China May Be the Defining AI Keyword of 2026

Honestly, this is a forecast I’d rather not acknowledge. But the data from Week 2 of 2026 points in an unmistakable direction.

DeepSeek V4: The World’s Strongest Code AI Model, Coming Before Lunar New Year

Internal benchmarks suggest DeepSeek V4 surpasses both Claude and GPT in code generation.

• Technical breakthrough in processing long code prompts
• Practical advantage when working on complex software projects
• Enhanced reasoning that improves logical consistency in outputs
• Better data pattern comprehension across the entire training pipeline without performance degradation

Chinese models have already been standing out in coding and agentic domains. GLM-4.7, M 2.1, and K2 Thinking have all demonstrated formidable performance in succession. DeepSeek’s own research over the past year - including Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) - has been building expectations for V4.

Meanwhile, user frustration with US AI models has been accumulating: Anthropic and Google’s service and credit restrictions, OpenAI’s sluggish generation speeds, and generally steep token pricing across the board.

With open-source coding agent projects like OpenCode gaining traction, if V4 meets expectations, the market landscape could shift faster than anyone anticipates.

Chinese Models Have Already Infiltrated

Open-source ecosystems have rendered national borders meaningless.

• Services like Cursor, Devin, and Manus that run on custom models are already leveraging Chinese open-source models
• Performance-first selection is happening regardless of a company’s nationality
• Much like TikTok, practical choices diverge from ideological resistance

Historic IPOs Give Chinese AI Companies Capital Firepower

This week, Zhipu and MiniMax became the first AI foundation model companies in the world to successfully go public. Riding historic surges, they secured massive funding - catapulting Chinese AI companies’ capital power to a new level.

• China’s IPO market is delivering its best quantitative and qualitative performance in recent memory
• AI semiconductor companies are also riding the bull wave
• The acquired capital is expected to accelerate R&D and global expansion

China’s Proven Track Record in Global Expansion

Since 2024, Chinese AI companies have been emerging from fierce domestic competition to make serious inroads into global markets. And they are doing it remarkably well.

• Global marketing and developer ecosystem building rivaling US Big Tech
• Rapid market penetration through open-source strategies
• Dual positioning that combines price competitiveness with strong performance

Implications: Regional Opportunities Will Return

When the US dominated the cloud market, regional opportunities still existed. While AWS, Azure, and GCP provided global infrastructure, region-specific cloud services, system integration, and consulting businesses thrived.

The AI era will follow the same pattern.

Even if China encroaches on the foundation model market, business opportunities built on top of those models will undeniably exist. Separate from any national sentiment, corporate strategy and investment decisions demand a flexible perspective.

The time to prepare is now approaching - for real.