The concept has been dubbed the “splinternet,” and it refers to a future in which the internet is fragmented, governed by separate regulations and run by different services.

A unified definition is still unclear, but one suggestion is that the future could see Chinese and American apps and services each dominate half of the internet. That concept was the topic of much discussion at the
World Economic Forum
in Davos, Switzerland, last month.

And while there may be two internets coming, “it will not be China and the rest of the world. It will be China and countries that adopt Chinese apps, and countries that adopt American apps,” Kaifu Lee, the CEO of China-based venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures, told CNBC at Davos.

“While Chinese apps will have a hard time getting adopted in U.S. and Europe and English-speaking countries, I think they’re proving their rapid acceptance in India, Southeast Asia, South America, Middle East and even a little bit in Africa . So I think in five years, if you look at all the people in the world that took their phone and counted how many Chinese apps and American apps, I’d say it would be fifty-fifty,” added Lee, who prior to his current job was the head of China for GoogleGOOGL.
Both the U.S. and China have been aggressive in developing AI, and recent findings show a split between the U.S and China when it comes to patent filings.

A study from the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published last week found that American firms IBMIBM and MicrosoftMSFT are the two organizations in the world with the most AI-related patent filings. But among research groups and universities, Chinese organizations hold 17 of the top 20 spots in terms of total patent filings.