A cheap Chinese AI model is closing in on Anthropic and OpenAI

The story here is not that a Chinese model is good, it is that it is good and cheap while running entirely on domestic chips, which was supposed to be years away. It arrives just as Washington is restricting American labs from releasing their best models abroad, handing openly available Chinese alternatives a distribution advantage nobody planned for. The real competition in the next year may not be frontier versus frontier, but frontier versus good enough and free to use anywhere.