Kimi K2 Thinking has continued the remarkable trend of Chinese Open-Source AI besting or equalling the Western closed source models investors are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into.
OpenAI floated the idea of a government guarantee for its debt, but then backtracked when the idea was badly received. It’s inked deals to build $1.4 trillion in infrastructure. Where’s the money going to come from? It’s revenue is expected to be $20 billion in 2025; that’s just 1.43% of that debt.
OpenAI says they have the potential to earn hundreds of billions a year, but where are the consumers who want to give them that amount of money? At every turn Chinese Open-Source models can do what they do, for a tiny fraction of the cost.
The classic pattern of “commoditize your complement”, where an industry that depends on some other product acts to ensure that the market for that product is impossible to monopolize.
Or, less charitably, the classic pattern of destroying rivals by giving away what they’re trying to sell.
Either way, it’s a weird timeline where China has become the bastion for openness and intellectual progress in this field, but I guess I’ll take it over OpenAI maintaining an iron stranglehold on the technology.