Which Country Is Leading the Global Race for AI Supremacy?

As the worldwide competition to be at the forefront of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) intensifies, recent statistics reveal that the contest is no longer between just two key players.

The United States is still in the lead but China is closing the performance gap and

Europe is also making progress.

as indicated in a recent report from Stanford University.

In 2024, US-based institutions developed 40 significant AI models, compared to China which created 15, and Europe which generated only three.

Even though many were created, the 2025 Stanford Artificial Intelligence Index assessed various metrics and discovered that Chinese models nearly matched U.S. standards in two key areas: Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU), which gauges an AI’s grasp of information and problem-solving skills; and HumanEval, which measures proficiency in coding tasks.

“As tight as can be, with nobody taking the lead,” stated the researchers from Stanford University in their report.

The outcomes arrive as international leaders assert that conquering the AI competition is essential for national security and progress in healthcare, commerce, and tech.

At the same time, firms like OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek, along with numerous competitors, are competing fiercely to develop superior AI systems.

Catch up

When OpenAI’s ChatGPT went viral in late 2022, only it and Google had pioneering AI tech. But fast forward to today and other US companies, such as

Meta

,

Elon Musk’s xAI

and

Anthropic

The report indicated that they are closing the gap.

Another set of benchmarks indicated that China’s DeepSeek R1 model was the closest to those developed by OpenAI and Google.

In January, DeepSeek ignited excitement with the release of R1, their AI model and chatbot. The company asserted that this technology was more cost-effective and performed comparably to OpenAI’s competing product, ChatGPT.

According to the report, the leading contributors of prominent machine learning models in 2024 included OpenAI with seven models, Google with six, and China’s Alibaba with four.

France’s Mistral AI secured the eighth spot with three models to their name.

Most patents

A sign that the AI competition is intensifying can be seen in the surge of AI-related publications and patent filings, highlighting China’s significant lead over the United States in this area.

The study revealed that by 2023, China was at the forefront with regard to total AI patents, representing nearly 70 percent of all granted patents. Following closely behind was South Korea in the second position, while Luxembourg claimed the third spot and notably emerged as the leading country in terms of AI patents per person.

The report also noted that AI model development is becoming more of a global effort, with significant releases coming from areas like the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.