In partnership with
Hey {{first_name | there}},
So, in case you don’t know, 80% of US AI startups now have quietly switched to Chinese models.
OpenAI and Anthropic know this.
And that's exactly why they're now giving away the product.
Let's talk about what's actually happening here, because it's more interesting than it looks.
The Free Compute Play
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and AWS are reportedly offering startups millions in free compute credits, heavy discounts, and perks to these early businesses.
On the surface, it looks generous. It's not.
This is a land grab disguised as philanthropy.
The logic is simple: get a startup addicted to your API during their formative months, and they'll build their entire product around your infrastructure. Switching costs skyrocket. You own them by the time they have real revenue.
It's what Salesforce did with CRM. What AWS did with cloud. Now OpenAI and Anthropic are doing it with intelligence itself.
But here's the part that makes this fascinating, and a little desperate:
Anthropic now holds 32% of the enterprise LLM market share, and its revenue run rate hit $30 billion by April 2026. OpenAI, meanwhile, saw losses increase nearly 8x in 2025.
So the richest AI company is also hemorrhaging money. And they're giving away more for free. That's either confidence or panic. I think it's both.
The Thing They're Running From
While OpenAI and Anthropic court startups with free credits, US companies are quietly defecting to Chinese AI.
Open-source Chinese models like DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, and Xiaomi's MiMo are now 60% to 90% cheaper than leading US models.
DeepSeek alone can run up to 40x cheaper than OpenAI on comparable workloads.
And the performance gap? It's closing fast.
So you have a situation where startups are getting free credits from OpenAI at the top of the funnel, while companies with real revenue are choosing Chinese alternatives at the bottom. That's a business model problem no amount of free compute can solve.
But Here's the Plot Twist Nobody Saw Coming
Just as US companies are accelerating adoption of Chinese AI, China is now considering restricting overseas access to its most advanced models.
Yes. You read that right.
China's Ministry of Commerce has held meetings with Alibaba, ByteDance, and Z.ai about keeping their frontier AI systems inside China.
Both closed-source and open-weight models are on the table. Even unreleased models.
Think about the absurdity of this moment:
- US companies are switching to Chinese AI because it's cheaper
- China might wall off that AI from the outside world
- While OpenAI is throwing free compute at startups to stop the bleeding
The whole AI supply chain is developing national borders. And if you're building a product on someone else's model, whether that's GPT-5.6, Claude, or DeepSeek, you're one policy decision away from a very bad day.
What This Actually Means For You
If you're a founder or builder right now, here's what I'd be thinking:
1. Take the free credits, but don't marry the platform. Free compute is a tool, not a commitment. Use OpenAI or Anthropic credits to validate your idea. But design your architecture with model-swapping in mind from day one.
2. Cost is a real moat, for now. If you're building something where inference costs matter, Chinese open-source models deserve a serious look. 60-90% cheaper isn't a rounding error.
3. The wall is being built from both sides. US export controls on AI chips. China restricting access to its best models. The AI internet is fragmenting.
The free compute offer from OpenAI and Anthropic isn't just a business strategy. It's a signal. A signal that they're worried. And worried companies make moves that desperate companies wouldn't.
Pay attention to what they're giving away. It tells you what they're afraid of losing.
- Aashish
How owning AI deployment expands your career
Across product, ops, and CX teams, a new kind of role is taking shape: the person responsible for making AI actually work, day to day.
On July 16, three people living this shift join a live roundtable: Simone Santiago Broad (Yoco), Yelva Espinoza (Zumba Fitness), and Fin's Dave Lynch. You'll hear what the job really looks like across industries, how they carved out these roles, the skills they'd hire for, and the challenges they're tackling now. Bring your questions, since the best moments happen live.
Register for the roundtable to save your spot.