India, July 3 -- Theft. Rivalry. Restrictions. Espionage. And declarations. The US and China artificial intelligence race has all the trappings of a thriller - one that now appears to be coming to a head.

Released last month by Beijing-based Z.ai, AI model GLM-5.2 has publicly drawn admiration from Silicon Valley. The surrounding buzz is on the model's ability to complete complex tasks with minimal prompts and rivals its US counterparts at a fraction of their cost.

Some have called it a "mini DeepSeek moment", a reference to January 2025, when China released the chatbot that took the US-dominated AI industry and markets world-over by surprise. China, it turned out, could develop cutting edge AI without advanced Nvidia chips - on which U...