Six Chinese AI Firms' Annual Revenue Is Estimated at $11 Billion

A September estimate put six Chinese AI companies' annual revenue at $11 billion, while open-source models accounted for more than 70% of token use on OpenRouter.

The Chinese total included DeepSeek and Zhipu AI, along with cloud-computing and other related-business revenue from Alibaba and ByteDance. ByteDance led the group at $4 billion. The $11 billion estimate was about one-tenth of OpenAI and Anthropic's combined $105 billion.

As of Sept. 16, eight companies offered Zhipu AI's GLM-5 through OpenRouter. Outside services accounted for 75% of its token calls in the prior 24 hours.

For DeepSeek V4 Pro, external providers made up about 70% of token use over the same period. Some services offered the model at prices 87% below official rates. The usage figures track model activity and access, while the revenue comparison measures income attributed to companies.