Finance

China’s AI models lag their U.S. counterparts by 6 to 9 months, says former head of Google China

Published

8 months ago

September 11, 2024

Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and chief executive officer of Sinovation Ventures, speaks during the HICOOL Global Entrepreneur Summit on September 11, 2021 in Beijing, China.

China News Service | China News Service | Getty Images

BEIJING — Chinese artificial intelligence models may be at least half a year behind those developed in the U.S., but Chinese AI apps will likely take off much faster, said Kai-Fu Lee, former head of Google China.

He was referring to large language models, which are trained on massive amounts of data that can process and produce text, images and videos.

The top Chinese companies’ LLMs are about six to nine months behind their U.S. counterparts, while less advanced Chinese models may lag the U.S. by about 15 months, Lee said. He was speaking at the AVCJ Private Equity Forum China on Wednesday.

Lee, author of “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order,“ is a widely followed commentator on AI, and is the founder of startup 01.AI as well as venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures.

“Apps, I would predict, by early next year will proliferate in China much faster than in the U.S.,” Lee said, noting that the cost of training a good AI model has fallen significantly.

“It’s inevitable that China will [build] the best AI apps in the world,” he said. “But it’s not clear whether it will be built by big companies or small companies.”

Lee, whose startup is focused on search apps right how, said it may take five to eight years to take generative AI consumer applications to the next level — a single “super app” that can perform multiple tasks.

The industry will likely need completely new devices versus existing smartphones, he said, adding “the right device ought to be always on, always listening.”

Major Chinese companies such as Alibaba and Tencent have released their AI models and business products. These companies and investors have also backed several AI startups.

Beijing-based ShengShu Technology, backed by Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group, announced Wednesday that its text-to-video model Vidu has introduced a new feature for improving how a main element or character in AI-generated clips can be portrayed consistently, without distortion. That can enable advertisers to create promotional videos for their products.

Vidu was released earlier this year and its basic tools are open to the public, with more advanced capabilities available via subscription. Co-founder and CEO Jiayu Tang told reporters Wednesday that several companies were interested in buying ShengShu’s services, and were not just exploring the tech.

Finance

More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

Published

4 hours ago

April 26, 2025

Business Finance News

People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.