US and China AI release cycles shorten as AI takes on more R&D work

Nikkei found the average gap between upgraded high-performance model releases among five US and four Chinese developers fell from 125 days (January 2023 to March 2026) to 44 days (April to September 2026).

Anthropic said its Claude AI led 26% of its R&D efforts as of August and was involved in more than 90% of R&D activities, while OpenAI reported AI agents working more hours than human researchers in August.