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The global tech sector had barely recovered from successive shocks when Silicon Valley woke up to a new 'technological nightmare' coming from Beijing, after the Chinese startup 'Moonshot AI' launched its latest model (Kimi K3), igniting competition and sounding alarm bells in Silicon Valley, the White House, and US financial markets.

Within hours of its launch, the Chinese model achieved a stunning surprise by topping the global 'Arena' ranking for AI-powered programming tools, an unprecedented achievement for a Chinese model, in a move described by tech circles as a declaration of breaking US dominance.

Fear on Wall Street

An atmosphere of anxiety prevailed among investors on Wall Street and US administration officials, as the fear is not just a transient technological superiority, but a potential threat to the business model of major companies like 'OpenAI' and 'Anthropic'.

If China manages to develop models that rival their American counterparts in quality, but at a very low cost, and based on open-source code that allows developers to modify them freely, US companies will not be able to continue imposing high prices, which could threaten their business model.

This launch brought to mind what happened at the beginning of 2025, when the Chinese company 'DeepSeek' surprised global markets by launching an advanced model at a cost that represents only a tiny fraction of the usual cost, which then led to the wiping out of hundreds of billions of dollars from the market value of US tech companies in a short time.

The director of the 'Arena' website, Anastasios Angelopoulos, said that 'Kimi K3' may push investors to a 'radical reassessment of financial markets,' because it undermines the concept of US dominance, and pushes companies around the world to favor free Chinese software that runs locally on devices, without the need to share data with external American companies.

The prominent investor and technical advisor to the White House, David Sacks, also entered the debate on platform 'X', directing sharp criticism at current US policies, and affirming that the success of 'Kimi' proves that US dominance has indeed become threatened.

Sacks considered that politicians in Washington are hindering their country's progress by imposing complex regulatory rules, obstructing the establishment of new data centers, and seeking to establish a federal agency to restrict powerful models before their launch, concluding his remarks with a warning: 'This is exactly how you lose the AI race.'