US AI Leaders Push for Slower Development While China's Z.AI Raises $5 Billion

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have called for the AI industry to slow its pace of model capability advancement, just days before Chinese AI developer Z.AI secured $5 billion in new funding. Amodei published an essay on September 12 outlining a plan to "pace the frontier," arguing that AI models are advancing faster than researchers can understand their capabilities or ensure safety. The proposal calls for embedding third-party evaluators inside AI companies, establishing shared safety benchmarks across the industry, and seeking government support including antitrust waivers to enforce capability constraints. Within hours, Sam Altman announced that OpenAI would match Anthropic's commitments, and both leaders cited recent concerning model behaviors during testing as motivation for the measured approach.