AI Around The World In 2026

Stanford HAI and a panel of experts say AI progress is still accelerating in 2026, while the U.S.-China performance gap has narrowed.

The biggest advantages are shifting from model quality alone to compute, chips, data centers, and access to capital.

Control of the supply chain — from Nvidia H100 GPUs to Taiwanese foundries and cloud providers like AWS — is becoming a key strategic chokepoint.

The findings suggest global AI leadership is increasingly multipolar, with major implications for national security and economic competition.