The real AI race may no longer be at the frontier | TechCrunch0

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• July 15, 2026

For several weeks this summer, the AI ​​industry was obsessed with Anthropic’s latest frontier models and Washington’s fight to control who was granted access to them. But while everyone was watching the frontier, developers kept building, and they weren’t waiting for permission from the Anthropics and OpenAIs of the world. Chinese open-weight models accounted for