Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says confidence in American AI technology and its strong training ecosystem will keep it competitive against Chinese products. Nadella was speaking with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on an episode of “GPS on CNN” that aired Sunday. Zakaria asked Nadella if Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 – a model that disrupted US tech stocks
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says confidence in American AI technology and its strong training ecosystem will keep it competitive against Chinese products.
Nadella was speaking with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on an episode of “GPS on CNN” that aired Sunday. Zakaria asked Nadella if Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 – a model that disrupted US tech stocks – and Chinese technologies have an advantage over US products, because they are “much cheaper” and can do what most companies need.
Nadella responded that the United States has taken an “ecosystem approach” to shore up the competitiveness of its digital sector.
“It’s about trust in our technology, right? So, for example, if we take the Chinese models, guess where these models are running? They’re running on a lot of hyperscalers, which are American, around the world,” Nadella said.
He added that because the Chinese models are open weight, American companies can monitor, test and train them later.
“I think one of the things that gets lost in this is understanding even how the United States became competitive in the first place,” Nadella said.
“We became competitive because we took our technology, built a rich ecosystem where others could participate, in other countries, and trust our management of this ecosystem,” he added. “And as long as that continues, we will be absolutely competitive and we will win.”
Microsoft has a lot riding on the AI game in the United States. The tech giant owns about 27% of the for-profit public benefit corporation OpenAI.
American artificial intelligence companies face fierce competition from Chinese rivals, some of which have launched explosive products that have rattled tech stocks.
Last year, the emergence of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek sparked a $1 trillion technology selloff, one of the first major signs that China could rival America’s AI capabilities at a much lower cost.
In July, Moonshot AI’s new AI model, Kimi K3, made waves in the tech sphere for its coding, reasoning, and knowledge-working capabilities, all of which could rival those of models from Anthropic and OpenAI.