Kai-Fu Lee Says China Will Win Global AI Reach as Open Models Trail U.S. Labs by Six Months

Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and founder of 01.ai, said Chinese open models are close enough to leading U.S. systems to win global usage even as OpenAI and Anthropic keep the high-margin business. In a long interview published on September 4, 2026, the longtime investor argued that Beijing’s edge is distribution through downloadable models, not a claim that Chinese labs already sit first on quality leaderboards.