Afflatus

An archived thesis, with inspectable relationships

ARCHIVE · Chapters describe a published view of the AI ecosystem. A page refresh does not verify today's companies or markets. Read source dates before using a claim.

ASSUMPTIONS · Relationship weights and scenario valuations are editorial inputs, not measured correlations or observed returns. Measurements retain their stated units and historical windows.

Read relationships without the graph ↓
AFFLATUS INTELLIGENCE BRIEF · 29 JUL 2026

The model war is no longer open versus closed.
It is price, power and distribution.

Kimi K3 did not erase America's lead. It broke the assumption that near-frontier intelligence must be rented from an American API — and forced every listed AI proxy to prove where its scarcity really lives.

PRIMARY VERDICT MODEL MARGIN ↓ TOKEN VOLUME ↑ CAPEX PROOF ↑
01 / KIMI K3

Read the architecture before trading the headline

The fork, upstream repository, license and 47-page technical report were reviewed together. Marketing claims are labelled; infrastructure consequences are separated from benchmark results.

COST FRONTIER · REPORT FIGURE 13

Capability is converging faster than cost

US–China AI competition · rivalry, co-existence, dependency
US–CHINA AI COMPETITION · VERIFIED CONNECTIONS

Two ecosystems. One supply chain.

Scroll to let the divide draw itself: the US bloc settles left in blue, the Chinese bloc right in red, and the suppliers both sides depend on sit on the line. Tap or click a logo to inspect its products and verified relationships; desktop users can also pan or reposition nodes. Zoom is intentionally disabled.

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01

The frontier goes multipolar.

Both blocs light up at once. Claude Opus 5 launched 24 July 2026 and tops the independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 61, ahead of Fable 5 at 60 and GPT-5.6 Sol at 59 — while Moonshot's Kimi K3 sits within four points of the leader. The capability spread that ran past 30 points in 2023 is now measured in single digits.

02

Capital picks ecosystems, not isolated models.

US private AI investment runs roughly 23 times China's, partly offset by state-guided funds on the other side. Alibaba's disclosed Moonshot stake, cloud-linked frontier investments and the 25-member open-weight coalition show how capital, policy and distribution now move as one bloc-level decision.

03

Every model lands on a chokepoint.

Cloud capacity flows through accelerators and custom silicon into HBM, DRAM and advanced packaging — and the lines that cross the meridian are the dependency. Advanced AI-processor die capacity still runs about 35–38× in the US bloc's favour on a quality-adjusted basis, which is why capability convergence has not closed the compute gap.

04

One system, two blocs, open for inspection.

The full network is now visible. Select any branded node to trace primary products and source-backed investment, platform and compute-supply relationships across the divide — then read the measured comparison below.

Relationship evidence

Graph archive metadata unavailable until loaded.

Open graph archive dataset
02 / FRONTIER LABS

Ten laboratories enter. Two industrial systems leave.

This is not a logo wall. Each lab is scored on capability, deployment economics, distribution, compute security and weight portability — the five vectors that determine whether a model becomes a business.

03 / MARKET TRANSMISSION

K3 was a catalyst. It was not the whole selloff.

A four-window event study separates the pre-existing valuation unwind, the K3 narrative shock, China's scarcity-premium reset and the later cash-conversion selloff.

THE NEXT 12–24 MONTHS

How value migrates through the stack

04 / 10 × 10 PUBLIC MARKET BOARD

Twenty listed instruments, repriced by the layer they own

No unlisted proxy is smuggled into the ranking. China now includes the verified HKEX codes for Z.ai and MiniMax; every fair-value band states the denominator it uses.

05 / OPEN-WEIGHTS LETTER AUDIT

Who signed, who joined, and whose absence matters

All 50 companies visible in the supplied screenshot are transcribed below and compared with the archived NVIDIA-hosted PDF snapshot. A signature supports policy portability; it does not prove that the signer publishes frontier weights.

06 / POST-MEMORY ERA

Ten theses after the model scarcity premium

Each thesis states what to own and what would invalidate it. The aim is a falsifiable portfolio framework, not a pile of bullish cards.

Source ledger & methodology