Top Chinese LLMs in September 2025 | Generated by AI
Here’s an updated view of the top LLMs in China as of September 2025, based on the latest reports and benchmarks. No table comparisons—just a clean, narrative run-through to keep it easy to read:
Leading Chinese LLMs in September 2025
1. DeepSeek-V3 / R1
- DeepSeek-V3 (Mixture-of-Experts design, ~250 B parameters) delivers top-tier performance with efficiency in compute. (Second Talent, Index.dev)
- DeepSeek-R1, its cost-effective, open-source sibling, has turned heads globally for outperforming Western counterparts on reasoning and reasoning-heavy tasks despite a tiny budget. (The Guardian, TIME, The Sun)
2. Qwen Family (Alibaba Cloud)
- Qwen 3 (dense and sparse variants up to 235B parameters, with 128K token context window) released mid–2025, licensed Apache-2.0. (Wikipedia)
- Ranked very high globally—beat many Western models in benchmarks. (Wikipedia, TechWire Asia)
3. Kimi K2 (Moonshot AI)
- Kimi K2, launched July 2025, is a trillion-parameter MoE model (active 32B) with open weights and licensing under a modified MIT license. (Wikipedia)
- Among top models globally; mentioned by technical observers and included among widely used open weights. (Simon Willison’s Weblog, Wikipedia)
4. GLM-4.5 / GLM-4.5V (Zhipu AI / Z.ai)
- GLM-4.5 (SOTA on common benchmarks) released mid–2025; GLM-4.5V, a 106B vision-language model, launched August 2025. (Wikipedia)
- GLM-4.5 is now positioned as a credible cost-effective alternative to Claude, especially within China. (Reuters)
5. Ernie X1 & Ernie 4.5 (Baidu)
- Ernie X1, a reasoning-focused model, and Ernie 4.5, a multimodal model outperforming GPT-4.5 at a fraction of the cost—both introduced in early 2025 and set for open-source release by June. (Business Insider, Wikipedia)
6. Yi (01.AI)
- Yi-34B was recognized early on among top pre-trained base LLMs globally. (Wikipedia)
- Yi-Coder (up to 128K token context length) and Yi-Lightning are optimized for coding and efficiency. (Wikipedia)
7. Wu Dao 3.0, GLM-4 Plus (ChatGLM), Doubao 1.5 Pro, Kimi k1.5
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Earlier-generation but still relevant for certain use cases:
- Wu Dao 3.0
- ChatGLM (GLM-4 Plus)
- Doubao 1.5 Pro
- Kimi k1.5 All are recognized as strong, open-source predecessors with good multilingual and reasoning capabilities. (Index.dev)
8. dots.llm1 (Rednote / Xiaohongshu)
- A newcomer in 2025, released as open-source, performing on par with Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 in coding—but trailing behind DeepSeek-V3. (Reuters)
Quick Summary (Narrative Style)
- DeepSeek-V3 / R1: Chart-topping in both performance and affordability.
- Qwen 3: Alibaba’s flagship open-axis model family dominating benchmarks.
- Kimi K2: Moonshot AI’s MoE, trillion-parameter, open-licensed workhorse.
- GLM-4.5 / 4.5V (Zhipu/Z.ai): SOTA on benchmarks and appealing for Claude migration.
- Baidu’s Ernie X1 & 4.5: Performance-efficient rivals, soon open-source.
- Yi series (01.AI): Efficient, long-context models with strong coding prowess.
- Earlier models (Wu Dao, ChatGLM, etc.): Still doing heavy lifting in specialized contexts.
- dots.llm1: Emerging, notable open model from a social-media player.
Why This Matters
China’s AI scene in 2025 is defined by performance, openness, and cost-effectiveness. Models like DeepSeek and Kimi undercut Western giants on price while maintaining high accuracy; Alibaba’s Qwen family continues to set benchmarks; Zhipu and Baidu increasingly open their innovations. The shift toward open models is accelerating, as Chinese developers and government strategies focus on broad domestic adoption and global competitiveness. (wsj.com, Reuters, Business Insider)