Visualizing U.S. vs. Chinese AI Model Performance

China vs. U.S. AI Model Performance

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The global AI race is heating up, evolving into a high-stakes battle spanning everything from semiconductors to talent acquisition.

One of the most important indicators of a country’s AI strength is the performance of their leading models. This graphic visualizes the performance of the top U.S. and Chinese AI models on LMSYS’s Chatbot Arena from January 2024 to February 2025.

Chatbot Arena is an open platform for benchmarking large language models based on crowd-sourced user preferences.

Data comes from LYMSYS via Stanford University’s 2025 AI Index Report.

This visualization is part of Visual Capitalist’s AI Week, sponsored by Terzo.

China is Narrowing the AI Performance Gap

Below, we show the performance of the top U.S. and Chinese AI models based on LMSYS’s Chatbot Arena from January 2024 to February 2025.

Date	China model score	U.S. model score	Performance gap
2024-01	1112	1215	103
2024-02	1147	1254	107
2024-03	1148	1254	105
2024-04	1154	1261	107
2024-05	1239	1289	50
2024-06	1240	1287	47
2024-07	1241	1287	47
2024-08	1240	1317	77
2024-09	1257	1355	98
2024-10	1287	1340	54
2024-11	1287	1365	78
2024-12	1315	1379	64
2025-01	1358	1382	24
2025-02	1362	1385	23

Historically, the top U.S. models have consistently outperformed those from China. But the gap is closing fast.

In January 2024, the performance difference between the top U.S. and Chinese models was 103 points. By February 2025, that margin had shrunk to just 23 points.

The rapid catch-up is largely credited to the launch of Deepseek R1, an open-source Chinese model that delivered strong results reportedly using just a fraction of the compute resources of U.S. models, shaking confidence in U.S. AI leadership and causing stock market turbulence.

China has been investing heavily into its AI infrastructure for years. In 2017, the Chinese government launched its “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan” with the goal of becoming the world’s “major AI innovation center” by 2030.

According to the Stanford report, China makes up 70% of all global AI patents, as of 2023.

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