With China in Apple's AI Cart, Competition Set to Heat Up

Apple has secured Chinese regulatory approval to deploy Apple Intelligence on iPhones using Alibaba's Qwen LLM as the technical partner, with the capability set to roll out across iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS. The move forces Apple to redesign its AI strategy around on-device processing and local partnerships, fundamentally diverging from its global approach and intensifying competition with Huawei in China's use-case-driven AI market. Apple just bet its China strategy on Alibaba's models instead of its own, which means on-device AI startups now have a wedge: prove you can run better locally and you're a buy for either Apple or Huawei before they lock down the stack. The real fight in China is no longer about model size—it's about who owns the silicon-to-OS pipeline, and that's open season for deeptech founders.