AI Reports · Epoch AI · 2026-10-06 · Blog / commentary
How do Chinese AI companies make money?
As of September 2026, China's six leading AI firms together earn about 10% of the AI-related revenue of OpenAI and Anthropic combined. Consumer apps have low gross margins, and API margins are limited because model weights are publicly released. Enterprise and government solutions earn meaningful profits but are hard to scale; Z.ai's on-premise share of revenue fell from 73.7% to 13.5% between 2025 and H1 2026.