Chinese authorities have held meetings with top tech firms over the past month about potentially restricting overseas access to China's most advanced AI models, including those yet to be released, three people familiar with the discussions said. The talks follow a number of steps by Beijing to keep homegrown AI within the country and underscore how China, like the U.S., is now treating cutting-edge artificial intelligence as a critical national asset that needs controls. Companies present at the talks included tech giants Alibaba and ByteDance as well as startup Z.ai, said the people, who were not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified. Since the emergence of DeepSeek's R1 model last year, Chinese AI models have made big inroads globally thanks to their low costs and increasing capabilities. Any decision by Beijing to limit access to those products could ripple across AI markets as costs for many businesses would likely increase.