American open-weight AI models as potential rivals to Chinese models

A September 16, 2026 post quotes Baseten CEO Tuhin Srivastava predicting strong American open-weight models within weeks. He argues that models competitive with Chinese offerings would help dispel fear-driven narratives about America falling behind. Alex Heath’s preview of his interview with Srivastava also explores AI agents using browsers and virtual machines. Heath argues that wider agent adoption should greatly increase demand for inference—the computing needed to run AI models.