China may be playing a different AI game: distribution over frontier model supremacy
ingliguori · x · 2026-10-07
Analyst Ingrid Liguori offers a framework worth noting: while the industry focuses on who owns the strongest frontier model, China is pursuing distribution — open-weight models, robots, EVs, factories, industrial automation, and edge AI.
The logic is a flywheel: you don't need every layer of the intelligence stack if you distribute AI across millions of physical systems → adoption → data → better systems → more adoption. The strategic question shifts from "who built the smartest model?" to "who deployed intelligence across the largest part of the economy?" The next phase of AI may be less about demos and much more about diffusion.
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