Chinese open-source models (like DeepSeek and Qwen) have surpassed US models in global downloads (17% vs 15.8% market share).

Risks: imported censorship/ideology in weights; regulatory surprises if US decides some of those models are "foreign critical tech."

Payoff: price/perf / context length that's very attractive to early-stage founders.

Also, DeepSeek v3.2 got released.

Top 12 nations map ranked by all time huggingface downloads 🤗

Developer and National Market Share

Model Size Distribution

Model Modality Distribution

The intersection of AI and geopolitics has escalated to Manhattan Project levels.

The White House launched the Genesis Mission, a massive initiative using Department of Energy (DOE) supercomputers to build a national AI platform. The goal is to automate scientific research in biotech, nuclear, and quantum fields. This is a clear signal that the White House is favoring AI companies.

Recently the Trump administration also approved the sale of H200 to China, which in less than 24 hours, confirmed their ban for any NVIDIA chips, claiming Huawei is building something better.

ref: https://genesis.energy.gov/