[Stanford Releases 2026 AI Index Report: AI Electricity Demand Reaches Half of Bitcoin Mining] Odaily Planet Daily News: Stanford University has released the '2026 AI Index Report,' which reveals that the current overall electricity demand of AI systems has reached nearly half the scale of Bitcoin mining and is comparable to the national electricity consumption levels of Switzerland or Austria. The report highlights that the gap in AI model capabilities between China and the U.S. is narrowing. In 2025, the U.S. is expected to launch approximately 50 representative models, while China is expected to launch around 30. Institutions such as Anthropic, xAI, Google, OpenAI, Alibaba, and DeepSeek are positioned within the same capability tier. Additionally, China leads in AI paper citation share (20.6%) and patent volume (74.2%), while U.S. private AI investment amounts to $285.9 billion, significantly surpassing China's $12.4 billion.