Çin yapay zeka şirketleri OpenAI ve Antropik gelirin bir kısmını kazanıyor

China AI companies earn fraction of OpenAI, Anthropic revenue

Thu, September 17, 2026 at 3:13 PM GMT+3 2 min read

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China's major artificial intelligence companies together generate only about 10% of the revenue that OpenAI alone reports, according to a new analysis from Rhodium Group that raises questions about how investors are valuing the country's AI startups.

Rhodium Group published estimates on Thursday using annual recurring revenue, an industry metric calculated by multiplying a recent monthly revenue figure by 12. OpenAI's ARR stands at $40 billion, while Anthropic's reaches $65 billion, the firm said. Among Chinese companies, ByteDance led with $4 billion, followed by Alibaba at $2.4 billion. Z.AI told investors on Wednesday its ARR was $1.8 billion, according to a transcript seen by CNBC. Moonshot's ARR was $1 billion, MiniMax's was $800 million, and DeepSeek's was $500 million.

The gap is starker when set against the valuations investors have placed on Chinese AI startups. Rhodium Group estimated that Moonshot carries a valuation-to-revenue ratio of 50x and DeepSeek one of 163x — both well above OpenAI's 34x and Anthropic's 21x. "Valuations relative to revenue appear exorbitant for Moonshot and DeepSeek at present," the report said.

Logan Wright, a partner at Rhodium Group who co-authored the report with research analyst Endeavour Tian, said the funding shortfall creates a structural problem for Chinese AI labs. "The financing gap means it will be far more difficult for Chinese frontier AI labs to scale sustainably," Wright said in a statement to CNBC. "They will be heavily dependent upon a favorable climate in the equity market — historically that's not an easy bet in China."

Rhodium also observed that Chinese AI labs are seeking new ways to monetize access by third parties, noting that the open-source nature of these models lets anyone with adequate hardware operate them without going through the original developer. American AI models are predominantly closed-source, and per-task pricing for top U.S. models runs higher than what Chinese models charge, per AI-comparison firm Artificial Analysis.

Several of the companies covered in the report are moving toward public markets. Moonshot filed confidentially for a Hong Kong IPO and is aiming to raise $3 billion, according to Reuters. DeepSeek has engaged CITIC Securities to prepare for a listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, also according to Reuters. OpenAI has delayed its IPO to next year, while Anthropic is reportedly on track to go public in the U.S. next month, per CNBC.

Rhodium noted a key limitation of its study: the figures reflect data available as of this summer, a period when Chinese AI adoption was still climbing from a relatively low starting point earlier in the year. Z.AI told investors Wednesday that it has raised its year-end ARR target to $3 billion, compared with the $2.4 billion it had previously projected. Z.AI shares were up more than 5% in early Thursday trading.