Jefferies said in a report that Anthropic's Fable/Mythos 5 has ranked first in the global model intelligence leaderboard, widening the China-US AI capability gap from 8% to 13%. Due to differences in computing resources, the gap may expand further. Fable/Mythos 5 features "anti-distillation" capabilities and has been included in US export controls, which may make it more difficult for China's open-source models to catch up. Meanwhile, Anthropic has doubled its API pricing, while pricing in China continues to decline, which is unhealthy against the backdrop of surging hardware costs.

The broker believes the disparity in computing resources stems from US AI laboratories having greater access to advanced AI chips, including NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US)      's Blackwell series. Although some Chinese AI models are also trained overseas using NVIDIA chips, the number of advanced US AI chips accessible to Chinese companies is expected to remain far below that of their US peers. As NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US)      is set to begin shipping its next-generation Rubin chips in 2H26, the computing gap between China and the US may widen further, potentially expanding the intelligence gap between models.

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Nevertheless, the broker considers the current performance of Chinese AI models sufficient for commercialization. A bigger concern is the continued decline in API pricing alongside a sharp rise in hardware costs. Anthropic has doubled the API price of Fable 5 compared with Opus 4.8. From March to June, average API pricing in the US rose 89%, partly due to higher hardware costs. However, API pricing in China remained stable, and in June it fell 2% MoM after MINIMAX-W (00100.HK)  +21.600 (+5.185%)    Short selling $53.22M; Ratio 6.081%   cut prices by 33%.

The broker added that with memory costs rising sharply, and as China uses Huawei's "Logic Folding" technology to develop its own AI chips at potentially higher costs, hardware expenses will continue to climb. It noted that to achieve an acceptable return on investment in AI, API pricing must rise while token consumption continues to surge. Therefore, price competition among Chinese AI laboratories is currently its biggest concern. (ha/u)(HK stocks quote is delayed for at least 15 mins.Short Selling Data as at 2026-06-16 16:25.) (Real-time Streaming US Stocks Quote; Except All OTC quotes are at least 15 minutes delayed.)

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