A new open-source model from Mistral AI is shaking things up in the tech world. This groundbreaking model outperforms comparable models like Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini, delivering inference speeds of 150 tokens per second. Mistral Small 3.1 surpasses the performance of leading small proprietary models across dimensions such as handling text, understanding multimodal inputs, supporting multiple languages, and managing long contexts, all that with low latency and cost efficiency.
Shifting focus to China, Tencent has recently captured attention with its suite of new artificial intelligence tools capable of converting text and images into 3D visuals. The company has released five open-source models based on its Hunyuan3D-2.0 technology, including “turbo” versions that can generate 3D visuals within 30 seconds while maintaining high precision and quality.
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Like many other Chinese firms, Tencent is advancing China’s position in the AI arms race by expanding its capital expenditures. According to Tencent President Martin Lau, capital spending would rise to the “low teens” as a percentage of revenue, and artificial intelligence will be a key focus of strategic investments.
“We will continue to increase our AI investments, increasing investment in our proprietary Hunyuan model while expanding our contributions in multimodal and open-source capabilities.” –Martin Lau.
Meanwhile, once an AI leader in China, Baidu is also striving hard to regain its position in the tech world. The company has released two new free-to-use artificial intelligence models, including its first reasoning-focused model. The move comes ahead of its plans to move toward an open-source strategy.
According to an article by The Financial Times on why China is suddenly flooding the markets with AI models, retaliation appears to be the driving force. When the US tightened its grip on advanced artificial intelligence technologies in January, it blocked off China’s access to advanced AI chips and locked proprietary models behind trade barriers.
Even though it seemed that China would retaliate by doubling down on secrecy, it’s doing quite the opposite, and with good reason. Chinese tech groups are seemingly creating an ecosystem where developers can continuously revamp their models. Provided open-source becomes powerful enough, there would be no reason to pay for closed models if free, equally capable alternatives exist.
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10. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 60
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is a multinational technology company and a pioneer in artificial intelligence, offering AI consulting services and a suite of AI software products. On March 18, the company announced a new collaboration with NVIDIA, including planned new integrations based on the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, to enhance enterprise AI capabilities.
These collaborations and integrations will help enterprises leverage data effectively to help build, scale, and manage generative AI workloads and agentic AI applications. The new storage capabilities for unstructured data, planned integrations with Watsonx, and IBM consulting capabilities for agentic reasoning and other AI workloads aim to accelerate AI at scale. The end goal is to create an intelligent, scalable system that supports real-time AI processing and develops more responsive and interactive applications.
“IBM is focused on helping enterprises build and deploy effective AI models and scale with speed. Together, IBM and NVIDIA are collaborating to create and offer the solutions, services and technology to unlock, accelerate, and protect data – ultimately helping clients overcome AI’s hidden costs and technical hurdles to monetize AI and drive real business outcomes.”
-Hillery Hunter, CTO and General Manager of Innovation, IBM Infrastructure.
9. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 77
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a leader in AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection. On March 18, the company announced that it is collaborating with Nvidia to advance agentic AI in cybersecurity. The company announced groundbreaking agentic AI innovations built on NVIDIA AI software, leading the next generation of cybersecurity. By utilizing Nvidia’s NIM microservices, CrowdStrike Charlotte AI Detection Triage was able to automate detection triage at 2x the speed of its initial launch with 50% fewer compute resources, dropping alert fatigue and maximizing SOC efficiency.
These AI innovations and initiatives from CrowdStrike that are accelerated by NVIDIA AI software and tools aim to deliver faster triage, enable smarter threat detection, and provide AI-driven security automation. In addition, the partnership will also explore NVIDIA Llama Nemotron reasoning models to enhance detection accuracy, enabling security teams to halt attacks with greater speed and precision.
“The future of cybersecurity is agentic AI—where advanced reasoning models power intelligent automation to work seamlessly with human analysts to stop breaches faster than ever. By combining CrowdStrike’s AI-native Falcon platform with NVIDIA AI, we’re working to deliver the next evolution in security operations. This is just the beginning—together, we’re redefining how organizations scale, secure and accelerate their defenses with the power of agentic AI.”
-Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike.
