Silicon Valley's Spiritual Father Kevin Kelly Praises China's Open-Source AI at WAIC: Cost Advantage to Shine When Token Prices Matter

Kevin Kelly, hailed as the 'spiritual father of Silicon Valley,' stated during an interview at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on July 18: 'When the global community begins to care about token consumption costs, China’s open-source AI models will demonstrate significant advantages.'

As the founding editor of Wired magazine, he highly praised China’s exploration into open-source models, saying, 'I’m very happy to see China moving in this direction.'

The renowned futurist pointed out that while the industry is currently not very sensitive to token costs, as AI applications become ubiquitous, cost will become a key decision-making factor. 'If you can reduce costs to one-tenth of Anthropic’s, you can completely disrupt the landscape,' he said.

Kelly also cautioned that open-source models require substantial funding to sustain, as their commercialization potential is weaker than closed-source models. 'Training large models demands enormous financial support,' he emphasized.

Regarding future trends, Kelly predicted: 'If people are unwilling to pay a premium for tokens, cost will become critically important. At that point, because China has open-source models, a wealth of opportunities will flow here.'

Additionally, he specifically praised Shanghai’s innovation incubation environment. He mentioned visiting an incubator housing 300 large-model startups, whose showcased achievements he described as 'very cool.' 'This is just one city—Shanghai—and it’s truly amazing,' he said, noting that such ecosystem vitality is precisely the soil from which innovation emerges.