GIC Says Chinese AI Models Will Slash Adoption Costs

Chinese developers including DeepSeek and Alibaba have narrowed the performance gap with US frontier labs while offering lower-cost, open-weight models. That gives companies scope to route routine workloads to cheaper systems, reducing inference bills and making broader deployment economical. GIC’s assessment carries weight because the Singapore sovereign wealth fund is a major global technology investor; on February 12, 2026, it led Anthropic’s $30 billion Series G, which valued the US AI company at $380 billion post-money.

The Financial Times reported on July 23, 2026, that GIC expects Chinese AI models to sharply cut the cost of enterprise adoption and sees strong growth ahead for established Chinese AI companies. The fund remains cautious on start-ups, however, given uncertainty around business models, capital requirements and valuations. Separately, GIC said its portfolio returned an annualised 5.6% in nominal US-dollar terms and 3.4% after global inflation over the 20 years through March 31, 2026.