Fellow miner IREN also signed a multi-year GPU cloud services contract with Microsoft worth $9.7 billion on Monday.
HyperUnit, the whale that made $200 million from the US-China tariff crash last month, is now betting on a rebound in Bitcoin and Ether, opening $55 million in long positions.
Andreessen Horowitz is pausing its Talent x Opportunity (TxO) fund and program, according to multiple sources.
Read more Over the last year, certain AI markets appear to be nearly sewn up by startup market leaders. But beyond these areas, a vast swath of AI remains anyone’s game.
Read more Flock said around 3% of its law enforcement customers do not use multi-factor authentication, potentially leaving dozens of law enforcement agency accounts open to compromise and improper access.
Read more OpenAI’s approach to working with copyrighted content is to ask forgiveness, not permission.
Read more Locket’s social app is using iOS Live Activities to reach Gen Alpha via the iPhone Lock Screen.
Read more The State of AI is a collaboration between the Financial Times & MIT Technology Review examining the ways in which AI is reshaping global power. Every Monday for the next six weeks, writers from both publications will debate one aspect of the generative AI revolution reshaping global power.
In this conversation, the FT’s tech columnist and Innovation Editor John Thornhill and MIT Technology Review’s Caiwei Chen consider the battle between Silicon Valley and Beijing for technological supremacy.
John Thornhill writes:
Viewed from abroad, it seems only a matter of time before China emerges as the AI superpower of the 21st century.
Here in the West, our initial instinct is to focus on America’s significant lead in semiconductor expertise, its cutting-edge AI research, and its vast investments in data centers. The legendary investor Warren Buffett once warned: “Never bet against America.” He is right that for more than two centuries, no other “incubator for unleashing human potential” has matched the US.
Today, however, China has the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the equivalent of technological murder. When it comes to mobilizing the whole-of-society resources needed to develop and deploy AI to maximum effect, it may be just as rash to bet against.
The data highlights the trends. In AI publications and patents, China leads. By 2023, China accounted for 22.6% of all citations, compared with 20.9% from Europe and 13% from the US, according to Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2025. As of 2023, China also accounted for 69.7% of all AI patents. True, the US maintains a strong lead in the top 100 most cited publications (50 versus 34 in 2023), but its share has been steadily declining.
Similarly, the US outdoes China in top AI research talent, but the gap is narrowing. According to a report from the US Council of Economic Advisers, 59% of the world’s top AI researchers worked in the US in 2019, compared with 11% in China. But by 2022 those figures were 42% and 28%.
The Trump administration’s tightening of restrictions for foreign H-1B visa holders may well lead more Chinese AI researchers in the US to return home. The talent ratio could move further in China’s favor.
Regarding the technology itself, US-based institutions produced 40 of the world’s most notable AI models in 2024, compared with 15 from China. But Chinese researchers have learned to do more with less, and their strongest large language models—including the open-source DeepSeek-V3 and Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5-Max—surpass the best US models in terms of algorithmic efficiency.
Where China is really likely to excel in future is in applying these open-source models. The latest report from Air Street Capital shows that China has now overtaken the US in terms of monthly downloads of AI models. In AI-enabled fintech, e-commerce, and logistics, China already outstrips the US.
Perhaps the most intriguing—and potentially the most productive—applications of AI may yet come in hardware, particularly in drones and industrial robotics. With the research field evolving toward embodied AI, China’s advantage in advanced manufacturing will shine through.
Dan Wang, the tech analyst and author of Breakneck, has rightly highlighted the strengths of China’s engineering state in developing manufacturing process knowledge—even if he has also shown the damaging effects of applying that engineering mentality in the social sphere. “China has been growing technologically stronger and economically more dynamic in all sorts of ways,” he told me. “But repression is very real. And it is getting worse in all sorts of ways as well.”
I’d be fascinated to hear from you, Caiwei, about your take on the strengths and weaknesses of China’s AI dream. To what extent will China’s engineered social control hamper its technological ambitions?
Caiwei Chen responds:
Hi, John!
