The release of Google DeepMind’s latest artificial intelligence model has sparked debate about the future of US-China competition in AI and the ability of Chinese developers to keep up.
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Gemini 3 Pro, released on Tuesday, overtook OpenAI’s GPT-5.1 to give Google the top spot on leading AI benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index for the first time.
The model was roundly praised by fellow industry competitors, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Lin Junyang, the technical lead of Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen model series, who congratulated Google for a “good model”.
Alibaba Cloud is the AI and cloud computing unit of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the Post.
The new model pushed the top Chinese model, Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2 Thinking, down to fourth on Artificial Analysis’ ranking, highlighting the daunting challenge faced by Chinese start-ups to compete with hyperscalers – cloud computing service providers with large-scale data centres – like Google.
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An executive at a leading Chinese AI start-up, who requested anonymity, said: “From my point of view, we are likely to lose the game.”