Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Kimmy K3. I'm your friend David Pierce and today on the show we're going to talk about AI models. We've been talking about AI models a lot on the show for the last few weeks in the wake of the open AI hack of hugging face and all of these new conversations about AI safety and AI deployment and openweight models and the race with China and how we think about and operate AI in general.It all feels like it's coming to a head in some way right now. So, ...

Market Dynamics and Product Strategy - Alibaba unveiled Qwen3.8-Max, its largest open-weights model to date, featuring 2.4 trillion parameters, with downloads available next week[1] - Alibaba priced the model at 2 dollars per million input tokens, significantly undercutting Western competitors to a fraction of their cost[1] - Chinese open models currently drive approximately 61 percent of OpenRouter traffic, while Alibaba Qwen has become the most self-hosted model globally[2] Competitive Landscape and Performance - Alibaba internal evaluations indicate that Anthropic Fable 5 outperforms Qwen by winning 15 out of 31 benchmarks, compared to Qwen winning 7[2]

Market Dynamics - Alibaba offers its top artificial intelligence model for free [1] - Technology sector companies target performance close to industry leading models like Claude and ChatGPT [1]

Market Dynamics - Alibaba released its advanced artificial intelligence model for free [1] - The new artificial intelligence model achieved performance levels nearly matching Claude and ChatGPT [1]

Market Trends and Competition - Intense competition in the Chinese artificial intelligence market driven by frequent new model releases from major tech companies such as Alibaba, DeepSeek, Minimax, and ByteDance[1][3][4][5] - Kimi K3 recognized as the current market leader in overall performance among Chinese artificial intelligence models[1][2][3] - Alibaba launching a new model featuring **2.4 trillion** parameters, ranking as the second largest open-weighted model in China behind Kimi K3[1][2] - DeepSeek upgrading its model to Flash V4 and ByteDance releasing an upgraded video generation model named Seedance[3][6] - Minimax launching the H3 video generation model, ranking first in editing capabilities on certain leaderboards and securing a top-three position for text-to-video or image-to-video tasks[6][7] Financial Performance and Pricing Strategy - Aggressive price war emerging in the Chinese artificial intelligence sector, marked by DeepSeek cutting input and output token prices for its new model by up to **50%**[5] - DeepSeek maintaining its position as the cheapest artificial intelligence model available in China prior to the latest price reduction, driving market adoption advantages[5] - Minimax pricing its H3 model at roughly **half** the price of competitors, specifically for high-resolution **2K** video generation[7] - Industry analysts from Bloomberg Intelligence warning that intense price competition may prevent the artificial intelligence sector from achieving profitability within the next **3** years without rational pricing adjustments[8]

VONNIE: IT IS 5:00 A. M. IN NEW YORK CITY.GOOD MORNING, I AM VONNIE QUINN. A TECH-LED RALLY HAS GLOBAL STOCKS IN THE GREEN AS PALANTIR LOOSENS GUIDANCE AFTER WHAT HE CALLS OTHERWORLDLY DEMAND. PRESIDENT TRUMP WARNS IRAN IT IS IT'S LESS CHANCE TO MAKE A DEAL.TEHRAN DENIES ANY TALKS WITH WASHINGTON. EARNINGS CONTINUE TO ROLL IN WITH SPACEX QUARTERLY RESULTS. RELATIVE STABILITY ACROSS ASIA TODAY.LET'S GET TO WINNIE HSU FOR DETAILS. WINNIE: GOOD MORNING. WE ARE SEEING THE JAPANESE YEN CONTINUE TO LOSE STEAM AFT ...

Market Dynamics - A flurry of five Chinese artificial intelligence models has shifted the competitive landscape [1] - Moonshot, DeepSeek, and Alibaba are narrowing the gap with Silicon Valley [1] - The market is creating a death zone for entities lacking frontier-pushing technology or market-breaking pricing [1]

>> IT IS 9:00 A. M. YOU ARE WATCHING "THE CHINA SHOW ." DAVID: GOOD MORNING.WE ARE COMING DOWN TO THE OPENING MARKETS IN GREATER CHINA. STOCKS ACROSS THE REGION SEEING A LITTLE BIT OF PRESSURE TODAY DESPITE THE TECH LEAD REBOUND IN U.S. EQUITIES. THE RALLY LOSES SOME STEAM, REVERSING GAINS AFTER JOINT INTERVENTION BY THE U.S. IN JAPAN.AVRIL: U.S. PRICES HOLDING ONTO LOSSES AFTER PRESIDENT TRUMP WARNING IRAN IS DOWN TO ITS LAST CHANCE FOR A DEAL TO END THE WAR AND REOPEN THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ. DAVID: HSBC IS ...