The African firms adopting Chinese AI as US-China rivalry intensifies

African insurtech platform Curacel has added GLM-5.3, a Chinese AI model developed by Beijing-based Zhipu AI, to its infrastructure alongside Western models, citing comparable performance at lower cost for high-volume tasks. CEO Henry Mascot said the multi-model approach lets the company route workloads based on quality and cost without vendor lock-in, reflecting a broader trend of African firms adopting Chinese AI as US-China rivalry intensifies.

The African firms adopting Chinese AI as US-China rivalry intensifies Lower costs, downloadable models and greater language flexibility are helping Chinese AI models gain ground across the continent The United States may want the world to choose sides in the AI race with China, but in Africa, many businesses are pursuing a more pragmatic strategy: using Chinese models where they offer better value or flexibility, while keeping their options open. For example, when African insurtech platform Curacel expanded the range of artificial intelligence AI models powering its internal infrastructure, it did not look only to Silicon Valley. AI-powered claims https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3322228/hong-kong-insurance-leaders-band-together-regional-ai-development-adoption?module=inline&pgtype=article and fraud-detection infrastructure to African insurers and fintech companies – added GLM-5.3, a Chinese model developed by Beijing-based Zhipu AI https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3364356/zhipu-ais-answer-project-glasswing-marks-shift-chinese-cyber-safety-researcher?module=inline&pgtype=article , alongside models from Western providers. Henry Mascot, chief executive and co-founder of Curacel, said Chinese models delivered comparable results at lower cost on high-volume tasks such as coding, data extraction, classification and customer support, although Western systems remained stronger on the most demanding reasoning and reliability-sensitive work. “In our experience, the leading Chinese models have closed much of the performance gap,” Mascot said. He said Curacel’s multi-model set-up allowed it to use GLM-5.3 selectively. “We can route suitable workloads to it based on quality and cost without moving the entire stack or locking ourselves into one vendor,” Mascot said. “We have also used lower-cost Chinese models within client deployments.”