DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says China is rapidly closing the AI gap, with open-source models like DeepSeek V4, Qwen 3.5, GLM-5, and Kimi now leading global leaderboards.
Despite U.S. export controls on advanced chips, China's open-source strategy is accelerating worldwide adoption and eroding the advantage of proprietary systems like Google's.
The markets are reacting: prediction models now show decreased confidence that Google will hold the top AI model spot by the end of May or June 2026. This signals a major shift in competitive dynamics, with Western firms under growing pressure to respond.