China AI Index

Your go-to intelligence source for China's AI ecosystem — models, funding & news, all in one place

134 articles · last updated 09:48 AM

DeepSeek Industry Jun 30, 2026 AUTO

After triggering price war, DeepSeek reverses course with surcharge on peak-hour API use

DeepSeek

↗ South China Morning Post

Industry Industry Jun 30, 2026 AUTO

China's AI capex to triple to 2030 amid aggressive power infrastructure spending: BofA

↗ CNBC

Tencent Funding Jun 30, 2026 AUTO

Tencent Ramps Up Buybacks as Share Rout Wipes Out $309 Billion

FundingTencent

↗ Bloomberg

Industry Industry Jun 30, 2026 AUTO

How South Korea’s AI megaprojects aim to ‘maintain edge’ over China, meet demand

↗ South China Morning Post

Alibaba Industry Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Alibaba, Tencent Dropped by DC Lobbyists to Comply With US Curbs

Alibaba

↗ Bloomberg

Industry Policy Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Taiwan Raids Super Micro in Widening China Chip Smuggling Probe

Policy

↗ Bloomberg

Industry Industry Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Watch The US-China AI Arms Race Could Be Heading Towards a ‘Chernobyl Moment’

↗ WIRED

Baidu Product Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Baidu’s CFO on the Company’s Approach to Recruiting Young Talent

ProductBaidu

↗ Bloomberg

Industry Industry Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

China warns popular phone games may provide map data to train foreign military AI models

↗ South China Morning Post

Industry Industry Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

China Pushes All School Levels to Teach AI in Xi’s Tech Drive

↗ Bloomberg

Industry Policy Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Top China chip toolmakers consolidate to build national champions, defy US curbs

Policy

↗ South China Morning Post

Baidu Industry Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Baidu's CFO on How It Became a Full-Stack AI Player | Odd Lots

Baidu

↗ Bloomberg

Baidu Funding Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Baidu shares jump 7% as AI chip arm Kunlunxin said to target $50 billion Hong Kong IPO

FundingBaidu

↗ CNBC

Industry Model Release Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

China’s first AI-powered cancer vaccine production line set to launch in Beijing

Model Release

↗ South China Morning Post

Industry Industry Jun 29, 2026 AUTO

Why brokers believe China’s AI-driven stock run will find fresh legs

↗ South China Morning Post

Industry Industry Jun 28, 2026 AUTO

China, India See Top Firms Lose Market Cap Share in AI Lag

↗ Bloomberg

Industry Industry Jun 28, 2026 AUTO

Chinese AI Matches Mythos in Cybersecurity, Report Says

↗ The Information

Tencent Product Jun 28, 2026 AUTO

Tencent Trials TenPayGo Pay App as Foreign Visits to China Rise

ProductTencent

↗ Bloomberg

Industry Funding Jun 27, 2026 AUTO

China’s AI-powered laser mosquito zapper goes viral after crowdfunding success

Funding

↗ South China Morning Post

Industry Industry Jun 27, 2026 AUTO

As China’s tech firms adapt to AI era, workers worry they’ll be ‘optimised’ out of a job

↗ South China Morning Post

Cambricon

🔵 Public — 688256.SH 📍 Beijing 📅 Founded 2016 👥 ~1,000

China's leading AI chip designer. Produces the MLU-series (Siyuan line) cloud accelerator chips used in domestic AI training and inference clusters. Listed on the Shanghai STAR Market in 2020.

↗ Website

Model Portfolio

Financing

Data compiled from public sources and fact checked by Tony Peng with the assistance of AI Stock prices and market cap figures are approximate historical ranges — not real-time quotes..

FY2025 Revenue

¥6.5B

~$900M USD

FY2025 Net Profit

¥2.06B

First profitable year

Market Cap

~¥443B

~$60B USD, April 2026

Exchanges: STAR Market: 688256

Listed on Shanghai STAR Market in July 2020. Achieved first annual profit in FY2025 after years of losses. Q1 2026 revenue up 160% YoY. Market cap surged to ~¥443B ($60B) in 2026.

