White House official accuses Chinese startup of distilling Anthropic model, accessing banned Nvidia chips

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Trillions of U.S. dollars might rest on the answer, as some see Chinese developers' success in increasing performance through architectural innovation as weakening the rationale for America's vast spending on AI infrastructure.

While this process can infringe on intellectual property rights, it’s also widely used as a legitimate optimization method.

Bessent's remarks came as Chinese open-weight models are gaining steam against leading offerings from American companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, sparking concerns from tech executives and government officials about the durability of the US lead in the AI race, the CNBC reported.