Honestly, even Huggingface downloads are underestimating the dominance of Chinese open-weight models. Modelscope is generally the platform of choice in China, so Huggingface downloads reflect popularity in the west.
This is also a big problem for proprietary model makers. Companies like OpenAI or Anthropic are losing money right now and are banking on being able to dominate the market and jack up prices, but that’s not going to happen with all these free, downloadable models from China that can go toe-to-toe with the big proprietary models.
Exactly, Chinese models have completely destroyed the whole business model US companies were hoping to build. As I recall, OpenAI has already been lobbying to get DeepSeek banned in the US. I think some European countries banned it already. So, I guess the west will eventually turn into a hermit kingdom.
