The contest between China and the United States for supremacy in artificial intelligence escalated on Friday when the Chinese start-up Moonshot AI released a new A.I. model that appeared to narrow the lead held by well-funded American competitors.

上周五，中美在人工智能主导权方面的竞争进一步升级，中国初创公司月之暗面发布了一款新的人工智能模型，似乎缩小了资金雄厚的美国竞争对手所保持的领先优势。

Moonshot said that the model, Kimi K3, was the world’s largest open-source A.I. system, allowing anyone to use, modify and build on it freely. The company said that Kimi K3 performed as well as leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic at some key tasks.

月之暗面表示，这款名为Kimi K3的模型是全球最大的开源人工智能系统，允许任何人免费使用、修改并在其基础上进行开发。该公司表示，Kimi K3在一些关键任务上的表现与OpenAI和Anthropic的领先模型不相上下。

The release coincided with an address by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, in which he outlined an ambitious vision for global A.I. development that cast China as the champion of an open approach to the technology.

该模型的发布恰逢中国领导人习近平发表讲话，勾勒了全球人工智能发展的宏伟愿景，将中国描绘成推动该技术开放发展的倡导者。

“A.I. development should not be a solo performance by a single country but a symphony of international cooperation,” Mr. Xi said. China was “ready to work with all parties to seize the opportunities of A.I. development,” he said.

“人工智能发展不应该是某个国家的独奏，而应当是全球合作的交响，”习近平表示。他说，中国愿意“同各方一道把握和应对人工智能发展的机遇和挑战”。

The market reaction was immediate. Stocks fell on Friday, with the Nasdaq dropping about 1 percent as investors sold shares of U.S. companies that make the computer chips needed to power A.I., including Nvidia and Intel.

市场反应立竿见影。上周五，股市下跌，纳斯达克指数下跌约1%，因为投资者抛售了制造驱动人工智能所需计算机芯片的美国公司股票，包括英伟达和英特尔。

The developments underscored the geopolitical stakes of the U.S.-China contest for leadership in what many see as the defining technological race of our time. President Trump has repeatedly framed maintaining America’s lead in artificial intelligence as a strategic imperative for preserving the country’s economic and national security.

这些事态发展凸显出中美在争夺领导权方面的地缘政治利害关系，许多人认为这场竞争是当今时代具有决定性意义的技术竞赛。特朗普总统多次将保持美国在人工智能领域的领先地位定义为维护美国经济和国家安全的战略要务。

The emergence of A.I. as a foundational technology with far-reaching economic and military implications has pushed the United States to slow China’s progress by restricting its access to the advanced chips needed to train cutting-edge A.I. systems.

人工智能成为一项具有深远经济和军事影响的基础性技术，促使美国限制中国获取训练尖端人工智能系统所需的高端芯片，从而延缓中国的进步。

The release of a free, open-source Chinese A.I. model that could rival the performance of costly, computing-intensive systems from Silicon Valley’s best-funded companies has reignited concerns over whether the industry’s enormous spending spree on data centers is justified.

中国推出了一款免费的开源人工智能模型，其性能足以媲美硅谷资金最雄厚公司开发的高成本计算密集型系统，这再次令人们担忧该行业在数据中心上的巨额支出狂潮是否合理。

3月，月之暗面联合创始人杨植麟在北京。

Over the past 18 months, Chinese technology companies have released a steady stream of open-source A.I. models that approach the performance of their American rivals, while claiming to require fewer computing resources. That combination of strong performance and lower costs has made Chinese A.I. systems the preferred choice for many developers worldwide.

过去18个月里，中国科技公司源源不断地发布了性能接近美国竞争对手的开源人工智能模型，同时声称它们所需的计算资源更少。强大的性能和较低的成本相结合，使得中国的人工智能系统成为全球许多开发者的首选。

Moonshot’s latest release adds to that momentum and raises the prospect that a Chinese company could soon match — or even surpass — the cutting-edge models built by leading American A.I. firms, which have raised hundreds of billions of dollars to build models that are closed and expensive to operate.

月之暗面的最新发布延续了这一势头，并让人们看到一种可能性：一家中国公司可能很快就会赶上甚至超越美国领先人工智能公司构建的尖端模型，这些美国公司已经筹集了数千亿美元，用于构建封闭且运行成本高昂的模型。

According to benchmarks run by Vals AI, an independent company that evaluates the performance of A.I. models, Kimi K3 performs just below Anthropic’s Fable 5 model while outperforming OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5.6 Sol model, said Rayan Krishnan, Vals AI’s chief executive.

评估人工智能模型性能的独立公司 Vals AI 首席执行官雷扬·克里希南表示，根据该公司运行的基准测试，Kimi K3的表现略逊于Anthropic的Fable 5模型，但优于OpenAI的旗舰模型GPT-5.6 Sol。

The latest A.I. models from Anthropic have become so powerful that their capabilities — including identifying vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure such as banking networks and power grids — have alarmed governments around the world.

Anthropic最新的人工智能模型已经变得如此强大，以至于它们的能力——包括识别银行网络和电网等关键基础设施中的漏洞——已经引起了世界各国政府的警觉。

Graham Webster, a Stanford University professor who studies China’s open-source A.I. ecosystem, said it did not matter much whether a model was at the absolute cutting edge, because the performance gap between leading American and Chinese models had narrowed.

研究中国开源人工智能生态系统的斯坦福大学教授格雷厄姆·韦伯斯特表示，一个模型是否处于绝对领先地位并不重要，因为中美领先模型之间的性能差距已经缩小。

“Everyone has a different number about how many months China is behind the U.S., and the estimates cluster around six months,” he said. “That is not much of a lead.”

