Lowy Institute: US leads China in AI, with nearly 40 times the data-centre compute

Nov 8, 2026
The Lowy Institute's Asia Power Snapshot finds the US ahead of China on compute, models and adoption, while China leads on critical minerals and open-model downloads.

The United States leads China in the AI race, according to an Asia Power Snapshot published by the Lowy Institute on 8 November. The Australian think tank compared the two countries on 14 indicators across resources, technology, AI capabilities and AI adoption. US AI data centres have nearly 40 times the combined computing power of China's, and US AI chips 31 times.

Top US models outperform China's best, consistent with claims of a six-to-nine-month lead, though the margin is narrowing. On Arena, Google's Gemini 4 Carbon ranks first among US models with an estimated 1528, while China's top model, Moonshot's Kimi K3, scores about 1488 and sits 19th. US models also draw more than 90 percent of combined traffic to US and Chinese AI websites.

China leads in critical minerals and open models. It leads production of 30 of the 60 minerals on the US critical list, against eight for the United States, and Chinese models took 78 percent of the two countries' combined Hugging Face downloads in the third quarter. Six Asian countries belong to the US-led Pax Silica framework and eight to China's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization; none belongs to both.

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