Altman warns US may be underestimating China’s AI surge

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman warned that the US may be underestimating China’s rapid progress in artificial intelligence, cautioning that export controls alone won’t slow Beijing down.

“I’m worried about China,” Altman said, noting that the AI race isn’t a simple scoreboard. China, he added, has advantages in building inference capacity and is pushing ahead across multiple layers — from research to product deployment.

He was skeptical that Washington’s chip bans are effective: “You can export-control one thing, but maybe not the right thing… maybe people build fabs or find workarounds.”

China’s rise has also shaped OpenAI’s own strategy. Altman admitted that competition from Chinese open-source models like DeepSeek influenced the company’s recent decision to release its first open-weight models since 2019. “If we didn’t do it, the world was gonna head to be mostly built on Chinese open source models,” he said.

The move marks a sharp shift for OpenAI, which long kept its models behind APIs. By opening up, Altman hopes to keep developers inside OpenAI’s ecosystem — and fend off rivals in China.

Staff reporter