The US has been chasing China in the open source AI competition. Openai's latest move could help bridge that gap, but it could also spur China to accelerate its own release.
Last week, Openai CEO Sam Altman unveiled GPT-Oss, a large family of language models with “openweights.”
This means that anyone can see or use information that determines how the model works after it is trained, but it is not the complete source code.
“I believe this is the best and easiest open model in the world,” Altman wrote on X on August 6th.
GPT-Oss is OpenAI's first open-weight language model in over five years since the release of GPT-2 in 2019.
Openai's model “reduced the gap” with China
Ray Wang, Futurum Group's research director on semiconductors and emerging technologies said Openai's open weight release was likely influenced by the strong reception of open source Chinese models like Deepseek, whose release rocked the market in January.
Wang said Openai's new model “find the gap” with China thanks to “competitive performance benchmarks and sizes against China's counterparts.”
“China still maintains a small lead, and there is an increasing number of competitive open source models available in the market compared to the US,” he added.
China's open source models include Alibaba's Qwen series, Baidu's Ernie 4.5, and Moonshot's Kimi K2, along with Deepseek's recent V3 and R1 releases.
However, with the launch of Openai's open weight model, Chinese companies could respond by speeding up their own open source releases and making the most of their developer minds.
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More importantly, they aim to be an “ecosystem lock-in” with models integrated into dominant national platforms such as Alipay and Wechat, in order to monetize downstream rather than the model layer.
Wang said that “pushing the boundaries of China's open source model will likely continue unabated,” adding that “Openai's actions may accelerate and motivate their efforts.”
Why solve the problem?
If the US does not fill the open source AI gap, Chinese models could gain more momentum and become the basis for defaults for applications and research around the world, Wang said.
For American companies, that could be a problem, Natham Lambert said. Senior research scientist at the Allen Institute of AI.
He told Business Insider: “If the US does not invest in open AI races, the standard for AI development will be Chinese.”
“Because of the majority of AI's history, American companies will become secondary markets, not the major beneficiaries of AI,” he added.
China's push towards open source is more than just sharing the latest technology, Lian Jye Su said. Omdia's chief analyst, Technology research and consulting company.
“It's also a way to escape developer engagement and influence and increasingly restrictive access to US technology,” he added.
In its “America AI Action Plan,” the Trump administration said that the US “needs to secure a major open model established based on American values.”
Technology leaders like Marc Andreessen say it's important to have a Western open source champion, as values, assumptions, and messaging embedded in the model “baked” to its weight and not easily reverted.
Is that true momentum?
Lambert calls Openai's move a “major cultural step” for American tech companies, saying it is “the norm” to release open models.
Openai is not just a high-tech American company that embraces more open models.
Elon Musk's Xai released GROK-1 on Open Weights, while Google Deepmind launched the Gemma series as an open weight model. Meta's llama model is also open weight.
Mark Zuckerberg, a leading advocate for making AI more open source, recently suggested that Meta's powerful models aren't always open source.
However, analysts like Sun and Wang remain cautious about declaring a broader US shift to open source.
Although GPT-oss has “strong performance and practical adoption potential,” the model is not entirely “open source AI” under the definition of open source initiatives, Sun said.
Sun called Openai's release “more iconic” than structure. There is also a question of timing. A few days after Trump announced the “American AI Action Plan,” the timing of the opening emphasizes the political and PR values of the move, she said.
Openai did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
