China's Open-Source AI Ecosystem Rapidly Takes Shape, Driven by 'DeepSeek Moments'
Open Source AI
China AI
DeepSeek
Qwen
Baidu
Alibaba
Hugging Face
AI Ecosystem
9
Ecosystem Shift
Media Hype
7/10
Real Impact
9/10
What is the Viqus Verdict?
We evaluate each news story based on its real impact versus its media hype to offer a clear and objective perspective.
AI Analysis:
The hype reflects the rapid development and global attention, but the underlying shift in the AI landscape’s power dynamics and technological capabilities represents a fundamentally transformative long-term impact.
Article Summary
China's open-source AI ecosystem is undergoing a profound transformation, rapidly evolving since the ‘DeepSeek Moment’ in January 2025. The core of this shift lies in major players—Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance—strategically embracing open-source models and infrastructure. Alibaba, for instance, positioned open source as an ecosystem, while Tencent integrated DeepSeek, then diversified with its own brand, Tencent Hunyuan, and PaddlePaddle. ByteDance selectively open-sourced components, like UI-TARS-1.5 and Seed-Coder, achieving significant scale with Doubao. Baidu, after years of closed models, also shifted, reinvesting in PaddlePaddle and Kunlunxin. Simultaneously, startups like Moonshot, Z.ai, and MiniMax were quickly adapting and contributing to the community, earning recognition on open-model rankings. This ecosystem isn’t just about more models; it’s a complete chain—models can be extended, deployments scaled, and infrastructure coordinated. Crucially, this evolution is underpinned by years of strategic investment by China in its compute infrastructure – the “East Data, West Compute” strategy established eight major compute hubs and ten data center clusters. With a global compute capacity nearing 160 EFLOPS by 2025, China’s commitment to distributed computing is proving to be the foundation for this vibrant, globally impactful, and rapidly maturing open-source AI landscape.Key Points
- China’s open-source AI ecosystem is experiencing rapid growth and expansion since the ‘DeepSeek Moment’ in 2025.
- Major companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are actively embracing open-source models and infrastructure, driving innovation.
- The shift is characterized by a complete chain: models can be extended, deployed, and integrated, fostering a dynamic and interconnected ecosystem.
- China's sustained investment in compute infrastructure, notably the ‘East Data, West Compute’ strategy, is providing the foundation for this growth.