Chinese open-weight AI models outpace U.S. rivals in cost-sensitive Global South markets

Chinese open-weight AI models are gaining ground in the Global South as Beijing promotes tools others can build on. Alibaba’s Qwen has 151,448 Hugging Face derivatives, a repository footprint 4.7 times Meta’s Llama and nearly double Google’s Gemma, with 39.6 million monthly GGUF downloads versus Llama’s 7.5 million. Leading U.S. firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic still rely on walled-garden API and subscription access.