Interconnects briefs Congress: Chinese open-weight models now lead American open models by a wide AAII margin
2026-09-21
In prepared remarks for a Congressional briefing on U.S.–China open-weight model competition, Nathan Lambert (Interconnects) said that as of September 14, 2026, the top three Chinese open-weight models — Z.ai's GLM-5.3 (Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index score 45), GLM-5.3-Flash (42), and Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 (44) — outscore the leading American open-weight models, Thinking Machines' Inkling and Inkling Small (26 each) and Nvidia's Nemotron 3 Ultra (23). He also cited Hugging Face download data showing China's cumulative open-weight download lead has grown to about 1.6B more downloads (roughly 3.2B China vs. 1.6B U.S. total) since he began tracking in August 2025, with China's Hugging Face download lead dating to July 2025 driven largely by Alibaba's Qwen models.
Significance 3: This is one curator's synthesis of third-party AAII and Hugging Face figures presented to Congress, quantifying an already-known trend rather than a new lab release or verdict-moving development; held at 3 pending any policy or lab response.
Implications · machine-drafted, not owner judgment
Congressional attention to a roughly 20-point AAII gap and a growing download gap favoring Chinese open-weight models raises the odds of U.S. policy responses (export-control changes, subsidized open-model funding, or procurement preferences) later in this Congress. It also sharpens the point that American open models specifically — not the open field overall — have fallen well behind, even as DeepSeek- and Qwen-adjacent releases keep the broader open/closed gap narrow.
- Any bill, hearing, or executive-agency statement citing this open-model gap within the current Congressional session
- A U.S. lab (Nvidia, Thinking Machines, Meta) closing meaningful AAII ground on GLM-5.3/Kimi K3 within a quarter
Sources
- curator The current balance of power in open models retrieved 2026-09-21