Kimi K3 and GLM-5.3 are now within striking distance of the best US models. Western labs blame distillation, and there's real evidence for it. But guilty or not, the conclusion is the same: a model lead can't be defended. This issue looks at what can.

The article Frontier Radar #4: China has caught up, so what's left of the Western AI lead? appeared first on The Decoder.

Unitree Robotics rose 460 percent in its Shanghai IPO, hitting a valuation of around $50 billion. But an FT report shows much of the demand for its robots comes from state-backed training centers that buy the machines and sell the resulting data back to the manufacturers, a circular business model that echoes the Nvidia criticism in the US.

The article China now has its own AI circular financing scheme appeared first on The Decoder.