China’s Open AI Models: Paid Weights or Free Access?
Goldman says Moonshot and Zhipu could start charging cloud platforms to host their open-weight models. It would be the open-source movement’s first real answer to how it makes money.
July 28, 2026 – 10:56 pm
Image by: Kimi
For a year, the story of Chinese AI has been simple. It is nearly as good as the American frontier, and it is effectively free. That second part may be about to change.
Chinese developers could start charging cloud platforms commercial licensing fees to host their open-weight models, Goldman Sachs told the South China Morning Post. The bank calls the idea “paid weights.”
What Paid Weights Would Mean
The weights are the parameters that encode a model’s intelligence. Releasing them openly is what let Chinese labs spread so fast. It is also why that spread earns them so little. Charging cloud platforms to host those weights would change the economics without closing the models. Goldman frames it as a way to turn soaring adoption into revenue.
The Catch
Open and free is the whole reason these models matter. Developers reached for them because they were cheaper than American systems and came without a licence to sign. Start charging, and some of that adoption could evaporate. Developers could fork the last free release and keep running it. Rivals that stay fully open would have an obvious pitch. The move that captures revenue could surrender the influence that made it worth capturing.
China’s Stance
China has been pulling the other way too. Beijing has weighed curbing overseas access to its top models on security grounds. Meanwhile labs like MiniMax keep open-sourcing ever larger systems. Paid weights would add a commercial motive to a debate that has been about national security.
Timing and Market Fear
The timing is not incidental. Global AI stocks have just been through a sharp selloff, and cheaper Chinese models are one of the cited reasons. A rout in chip shares has swept Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Investors are questioning whether lofty valuations and the AI spending boom can hold. Bloomberg reported that Japan’s Nikkei 225 has fallen 14% from its June peak, and chip names such as Kioxia have slumped more than 40%.
The Future of Open AI
Goldman’s Japan strategist Bruce Kirk called the drop a buying opportunity. He told Bloomberg the bank does not think “the AI story is broken,” and that it will come down to earnings. Part of what spooked the market, though, is the fear that cheap Chinese models undercut the returns on hundreds of billions of dollars of US spending.