You’re right that the US still holds a clear lead in frontier research and infrastructure. But “winning” AI can mean many different things. Jeffrey Ding, in his book Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, makes a counterintuitive point: For a general-purpose technology like AI, long-term advantage often comes down to how widely and deeply technologies spread across society. And China is in a good position to win that race (although “murder” might be pushing it a bit!).
Chips will remain China’s biggest bottleneck. Export restrictions have throttled access to top GPUs, pushing buyers into gray markets and forcing labs to recycle or repair banned Nvidia stock. Even as domestic chip programs expand, the performance gap at the very top still stands.
Yet those same constraints have pushed Chinese companies toward a different playbook: pooling compute, optimizing efficiency, and releasing open-weight models. DeepSeek-V3’s training run, for example, used just 2.6 million GPU-hours—far below the scale of US counterparts. But Alibaba’s Qwen models now rank among the most downloaded open-weights globally, and companies like Zhipu and MiniMax are building competitive multimodal and video models.
China’s industrial policy means new models can move from lab to implementation fast. Local governments and major enterprises are already rolling out reasoning models in administration, logistics, and finance.
Education is another advantage. Major Chinese universities are implementing AI literacy programs in their curricula, embedding skills before the labor market demands them. The Ministry of Education has also announced plans to integrate AI training for children of all school ages. I’m not sure the phrase “engineering state” fully captures China’s relationship with new technologies, but decades of infrastructure building and top-down coordination have made the system unusually effective at pushing large-scale adoption, often with far less social resistance than you’d see elsewhere. The use at scale, naturally, allows for faster iterative improvements.
Meanwhile, Stanford HAI’s 2025 AI Index found Chinese respondents to be the most optimistic in the world about AI’s future—far more optimistic than populations in the US or the UK. It’s striking, given that China’s economy has slowed since the pandemic for the first time in over two decades. Many in government and industry now see AI as a much-needed spark. Optimism can be powerful fuel, but whether it can persist through slower growth is still an open question.
Social control remains part of the picture, but a different kind of ambition is taking shape. The Chinese AI founders in this new generation are the most globally minded I’ve seen, moving fluidly between Silicon Valley hackathons and pitch meetings in Dubai. Many are fluent in English and in the rhythms of global venture capital. Having watched the last generation wrestle with the burden of a Chinese label, they now build companies that are quietly transnational from the start.
The US may still lead in speed and experimentation, but China could shape how AI becomes part of daily life, both at home and abroad. Speed matters, but speed isn’t the same thing as supremacy.
John Thornhill replies:
You’re right, Caiwei, that speed is not the same as supremacy (and “murder” may be too strong a word). And you’re also right to amplify the point about China’s strength in open-weight models and the US preference for proprietary models. This is not just a struggle between two different countries’ economic models but also between two different ways of deploying technology.
Even OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, admitted earlier this year: “We have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open-source strategy.” That’s going to be a very interesting subplot to follow. Who’s called that one right?
Further reading on the US-China competition
There’s been a lot of talk about how people may be using generative AI in their daily lives. This story from the FT’s visual story team explores the reality
From China, FT reporters ask how long Nvidia can maintain its dominance over Chinese rivals
When it comes to real-world uses, toys and companions devices are a novel but emergent application of AI that is gaining traction in China—but is also heading to the US. This MIT Technology Review story explored it.
The once-frantic data center buildout in China has hit walls, and as the sanctions and AI demands shift, this MIT Technology Review story took an on-the-ground look at how stakeholders are figuring it out.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Here’s the latest company planning for gene-edited babies
The news: A West Coast biotech entrepreneur says he’s secured $30 million to form a public-benefit company to study how to safely create genetically edited babies, marking the largest known investment into the taboo technology.
How they’re doing it: The new company, called Preventive, is being formed to research so-called “heritable genome editing,” in which the DNA of embryos would be modified by correcting harmful mutations or installing beneficial genes. The goal would be to prevent disease.
