Chinese AI Models Generate 10% of U.S. Revenue as Valuations Reach 163x Sales
Updated
Updated · CNBC · Sep 17
Chinese AI Models Generate 10% of U.S. Revenue as Valuations Reach 163x Sales
3 articles · Updated · CNBC · Sep 17
Summary
Rhodium Group estimates all major Chinese AI models together generate only about 10% of the annual recurring revenue reported by OpenAI and Anthropic, despite rapid adoption.
OpenAI alone produces about $40 billion in ARR and Anthropic $65 billion, versus $4 billion for ByteDance, $2.4 billion for Alibaba, $1.8 billion for Z.ai, $1 billion for Moonshot and $500 million for DeepSeek.
Those revenue gaps are fueling valuation concerns: Rhodium pegs Moonshot at roughly 50x revenue and DeepSeek at 163x, well above OpenAI's 34x and Anthropic's 21x.
Chinese labs are trying to capture more revenue from third-party access, but their open-source models are cheaper and easier to run independently than mostly closed U.S. rivals.
Rhodium said the financing gap could make it harder for Chinese frontier AI labs to scale sustainably, leaving them reliant on equity markets and limited direct state backing.