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Could China’s Cheap AI Models ‘Crash’ The US Stock Market In 2026? CEO Issues Stark Warning For OpenAI And Anthropic: ‘The Bubble Is…. About

Polsia AI CEO Ben Cera ‘s argued that China is releasing state-of-the-art open-source (SOTA) AI models in the U.S., like GLM-5.2, that perform nearly as well as leading frontier models at a fraction of the cost, making it hard for companies to justify spending $100 million when similar capabilities may be available for around $5 million. In an X post on Tuesday, he cautioned that this would force enterprises to slash AI spending from millions to fractions, collapsing OpenAI and Anthropic valuations. “China will crash the US stock market this year,” he wrote, while adding, “The bubble isn’t AI. It’s the price of AI. And it’s about to pop.” In a subsequent reply to another user, Cera acknowledged that the “AI Model only” companies may be the biggest losers while hyperscalers like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) (NASDAQ: GOOG ) w...

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Polsia AI CEO Ben Cera ‘s argued that China is releasing state-of-the-art open-source (SOTA) AI models in the U.S., like GLM-5.2, that perform nearly as well as leading frontier models at a fraction of the cost, making it hard for companies to justify spending $100 million when similar capabilities may be available for around $5 million.

In an X post on Tuesday, he cautioned that this would force enterprises to slash AI spending from millions to fractions, collapsing OpenAI and Anthropic valuations. “China will crash the US stock market this year,” he wrote, while adding, “The bubble isn’t AI.

It’s the price of AI.

And it’s about to pop.” In a subsequent reply to another user, Cera acknowledged that the “AI Model only” companies may be the biggest losers while hyperscalers like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) (NASDAQ: GOOG ) would remain unscathed. “Google has an infinite war chest. they’ll be fine,” he stated.

China will crash the US stock market this year.

They're dumping SOTA open-source models on the US, nearly as good as the frontier labs, basically free.

Nobody can refuse cutting a $100M AI bill down to $5M.

Once that deal is on the table for everyone, Anthropic and OpenAI… pic.twitter.com/p20sMUc4rx — Ben Cera (@Bencera) June 30, 2026 However, Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman dismissed the prevailing notion that U.S. enterprises are going to increasingly favor Chinese open-source models over frontier labs like OpenAI or Anthropic.

In an X post on Monday, Newman stated, “This whole U.S. enterprises are going to use Chinese open source models instead of frontier labs narrative is an absolute heaping pile of ***.” This whole U.S. enterprises are going to use Chinese open source models instead of frontier labs narrative is an absolute heaping pile of 💩 — Daniel Newman (@danielnewmanUV) June 30, 2026 Read Also: Forget AMD And Micron — The Next Wave Of AI Winners Are The Ones Nobody Talks About Why Chinese AI Models Are Gaining The growing narrative that Chinese AI models are increasingly being adopted by U.S. enterprises has been fueled by the success of Chinese AI firms like Zhipu AI, which has been making waves in the AI industry with its latest GLM 5.2 model and its strategy of building sovereign large language model systems.

DeepSeek ‘s R-1 model and Alibaba Group Holdings ‘ (NYSE: BABA ) Qwen3 and Qwen2.5 are some of the other open-source models.

GLM 5.2 model is generating a buzz after outperforming other open-source models and approaching Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 on a key agentic AI benchmark at roughly one-fifth the cost.

The model has seen rapid developer adoption and is particularly strong at enterprise-focused tasks such as planning, coding, testing, and automation, unlike DeepSeek, which many viewed as a one-off chatbot breakthrough, reported CNBC.

Founded in 2019, Zhipu AI is one of China’s leading AI startups developing large language models to reduce reliance on U.S. technology.

Although it was added to the U.S.

Commerce Department’s Entity List in January 2025 over alleged support for China’s military AI efforts, OpenAI said that the company made significant global progress by providing AI infrastructure to governments.

Meanwhile, government restrictions on leading U.S.

AI models have heightened interest in alternatives like GLM 5.2.

After the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to withdraw its Fable Mythos-class model and OpenAI to limit access to GPT-5.6, enterprises are increasingly weighing models that are less vulnerable to policy-driven access restrictions.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published editors.

Image via Shutterstock Read Also: Box CEO Aaron Levie Says AI Race Hinges On Whether 'Open Weights AI' Stays 'A Close Second'