China is on par with top American AI companies

China’s AI advancements are shaking up the global race, Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, told CNBC.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Wang, whose company provides training data to AI players like OpenAI, Google and Meta, called the US-China competition an “AI war,” noting that models by DeepSeek, China’s leading AI lab, are now on par with top American systems, signaling a shift in the global balance of power.

Deepseek released a groundbreaking model on Christmas Day, followed by DeepSeek-R1, which focuses on reasoning and competes with OpenAI’s latest model, o1.

The progress comes despite US export restrictions meant to limit China’s access to critical AI hardware, like Nvidia’s H100 GPUs.

DeepSeek-R1 is open-source and can be used by anyone for free. ChatGPT Pro plan costs $200 per month.