In January 2025, DeepSeeka small and unknown company in Hangzhou, gave a crude cure of humility to USA. Your model of artificial intelligence Not only was it as powerful as those developed by giants like OpenAI, Google o Anthropicbut its creation had been much more economical. Silicon Valleymecca of the most powerful technology industry in the world, put its hands on its head with what it described as its “Sputnik moment“. How did he achieve Soviet Union at the beginning of the space race, China showed the world that it could unseat the great power on its next frontier: the IA.
The Chinese emergence has served Washington and the technology sector to recover the narrative of collision between blocks of the Cold wara discourse of existential competition that enables the cancellation of all regulation of the Generative AI to accelerate its deployment. A zero sum game in which you win or lose. “One of the biggest risks of continuing to feed this particular narrative is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” author Yi-Ling Liu warned in statements to POLITICO Magazine.
Collision between blocks
Today’s world is multipolar, also on the geopolitical board of the technology. However, the prominence that USA and China hold in the race for AI dominance is overwhelming. Both powers control 90% of the computing power worldwide and attract between 70% and 80% of the investment global in algorithmic systems. “We have a big advantage, but they are in second place and they are very strong,” said the American president. Donald Trump during his trip to Beijing in May.
In 2025, the US manufactured 59 leading AI models, compared to 35 in China, indicates Stanford University’s AI Index Report. Of the 20 language models (o LLMsfor its acronym in English) most powerful in the world, according to the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, ten have been created by American companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, Meta y Nvidia; nine by Chinese companies such as Alibaba, MiniMax, Moonshot, Xiaomi, DeepSeek y Z.ai; and only one is European, the French one Mistral.
The most powerful generative AI models in the world, according to the main industry index. / Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
US dominion
The US cements its hegemony on a private sector that flourishes thanks to the impulse of venture capital. In 2025 alone, the American AI industry concentrated $285 billion in private investment—23 times more than the second country, China—and saw some 1,953 start-ups dedicated to generative models founded, according to the AI Index Report. More than the rest of the world combined. Another OECD study suggests that the sector attracted up to 75% of all global investment in AI last year.
Concentrating capital is a great strategic advantage for the US. This way, your AI companies can not only design and train the most advanced models, a highly expensive process, but also build data centers and build alliances with firms such as Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and others that are behind other vital components of the production chain like the chips o to energy. This explains why the country is home to 5,427 data centers, more than ten times more than any other country.
A Google manager, at the company’s data center in The Dalles, Oregon. / CONNIE ZHOU / AP
The Chinese alternative
China plays with other metrics. And, beyond the 21 billion mobilized from the private sector, the Asian giant’s AI strategy has used the State as a guiding principle. Between 2000 and 2023, the single-party regime that controls the country has allocated some 184 billion dollars to irrigate its industry. Now, it is preparing a plan of almost 300,000 million to promote the creation of a network of data centers throughout the country that reinforces its autonomy.
Furthermore, the holistic strategy adopted by Beijing has allowed it to take the lead on other strategic fronts. In 2024, China accounted for 74.24% of AI patents granted worldwide, an index in which it surpasses the US since 2017. Some of them have been translated into the corporeal form of AI: robots. Two years ago it installed 295 million of these industrial machines, 54% of the world’s total and more than the rest of the world combined.
Robots participate in the celebration of the new year in China. / Associated Press / LaPresse
Global imbalance
That the race for AI is concentrated in two powers translates into a strategic imbalance for the rest of the world, relegating most countries to a position of dependence that both Washington and Beijing seek to exploit. “That puts most of the Global South in an uncomfortable position. And the middle powers remain exposed to the disruptions that AI could cause in employment or with its social effects, even if they do not necessarily reap the benefits,” Sam Winter-Levy, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explained to the portal. Rest of World.
Control the extraction of minerals crucial for the electronicsthe manufacture of semiconductorsthe design of software or the production of electricity that activates the machines is a power tool that will gain more and more weight in the international relations.
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