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Amir Efrati’s report for The Information says 21% of surveyed subscribers use Chinese AI models. That is roughly one in five of this publication’s respondents—not one in five companies or AI users generally. The same report says 46% use at least some open-source AI models for work, while 20% use them for a majority of their AI workloads.

How many subscribers use Chinese AI models?

The Information reports that 21% of surveyed subscribers said they used Chinese AI models. The story names DeepSeek and Moonshot’s Kimi K3 as examples of the models in that category and describes Chinese offerings as open-weight alternatives. The figure is a survey result about The Information’s subscriber respondents, not a measure of overall enterprise or consumer adoption.

The report’s available text does not provide the survey’s sample size, field dates, full question wording, or sampling method. Without those details, readers cannot assess the result’s precision or how closely respondents reflect a wider population.

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How does that compare with workplace use of open-source AI?

The report gives two separate figures for open-source AI use at work. They describe different levels of adoption and should not be treated as interchangeable.

Measure reported by The Information Share of surveyed subscribers What it means
Used at least some open-source AI models for work 46% Any workplace use, regardless of how much of a subscriber’s AI workload it represents.
Used open-source models for a majority of AI workloads 20% Open-source models accounted for most of the respondent’s AI workload.

These are figures as reported in Amir Efrati’s article; its publication date and survey methodology are not established in the available text. “Any use” does not mean that open-source models handle most work: the report’s separate majority-of-workloads figure is 20%.

Does “open-weight” mean a model is fully open source?

No such conclusion follows from the report. “Open-weight” describes access to model weights; it does not establish that every model has the same license terms or permits every kind of use. The article does not provide a model-by-model licensing analysis for DeepSeek, Kimi K3, or other offerings. Organizations considering a model should check that model’s own license and terms for their intended use.

What might explain the result—and what are its limits?

Efrati suggests the reported adoption could reflect recent progress in AI models and agents, including their ability to work with other applications, run in the background, and produce better code. These are possible explanations offered in the article, not demonstrated causes of the survey result.

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The Information also cautions that its subscriber audience is weighted toward enterprises with software-development experience. That audience profile matters when interpreting interest in coding-capable tools and open-weight models: the 21% result should not be generalized to all businesses or AI users.

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The article describes Claude and Gemini gaining ground relative to ChatGPT over the preceding year, while saying ChatGPT remained ahead and had recovered some ground in recent months. It also mentions Microsoft Copilot and other tools. These are time-bound observations from the subscriber survey, not independently verified measurements of market share.

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What the survey does—and does not—show

  • It reports: 21% of surveyed subscribers said they used Chinese AI models; 46% said they used at least some open-source models for work; and 20% said open-source models handled a majority of their AI workloads.
  • It does not establish: adoption rates across all enterprises, the general public, or the broader AI market.
  • It does not compare: the named models’ quality, cost, security, or license suitability.

Source: The Information, “Chinese Open Models Win Over One in Five of The Information’s Subscribers,” by Amir Efrati.

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