他说：“对于中国落后美国多少个月，每个人都有不同的数字，估计普遍集中在六个月左右。这算不上多大的领先优势。”

Moonshot said it would release the full details of Kimi K3 at the end of the month.

月之暗面表示，将在本月底发布Kimi K3的全部细节。

Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who attended Friday’s A.I. conference in Shanghai where Mr. Xi spoke, said that many experts believe it’s only a matter of time before a Chinese company releases a freely available model that matches Anthropic’s most advanced systems. Such a breakthrough, Ms. Sacks said, would raise difficult questions for regulators trying to contain powerful A.I. technology once it has been released.

约翰霍普金斯大学高级国际研究学院高级研究员萨姆·萨克斯出席了上周五习近平发表讲话的上海人工智能大会。她表示，许多专家认为，中国公司发布一款能够媲美Anthropic最先进系统的免费模型只是时间问题。萨克斯说，一旦这种突破性技术问世，将给试图遏制强大人工智能技术的监管机构带来棘手难题。

Last month, another Chinese start-up, Z.ai, released a model called GLM-5.2 that was nearly as powerful as Anthropic’s Fable 5 model, the leading American system. And unlike Fable, this Chinese model was widely available.

上个月，另一家中国初创公司智谱AI发布了一款名为GLM-5.2的模型，其性能几乎与美国领先系统、Anthropic的Fable 5模型同样强大。而且，与Fable不同的是，这款中国模型被广泛提供给大众使用。

Many software developers and start-ups in Silicon Valley quickly adopted the model, largely because it was much cheaper than the leading American systems. It arrived just as U.S. businesses realized they had to find ways to cut down their A.I. spending.

硅谷的许多软件开发者和初创公司迅速采用了该模型，很大程度上是因为其价格远低于美国领先的系统。该模型问世之际，恰逢美国企业意识到，必须设法削减人工智能支出。

Kimi K3 is even more powerful than GLM-5.2, according to benchmarks run by Vals AI. The model arrives as the Trump administration is considering regulating the technology. Many Silicon Valley executives have begun to support such regulation, saying that leading technologies can enable malicious cyberattacks and potentially help build biological weapons.

根据Vals AI运行的基准测试，Kimi K3甚至比GLM-5.2更强大。该模型的发布正值特朗普政府考虑对该技术进行监管之际。许多硅谷高管已开始支持此类监管，称尖端技术可能会助长恶意网络攻击，甚至可能被用于制造生物武器。

Moonshot’s A.I. has been widely adopted in China since the Beijing-based start-up was founded in 2023.

月之暗面是一家总部位于北京的初创公司，于2023年成立，其人工智能已在中国被广泛使用。

Nearly all of China’s leading A.I. systems are open-source, helping them gain users around the world. But unlike the closed systems favored in Silicon Valley, the Chinese models have proved harder to profit from. The challenge of leveraging global adoption to create a profitable business is now fracturing some of China’s top A.I. research labs, including the internet giant Alibaba.

中国几乎所有领先的人工智能系统都是开源的，这有助于它们在全球范围内吸引用户。但与硅谷青睐的封闭系统不同，事实证明，中国人工智能模型更难实现盈利。面对如何利用其全球普及来打造盈利业务的挑战，包括互联网巨头阿里巴巴在内的一些中国顶级人工智能研究实验室已经产生分歧。

Chinese A.I. researchers routinely cite shortages of computing power — caused by U.S. export controls — as the industry’s biggest constraint, and companies have spent heavily to secure scarce chips. Some companies, including MiniMax and Z.ai, have gone public to raise money from investors. Alibaba is increasingly steering customers toward models that require users to pay.

中国的人工智能研究人员经常将美国出口管制导致的算力短缺，视为该行业最大的制约因素，各公司已投入巨资以获取稀缺的芯片。包括稀宇科技和智谱AI在内的一些公司已通过上市向投资者筹集资金。阿里巴巴则日益引导客户使用需要付费的模型。

But the scale of fund-raising by Chinese A.I. firms pales in comparison to their U.S. rivals. In May, Moonshot raised $2 billion in a funding round backed by China Mobile, the state telecom company, and the investment arm of food delivery giant Meituan. By comparison, Anthropic raised $65 billion the same month.

但中国人工智能公司的融资规模与美国竞争对手相比相形见绌。今年5月，月之暗面在由国有电信公司中国移动和外卖巨头美团的投资部门支持的一轮融资中筹集了20亿美元。相比之下，Anthropic在同月筹集了650亿美元。

Moonshot has instead focused on making the most of its limited computing resources. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, the company’s president, Yutong Zhang, said efficiency had been a necessity from the outset.

因此，月之暗面转而专注于充分利用其有限的计算资源。今年在达沃斯世界经济论坛上发言时，该公司总裁张予彤表示，从一开始，效率就是一种必要条件。

“We knew we didn’t have the luxury to just scale up compute,” she said.

她说：“我们知道，我们没有随意堆砌算力的奢侈条件。”

Anthropic and OpenAI have accused Chinese companies of improperly harvesting data from their A.I. systems to accelerate the development of competing models. But experts say the recent advances by Moonshot and Z.ai cannot be explained by distillation alone. Years of operating under export controls have forced Chinese companies to innovate within tight computing constraints.

Anthropic和OpenAI曾指责中国公司不当收集其人工智能系统的数据，以加速竞争模型的开发。但专家表示，月之暗面和智谱AI最近的进展不能仅用模型蒸馏来解释。多年来在出口管制下运营，迫使中国公司在严格的算力限制下进行创新。

“The Chinese models are not excellent only because of distillation, ” said Mr. Webster of Stanford. “There is real innovation going on.”

“中国模型之所以出色，并非仅仅因为蒸馏技术，”斯坦福大学的韦伯斯特说。“那里正在发生真正的创新。”