Chinese authorities are in talks to potentially curb overseas access to the country’s leading AI models, many of which are open source, Reuters reported. Beijing has made a slew of moves in recent months to gatekeep its cutting edge and cost-efficient models, talent and startups— including ordering Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus and blocking foreign investment in Chinese-linked entities. Paradoxically, such strict rules are contributing to some Chinese founders relocating to the U.S., Forbes reported earlier this year.

But American AI firms are increasingly adopting open source Chinese models, which can be 60 to 90 percent cheaper than leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic, CNBC reported. Plus, they allow developers to have more control over how the models work. OpenRouter, a startup that lets U.S. companies use different AI models to answer queries, said the amount of work routed to Chinese models has been steadily rising, sitting at about 30 percent, per the report. Some early-stage startups have switched all of their traffic to models developed by Chinese companies like DeepSeek. That could spell trouble for those businesses if China cuts off access.

Joseph Spisak, VP of product and head of open source at Reflection, an AI startup that’s developing open-source foundational models, says some firms risk getting “locked into” the Chinese AI ecosystem, especially if they grow accustomed to using a Chinese AI model or have already built applications on top of it. “Once you’re …hooked on the technology I think there's a certain amount of inertia that gets created. And it's harder and harder to move away,” he says.

China’s potential export controls on its models could provide strong tailwinds for........

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