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Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and chief executive officer of Sinovation Ventures, speaks during the HICOOL Global Entrepreneur Summit on September 11, 2021 in Beijing, China.

BEIJING — Chinese artificial intelligence models may be at least half a year behind those developed in the U.S., but Chinese AI apps will likely take off much faster, said Kai-Fu Lee, former head of Google China.

He was referring to large language models, which are trained on massive amounts of data that can process and produce text, images and videos.

The top Chinese companies' LLMs are about six to nine months behind their U.S. counterparts, while less advanced Chinese models may lag the U.S. by about 15 months, Lee said. He was speaking at the AVCJ Private Equity Forum China on Wednesday.

Lee, author of "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order,“ is a widely followed commentator on AI, and is the founder of startup 01.AI as well as venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures.

"Apps, I would predict, by early next year will proliferate in China much faster than in the U.S.," Lee said, noting that the cost of training a good AI model has fallen significantly.

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