AI models built outside the US and China are nearly a year behind

Village's LLM Atlas, which scores 857 models on one capability scale, finds that since 2024 the best models from outside the US and China have trailed US models by a median of 9.9 months, versus 5.2 months for China. South Korea and Mistral are closest at about 10 months behind, while India's Sarvam 30B scores where US models were 28 months earlier. Labs outside the two countries released about 20 of the models Atlas ranks from 2026, against 113 from the US and 79 from China.