China’s AI models spooked Wall Street. But they may turbocharge industry growth

Aug 9, 2026

Breakthroughs in cheap Chinese open-weight artificial intelligence models have spooked US investors, but analysts argue plummeting model costs will benefit the AI industry in the long run by supercharging global demand for AI systems. Companies across the AI industry have slashed prices in recent weeks, with large-language model (LLM) inference prices per million tokens falling from above US$2 at the start of June to just US$1.2 this week, according to research firm Silicon Data’s LLM Token...

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