Why it’s contentious: Creating genetically edited humans remains controversial. The first scientist to do it, in China, was imprisoned for three years. The procedure remains illegal in many countries, including the US, and doubts surround its usefulness as a form of medicine. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
This startup wants to clean up the copper industry
Demand for copper is surging, as is pollution from its dirty production processes. The founders of one startup, Still Bright, think they have a better, cleaner way to generate the copper the world needs.
The company uses water-based reactions, based on battery chemistry technology, to purify copper in a process that could be less polluting than traditional smelting. And the hope is that this alternative will also help ease growing strain on the copper supply chain. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 The FDA’s top drug regulator has resigned
George Tidmarsh allegedly abused his position to inflict financial harm on a former associate. (STAT)
+ He’s only been in the post since July. (WP $)
+ It’s just the latest in a long line of slapdash leadership changes at the agency. (AP News)
+ Here’s what food and drug regulation might look like under the Trump administration. (MIT Technology Review)
2 America’s nuclear weapons testing won’t involve explosions
So don’t expect to see mushroom clouds any time soon. (BBC)
+ The tests will involve “the other parts of a nuclear weapon,” apparently. (NYT $)
+ The US is working to modernize its nuclear stockpile too. (The Hill)
3 Mustafa Suleyman wants researchers to stop pursuing conscious AI
The Microsoft AI boss believes consciousness is reserved for biological beings only. (CNBC)
+ Here’s what the man who coined the term AGI has to say. (Wired $)
+ “We will never build a sex robot,” says Mustafa Suleyman. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Elon Musk may relinquish control of Tesla
If the company’s shareholders decide against awarding him close to $1 trillion in stock. (NYT $)
+ One major investor has already said it won’t be supporting the pay package. (Gizmodo)
5 The hottest job in AI right now? Forward-deployed engineers
They’re specialists who help AI companies’ customers adopt their models. (FT $)
6 Hackers are stealing cargo shipments from transportation firms
They’re successfully infecting networks with remote access tools. (Bloomberg $)
7 OpenAI’s o1 model can analyze languages like a human expert
Experts suggest linguistic analysis is a key testbed for assessing the extent to which these models can reason like we can. (Quanta Magazine)
8 US obesity rates have started to drop
And weight-loss drugs are highly likely to be the reason why. (Vox)
+ We’re learning more about what weight-loss drugs do to the body. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Why it’s so tricky to make a good grocery list app
Notes just won’t cut it. (The Verge)
10 Many robots make light work
Lots of machines working in tandem can achieve what they’d struggle to do alone. (WSJ $)
+ Tiny robots inspired by spiders could help deliver diagnoses. (IEEE Spectrum)
Quote of the day
“You can check if there’s a backdoor.”
—China’s leader Xi Jinping jokes about the security of two Chinese-made cellphones he gifted to South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, the New York Times reports.
One more thing
Digital twins of human organs are here. They’re set to transform medical treatment.
“Digital twins” are the same size and shape as the human organs they’re designed to mimic. They work in the same way. But they exist only virtually. Scientists can do virtual surgery on virtual hearts, figuring out the best course of action for a patient’s condition.
After decades of research, models like these are now entering clinical trials and starting to be used for patient care. The eventual goal is to create digital versions of our bodies—computer copies that could help researchers and doctors figure out our risk of developing various diseases and determine which treatments might work best.
But the budding technology will need to be developed very carefully. Read the full story to learn why.
—Jessica Hamzelou
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ The Empire State Building Run-Up race sounds amazing, if completely gruelling.
+ Very cool: each year, the scientific staff of the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station screen horror classic The Thing to prepare themselves for the long, isolated winter ahead.
+ How caterpillars spin their protective little cocoons.
+ One-pot chicken sounds like a great winter warmer of a recipe.
Demand for copper is surging, as is pollution from its dirty production processes. The founders of one startup, Still Bright, think they have a better, cleaner way to generate the copper the world needs.
The company uses water-based reactions, based on battery chemistry technology, to purify copper in a process that could be less polluting than traditional smelting. The hope is that this alternative will also help ease growing strain on the copper supply chain.
