In addition, the AI company MiniMax from Shanghai released the open model M2.5 on February 12th, which is said to be able to rival Anthropic’s Claude Opus in terms of speed – at a fraction of the cost, according to the company. The model was trained using “intensive reinforcement learning in hundreds of thousands of complex real environments”.
In view of these developments, it remains to be seen how NVIDIA & Co. will be able to deal with the increasing pressure from China.
Editorial team finanzen.net
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