Funding History

↗ Source: STAR Market / Cambricon Financials

Products & Applications

Company Newsfeed

ByteDance Industry Jun 15, 2026 ✎ PICK

ByteDance in Talks to Buy 50,000 AI Inference Chips From China's Iluvatar CoreX

ByteDance is negotiating to purchase at least 50,000 inference GPUs from Shanghai startup Iluvatar CoreX — potentially its third domestic GPU supplier after Huawei and Cambricon — as it scales its Doubao chatbot and reduces dependence on Nvidia amid US export controls.

ByteDance

↗ Reuters

Key People

Chen Tianshi

陈天石

Co-founder & CEO

AI Chips View full chip database ↗

Chip	Role	Peak Compute	Memory Tech	Capacity	Bandwidth	Interconnect Bandwidth	TDP	Process	Status	Highlights
MLU590	Training / Inference	345 TFLOPS FP16 / FP8 support	HBM2e	64 GB	1.2 TB/s	—	300 W	TSMC 7nm	Production	Cambricon's flagship (2023) with FP8 support. Drove the company to its first profit.
MLU690	Training	H100-class target	—	—	—	—	—	—	Planned	In development. Targets H100-class performance.

All Models

Compare models across all 31 Chinese AI companies

Company ↕	Model ↕	Type ↕	Released ▼	Context ↕	Input Price ↕	Output Price ↕	Highlights
Zhipu AI (Z.ai)	GLM-5.2 Open	Text	2026-06	1M	$1.40/1M tokens	$4.40/1M tokens	753B params; Rolled out to all GLM Coding Plan tiers (Lite/Pro/Max/Team); standalone API + MIT open weights
MiniMax	MiniMax M3 Open	Multimodal	2026-06	1M	$0.30/1M tokens	$1.20/1M tokens	428B params (23B active); 1-million-token context window; novel attention mechanism called MSA; native multimodality
Moonshot AI	Kimi-K2.7-Code Open	Code	2026-06	256K	$0.95/1M tokens	$4.00/1M tokens	1T total params / 32B active, 384 experts, ~30% lower reasoning-token usage vs K2.6
StepFun	Step 3.7 Flash Open	Multimodal	2026-06	256K	$0.2/1M tokens	$1.15/1M tokens	198B total / 11B active params; 1.8B ViT vision encoder; 3 reasoning levels (low/med/high); ~400 TPS; Apache 2.0; supports NVIDIA NIM on-prem deployment
Meituan	LongCat-2.0 Open	Text	2026-06	1M			1.6T para + MoE; trained on 50,000 domestic Chinese chips; next-gen flagship
Alibaba	Qwen3.7-Max Closed	Text	2026-05	1M	$2.50/1M tokens	$7.50/1M tokens	Flagship closed-source reasoning model. Ranked #1 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (57/100) out of 218 models at release. 1M token context window. Text-only (no multimodal). Architecture reportedly dual-72B. Extended thinking / chain-of-thought mode. Released May 19, 2026.
Baidu	ERNIE 5.1 Closed	Text	2026-05	128K	$0.59/1M tokens	$2.65/1M tokens	MoE successor to ERNIE 5.0. ~⅓ total params, ~½ active params, 6% of pre-training cost. AIME 2026: 99.6% with tool use (#2 globally). Arena Search: 1,223 (#4 global, #1 China). Released May 9, 2026.
Baichuan AI	Baichuan-M4 Closed	Text	2026-05	—			Medical AI flagship (May 2026). World #1 on HealthBench, HealthBench Hard & HealthBench Professional. Hallucination rate 3.3% — industry low via factuality-aware RL. Surpasses GPT-5.5, Opus 4.7, DeepSeek-V4-Pro. Powers 百小医 AI family doctor.
ModelBest	MiniCPM-V 4.6 Open	Multimodal	2026-05	260K			1.3B multimodal model (SigLip2 + Qwen3.5-0.8B). 260K token context. Runs on consumer phones (iOS/Android/HarmonyOS). Launched May 2026.