“We’re really focused on addressing the copper supply crisis that’s looming ahead of us,” says Randy Allen, Still Bright’s cofounder and CEO.
Copper is a crucial ingredient in everything from electrical wiring to cookware today. And clean energy technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles are introducing even more demand for the metal. Global copper demand is expected to grow by 40% between now and 2040.
As demand swells, so do the climate and environmental impacts of copper extraction, the process of refining ore into a pure metal. There’s also growing concern about the geographic concentration of the copper supply chain. Copper is mined all over the world, and historically, many of those mines had smelters on-site to process what they extracted. (Smelters form pure copper metal by essentially burning concentrated copper ore at high temperatures.) But today, the smelting industry has consolidated, with many mines shipping copper concentrates to smelters in Asia, particularly China.
That’s partly because smelting uses a lot of energy and chemicals, and it can produce sulfur-containing emissions that can harm air quality. “They shipped the environmental and social problems elsewhere,” says Simon Jowitt, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.
It’s possible to scrub pollution out of a smelter’s emissions, and smelters are much cleaner than they used to be, Jowitt says. But overall, smelting centers aren’t exactly known for environmental responsibility.
So even countries like the US, which have plenty of copper reserves and operational mines, largely ship copper concentrates, which contain up to around 30% copper, to China or other countries for smelting. (There are just two operational ore smelters in the US today.)
Still Bright avoids the pyrometallurgic process that smelters use in favor of a chemical approach, partially inspired by devices called vanadium flow batteries.
In the startup’s reactor, vanadium reacts with the copper compounds in copper concentrates. The copper metal remains a solid, leaving many of the impurities behind in the liquid phase. The whole thing takes between 30 and 90 minutes. The solid, which contains roughly 70% copper after this reaction, can then be fed into another, established process in the mining industry, called solvent extraction and electrowinning, to make copper that’s over 99% pure.
This is far from the first attempt to use a water-based, chemical approach to processing copper. Today, some copper ore is processed with acid, for example, and Ceibo, a startup based in Chile, is trying to use a version of that process on the type of copper that’s traditionally smelted. The difference here is the particular chemistry, particularly the choice to use vanadium.
One of Still Bright’s founders, Jon Vardner, was researching copper reactions and vanadium flow batteries when he came up with the idea to marry a copper extraction reaction with an electrical charging step that could recycle the vanadium.
COURTESY OF STILL BRIGHT
After the vanadium reacts with the copper, the liquid soup can be fed into an electrolyzer, which uses electricity to turn the vanadium back into a form that can react with copper again. It’s basically the same process that vanadium flow batteries use to charge up.
While other chemical processes for copper refining require high temperatures or extremely acidic conditions to get the copper into solution and force the reaction to proceed quickly and ensure all the copper gets reacted, Still Bright’s process can run at ambient temperatures.
One of the major benefits to this approach is cutting the pollution from copper refining. Traditional smelting heats the target material to over 1,200 °C (2,000 °F), forming sulfur-containing gases that are released into the atmosphere.
Still Bright’s process produces hydrogen sulfide gas as a by-product instead. It’s still a dangerous material, but one that can be effectively captured and converted into useful side products, Allen says.
Another source of potential pollution is the sulfide minerals left over after the refining process, which can form sulfuric acid when exposed to air and water (this is called acid mine drainage, common in mining waste). Still Bright’s process will also produce that material, and the company plans to carefully track it, ensuring that it doesn’t leak into groundwater.
The company is currently testing its process in the lab in New Jersey and designing a pilot facility in Colorado, which will have the capacity to make about two tons of copper per year. Next will be a demonstration-scale reactor, which will have a 500-ton annual capacity and should come online in 2027 or 2028 at a mine site, Allen says. Still Bright recently raised an $18.7 million seed round to help with the scale-up process.
How scale up goes will be a crucial test of the technology and whether the typically conservative mining industry will jump on board, UNR’s Jowitt says: “You want to see what happens on an industrial scale. And I think until that happens, people might be a little reluctant to get into this.”