China Closes AI Gap with US, Surpassing in Patents and Robot Deployments

China has nearly erased the United States' lead in artificial intelligence (AI), according to a new report from the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). The 2026 AI Index report highlights China's significant advancements in AI bot performance, patents, and robot deployments, signaling a shift in the global AI landscape.

Shrinking Performance Gap

The report reveals that the gap in Arena scores—a metric indicating the relative performance of large language models—between the top AI bots in the U.S. and China has narrowed dramatically. In May 2023, the U.S.'s top model, OpenAI’s GPT-4, led with more than 1,300 Arena points compared to China’s fewer than 1,000. By March 2026, this gap shrank to just 39 Arena points, with the top U.S. model, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6, leading China’s Dola-Seed 2.0 by only 2.7%.

Patents and Publications

While the U.S. still leads in the number of top AI models, with 50 compared to China’s 30, China surpasses the U.S. in publication citations. In 2024, China accounted for 20.6% of AI citations, compared to the U.S.’s 12.6%. Additionally, China dominates in industrial robot installations, with over 295,000 robots, nearly nine times the U.S. count of 34,200.

Investment and Infrastructure

Despite receiving fewer investment dollars and facing wider regulatory constraints, China has made significant strides in AI. Spurred by its 2025 “DeepSeek moment,” China has invested heavily in AI startups, with IPOs in Hong Kong reaching a five-year high of $110 billion across 40 new listings last quarter. The country has also bolstered its electricity infrastructure, adding more electricity demand than the entire consumption of Germany every year, according to David Fishman, a China energy analyst with the Lantau Group.

American Challenges

The U.S. faces challenges in sustaining and growing its AI infrastructure. The American power grid system is vulnerable due to decades of underinvestment, making it susceptible to extreme weather and natural disasters. This bottleneck, as suggested by Goldman Sachs, could stymie AI growth in the U.S. Mohit Kumar, Jefferies global macro strategist, told Fortune, “We believe that China is the big winner in this tech war for a number of reasons: valuation, wider adoption of AI, an advantage in power generation.”

Talent Flow Slows

The momentum swing in China’s favor may be contributing to a slowdown in tech talent entering the U.S. The Stanford report found that the number of AI scholars moving to the U.S. dropped by 89% since 2017, with a 80% acceleration in the past year alone. While more researchers are still entering the U.S. than leaving, the dramatic slowdown in the flow of experts into the country raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of the U.S. AI talent pool.

References

• China has ‘nearly erased’ America’s lead in AI—and the flow of tech experts moving to the U.S. is slowing to a trickle, Stanford report says | Fortune