8 PLOTS THAT EXPLAIN THE STATE OF OPEN MODELS

Summary from the TLDR AI newsletter

Chinese companies are making strong, open AI models that are applying increasing pressure on the US AI economy. Dethroning Qwen in adoption in 2026 looks impossible, but there are areas of opportunity. The US could very well have the smartest open models again in 2026, even if they're used far less across the ecosystem. This post contains 8 plots that show the impact of Qwen, DeepSeek, Llama, GPT-OSS, Nemotron, and other new entrants to the ecosystem.