Market Analysis Stock Picks Market Insight Crypto Stocks to Buy Hot Stocks China's latest breakthrough suggests AI hardware could become a lot more competitive. Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI). Artificial intelligence is getting cheaper and more efficient, and China is a big reason why. Here at Smart Money, we’ve discussed how China is developing remarkable AI systems at significantly lower costs than American firms. Recently, Chinese startup Z.ai released GLM 5.2, a free open-source model. Capable of performing many real-world business tasks, Artificial Analysis quickly ranked it the fourth-best AI model.

Then, Chinese startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, another model competing with the top U.S. In benchmark tests, Kimi K3 beat Anthropic’s top model and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol at some coding tasks. Most recently, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) unveiled a preview of its newest AI model, Qwen3.8 Max. The Chinese e-commerce giant says Qwen3.8 Max ranks among the world’s most powerful AI models, trailing only Anthropic’s Fable 5.