The World AI Conference in Shanghai delivered exactly the kind of news Wall Street didn’t want to hear. On July 17, Chinese AI firms unveiled a wave of powerful new models that immediately sent US tech stocks into retreat, with the Nasdaq dropping 1.4%, the S&P 500 falling 1%, and the Dow sliding 0.77%.
Semiconductor stocks got hit even harder. The sector declined 1.6% on the day, marking a 20% drop from its late-June peak, which officially puts it in bear territory.
What China actually announced
Two announcements dominated the conference. Moonshot AI launched its Kimi K3 open-source model, which the company claims is closing the performance gap with Anthropic’s Claude, one of the leading US AI systems. The key word there is “open-source,” meaning anyone can access and build on it without paying subscription fees.
MiniMax, valued at over $5 billion in recent funding rounds, unveiled its M3 multimodal model. The standout feature is a 1-million-token context window designed for enterprise applications.
