{"id":3660,"date":"2026-07-18T07:39:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T07:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3660"},"modified":"2026-07-18T07:39:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T07:39:29","slug":"businesses-are-experimenting-with-cheaper-chinese-ai-models-as-u-s-rivals-get-more-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3660","title":{"rendered":"Businesses are experimenting with cheaper Chinese AI models as U.S. rivals get more expensive"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Take for example DoorDash, which, according to a post on X on Wednesday by co-founder and CTO Andy Fang, will be launching DoorDash CLI, an experimental tool in limited beta that will allow users to order DoorDash through an AI agent, or even directly from the terminal. Earlier this month, Fang said using a model from Chinese startup Moonshot AI is \u201cbetter quality\u201d and comes at a \u201ccheaper cost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3658\">Cybercriminals are cashing in on the World Cup by selling stolen streaming accounts<\/a><\/p>\n<p>DoorDash is far from the first to turn to Chinese AI companies, or Moonshot for that matter. Cursor, the AI coding startup, used Moonshot\u2019s Kimi to help build its Composer 2 coding agent, while fellow startup Lindy has reportedly dropped Anthropic\u2019s tools altogether in favor of DeepSeek\u2019s V4 models, according to the <em>FT<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>These companies is joining the likes of Airbnb and Siemens\u2014both of which are experimenting with moving their daily operations to Chinese AI companies like Alibaba and DeepSeek\u2014to save on rising AI costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For Yasir Atalan, deputy director and data fellow in the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the shift comes down to three factors: cost, capability and the availability of open-source models.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing right now is that it seems like the recent high-quality, high-performance models by U.S. companies seem expensive compared to Chinese models,\u201d Atalan told <em>Fortune<\/em>. \u201cThe idea of open-source models is much more exciting for some people, specifically countries other than the U.S. for the reason that people don\u2019t want to share their enterprise data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As excitement builds around open-source AI, companies looking for more control over their data are embracing Chinese open-source models. Running these models locally can give companies more control over how sensitive information is handled and reduce the need to send proprietary data to outside providers.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s better for you to host a local model instead of just a closer model because that means everything will stay in that computer and will not go to any company,\u201d said Atalan. \u201cOpen-source models give that sort of relief to those people who want to keep their data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The approach comes with tradeoffs. \u201cYou need to have a very high-level computer in your company, like you paid $30,000 for GPUs, RAM, storage, etc,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3656\">Best certificates of deposit (CDs) for July 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Cheap at the cost of secure<\/h2>\n<p>Others in the industry are more skeptical. While some startups turn to cheaper Chinese AI models to cut costs, experts warn they may be overlooking key security risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Snehal Antani, co-founder and CEO of Horizon3.ai, said in a statement to <em>Fortune <\/em>that startups adopting such models \u201crisk severe data sovereignty violations by exposing proprietary code and user data to foreign surveillance,\u201d while also overlooking \u201ccritical vulnerabilities in model integrity and reasoning.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Still, Atalan cautioned against viewing the trend as a wholesale migration to Chinese AI models. Rather than replacing U.S. models outright, he said companies are experimenting with alternative models for different tasks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA company could try to use one of those open-source models for one task and use Claude for something else. That\u2019s very plausible,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Few companies have publicly disclosed using Chinese AI models, but they are widely available through platforms like code-hosting site GitHub and AI-model hub Hugging Face, where developers can upload, download and run open-source models. A March 16, 2026 study from Hugging Face found that Chinese open-source models accounted for 41% of downloads.<\/p>\n<p>However, lower cost doesn\u2019t eliminate risk. Even as companies experiment with cheaper models, questions remain around security, data control and how these systems perform in higher-stakes use cases.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>For many companies, the decision may come down to cost and capability, not country of origin. As Atalan suggests, if a model is \u201ccheap and capable enough\u201d and can be run locally, businesses are likely to use it regardless of whether it came from the U.S. or China.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3648\">OpenAI\u2019s CFO: 4 questions that reveal if your AI spend is paying off<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DoorDash is among the companies testing Chinese AI models as lower costs and strong performance drive interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Businesses are experimenting with cheaper Chinese AI models as U.S. rivals get more expensive - 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