Recently The New York Times reported the following:
Chinese A.I. Models Close the Gap with Anthropic and
OpenAI (1/2)
Silicon Valley engineers recently flocked to new
technology from a Chinese company, Z.ai, that is almost as good as its American
competitors but much cheaper.
The NYT - By Cade MetzKaren Weise and Meaghan Tobin - Cade Metz reported from San Francisco, Karen Weise from Seattle and Meaghan Tobin from Taipei, Taiwan.
June 25, 2026
Two weeks ago, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic
shut down its two most powerful A.I. systems after an unexpected demand from
the U.S. government to cut access to it.
Days later, a Chinese start-up, Z.ai, released an A.I. model that is nearly as powerful as Anthropic’s models, Fable and Mythos. But Z.ai’s new technology costs much less to use, and no one in the United States was putting restrictions on it. It quickly landed on a closely watched leaderboard of the world’s 10 most popular models.
Z.ai is on the cutting edge of a wave of powerful but inexpensive A.I. from China that is challenging the lock that OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have had on the industry. Six of the models now on the A.I. leaderboard were developed in China.
Z.ai’s new model, GLM-5.2, arrived just as U.S. businesses realized that they had to find ways to cut down on how much they were spending on A.I. It also landed when executives in Silicon Valley were becoming worried that the Trump administration was leaning toward regulating the technology.
“With Fable restricted, the gap between the U.S. and China is very slim,” said Rehaan Ahmad, a co-founder of the Silicon Valley start-up alphaXiv, who has been using Z.ai’s new model for more than a week.
The Chinese models still face two big hurdles to widespread use in the United States: concerns about their ties to the Chinese government and complaints that Chinese companies have unfairly used American technology to build these cheaper models. But their low cost is winning converts.
About 18 months ago, the Chinese start-up DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley when it demonstrated that it could build effective A.I. far more affordably than many of its American counterparts. Z.ai is doing something similar. When performing certain tasks, GLM-5.2 costs about an eighth as much as Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8, which came out shortly before Fable and Mythos, according to OpenRouter, a start-up that runs the A.I. leaderboard.
Like most top-performing Chinese models, GLM-5.2 is open source software, which means anyone can use and modify it for free. That makes it much cheaper to use, even if it is not quite as powerful as what American companies have created.
“Do you need to drive a Ferrari everywhere?” asked Vivek Ramaswami, a start-up investor at Madrona Venture Group. “Probably not.”
GLM-5.2 is particularly good at generating computer code and powering A.I. agents, digital assistants that can use other software to perform tasks. Z.ai’s technology is now the third most widely used in the world for A.I. tasks, said Anastasios Angelopoulos, chief executive of ArenaAI, which tracks millions of A.I. users.
The largest cloud computing providers, including Microsoft and Amazon, already offer access to some systems from Z.ai, DeepSeek, MiniMax and other Chinese start-ups. Microsoft has also considered adding the latest DeepSeek model as an option to power one of its own products, which now runs on technology from Anthropic and OpenAI, two people familiar with the deliberations said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The talks were reported earlier by Axios.
Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI declined to comment.
Some software developers are reluctant to use the A.I. system that Z.ai offers from computers in China, because they worry about sharing data with the company or with the Chinese government. They are also wary of China’s efforts to censor its A.I. systems or running afoul of U.S. export restrictions.
Z.ai was added to the Commerce Department’s trade blacklist in 2025. Corporate filings show that several of the company’s shareholders are controlled by a Chinese government agency that supervises the country’s defense industry.
(to be continued)
Translation
中國人工智能模型縮小與
Anthropic 和
OpenAI 的差距(1/2)
矽谷工程師最近紛紛湧向一家中國公司
Z.ai 的新技術,它幾乎與美國競爭對手不相伯仲,但價格卻便宜得多
兩週前,人工智能公司
Anthropic 在美國政府出人意料地要求限制其存取權限後,關閉了公司其兩個最強的人工智能系統。
幾天后,一家中國新創公司 Z.ai 發佈了一款人工智能模型,其功能幾乎與 Anthropic 的 Fable 和 Mythos 兩款模型相當。但 Z.ai 的新技術使用成本要低得多,而且美國方面也沒有對其施加任何限制。它迅速躋身備受關注的全球十大最受歡迎模型排行榜。
Z.ai 代表中國強大且低成本的人工智能浪潮,這股浪潮正在挑戰 OpenAI、Anthropic 和 Google 對產業的壟斷地位。目前人工智能排行榜上的六個模型均是由中國開發。
Z.ai 的新模型 GLM-5.2 的發佈正值美國企業意識到必須找到削減人工智能支出的方法之際。同時,矽谷的高層也開始擔憂特朗普政府可能傾向對這項技術進行監管。
矽谷新創公司 alphaXiv 的聯合創始人 Rehaan Ahmad 表示,他已經使用 Z.ai 的新模型超過一週了:「隨著 Fable 受到限制,美國和中國之間的差距已經非常小了」。
中國人工智能模型在美國的廣泛應用仍面臨兩大障礙:一是人們對其與中國政府關係的擔憂,二是有人指責中國公司不公平地利用美國技術來製造這些價格更低廉的模型。但其低成本優勢正令越來越多人把擔憂及指責放下。
大約18個月前,中國新創公司DeepSeek震驚了矽谷,該公司展示了能夠以遠低於許多美國同行的成本建立高效的人工智能。 Z.ai也在做類似的事情。根據營運人工智能排行榜的新創公司OpenRouter稱,在執行某些任務時,GLM-5.2的成本約為Anthropic公司Claude Opus 4.8的八分之一,後者發佈時間略早於Fable和Mythos。
與大多數性能卓越的中國模型一樣,GLM-5.2是開源軟件,這意味著任何人都可以免費使用和修改它。這使得它的使用成本更低,即使它的功能不如美國公司開發的產品般強大。
Madrona Venture Group的創業投資人Vivek Ramaswami問道: “你真的需要開著法拉利到處跑嗎?” , “大概不需要吧。”
GLM-5.2尤其擅長產生電腦程式碼,並為人工智能代理(即能夠使用其他軟件執行任務的電子助理)提供支援。 ArenaAI在追蹤著數以百萬計的人工智能用戶,其執行長Anastasios Angelopoulos表示,Z.ai的技術目前是全球第三大最廣泛用於人工智能任務的技術。。
包括微軟和亞馬遜在內的大型雲端運算供應商已經提供對Z.ai、DeepSeek、MiniMax和其他中國新創公司部分系統的存取。兩位知情人士透露,微軟也考慮將最新的DeepSeek模型作為其自身產品的運行選項,該產品目前運行在Anthropic和OpenAI的技術之上。這兩位人士因未獲授權公開討論此事而要求匿名。
Axios先前報道了此次洽談。
微軟、Anthropic 和 OpenAI 均拒絕置評。
一些軟件開發人員不願使用 Z.ai 提供的、運行在中國境內的 AI 系統,因為他們擔心與該公司或中國政府共享數據。他們也擔心中國會審查其 AI 系統的企圖,或觸犯美國的出口限制。
Z.ai 已被列入美國商務部的貿易黑名單,生效日期為 2025 年。公司文件顯示,該公司的幾位股東受控於一家負責監管中國國防工業的中國政府機構。
(待續)