Then don't use the cloud-based Chinese providers, use cloud-base US/EU providers using Chinese models. The interesting Chinese models are all open making this issue mostly moot.

Saner companies ask the same question about models from their own country too.

I wonder if I could start a US-based company with good data regulation and just serve open-weight models at a competitive price. I feel like the real barrier is just that most companies willing to adopt AI usage enough to make it worth it at this point don't want to be using inferior models.

You can run DeepSeek as it's open weights, unlike Claude or GPT.

Deepseek has some models in Bedrock. There is definitely a huge market for a "good enough" model running within the country of the company

There are some objections here saying that some US firms are using Chinese AI providers, but I wonder if any of those are subject to compliance. Large firms that are disproportionately responsible for AI spending are all subject to compliance.

Do you trust OpenAI with your code, data, PII? What makes you so sure it's not all part of the next training set anyway?