Chinese AI companies are competing with American rivals not by building the most sophisticated models, but by offering "good enough" AI at far lower prices for wider adoption, according to Cherie Shi, global business manager at MiniMax. Success is now measured by "how many people are actually using our models every day." Over the past year, Chinese AI firms have promoted their models across Southeast Asia and the Gulf. US President Donald Trump said the United States was "leading China by a lot." However, a May report from JPMorganChase Centre for Geopolitics stated that "top models may converge near the frontier" and that Chinese AI laboratories are producing models designed to "win at adoption." A salesperson at a leading Chinese AI company said, "If we can provide 80 per cent of the value at a much lower cost, that’s enough." Gunja Gargeshwari, chief revenue officer at Bright Data, noted that despite national security concerns, Chinese firms "are getting a seat at the table." At Singapore’s SuperAI conference, Z.ai executive Zixuan Li compared top US firms to selling Rolls-Royces and Chinese companies to selling Mercedes. Z.ai, known as Zhipu AI, has opened offices in Singapore and Dubai despite being on the US Commerce Department’s entity list. Its flagship GLM model is particularly popular.