ModelBest	MiniCPM5-1B Open	Text	2026-05	128K			1B language model with 128K token context. SOTA on-device LLM at its size class. Apache 2.0.
Zhipu AI (Z.ai)	GLM-5.1 Open	Text	2026-04	200K	$0.98/1M tokens	$3.08/1M tokens	754B flagship — top scores on AIME 2026 (95.3) and GPQA-Diamond (86.2); strong agentic and coding ability
MiniMax	MiniMax-M2.7 Open	Agent	2026-04	1M tokens	$0.28/1M tokens	$1.20/1M tokens	229B MoE; self-evolving agent — 30% perf gain over 100+ rounds; agent teams, complex skills, 24/7 background agents
Moonshot AI	Kimi K2.6 Open	Multimodal	2026-04	256K	$0.60/1M tokens	$2.50/1M tokens	1T MoE (32B active), 256K ctx; native multimodal agentic — top SWE-Bench (80.2) and AIME 2026 (96.4)
DeepSeek	DeepSeek-V4-Pro Open	Text	2026-04	1M	$0.435/1M tokens	$0.87/1M tokens	Flagship MoE: 1.6T total / 49B active params, 1M context, FP4+FP8 precision, built-in Think/Non-Think reasoning modes. Codeforces rating 3206.
DeepSeek	DeepSeek-V4-Flash Open	Text	2026-04	1M	$0.14/1M tokens	$0.28/1M tokens	Efficient MoE: 284B total / 13B active params, 1M context. Same architecture as V4-Pro at far lower compute cost. Codeforces 2816.
Baidu	ERNIE-Image Open	Image Gen	2026-04	—	$0.03/image		8B single-stream Diffusion Transformer (DiT). Best text rendering in open source (LongTextBench: 0.9733). Up to 4K output. Apache 2.0. Released Apr 15, 2026.
Ant Group	Ring-2.6-1T Open	Reasoning	2026-04	262K	$0.075/1M tokens	$0.625/1M tokens	1T total params, ~63B active per token; adaptive reasoning via high / xhigh modes; up to 66K output tokens; open weights (MIT); released May 8 2026; free tier available on OpenRouter
Ant Group	Ling-2.6-1T Open	Text	2026-04	262K	$0.075/1M tokens	$0.625/1M tokens	1T total params, ~63B active per token; fast thinking approach cuts token cost to ~1/4 of comparable models; open weights (MIT); released Apr 23 2026; free tier available on OpenRouter via Novita AI
Ant Group	Ling-2.6-flash Open	Text	2026-04	262K	$0.10/1M tokens	$0.30/1M tokens	Efficient sparse MoE: 104B total / 7.4B active, hybrid linear attention. 340 tokens/s on 4× H20. Strong agent and tool-use performance.
Tencent	Hy3-preview Closed	Text	2026-04	256K	¥1.2/1M tokens	¥4.0/1M tokens	295B MoE (21B active); reasoning, coding, and agentic workloads. Via Tencent Cloud TokenHub. Released Apr 23, 2026.
Xiaomi	MiMo-V2.5-Pro Open	Text	2026-04	1M	$0.0036/1M tokens	$0.087/1M tokens	1.02T MoE, 42B active; KV-cache reduced ~7×; latest generation
Xiaomi	MiMo-V2-Pro Closed	Text	2026-03	1M	$0.0036/1M tokens	$0.087/1M tokens	1T+ MoE, 42B active; hybrid attention; 1M token context
Unitree Robotics	UnifoLM-VLA-0 Open	Embodied	2026-03	N/A			Vision-Language-Action model enabling the G1 humanoid to autonomously perform household tasks from natural language commands. Runs onboard the robot. Open-sourced March 2026 — Unitree's first AI model release.
Kunlun Tech	SkyReels V4 Closed	Video Gen	2026-03	—			Audio-visual creation model (Mar 2026). Dual-stream architecture; #1 globally on Text-to-Video (With Audio) and Image-to-Video (With Audio) tracks at release. Generates clips up to 3 minutes.
Kunlun Tech	Mureka V9 Closed	Audio	2026-03	—			Music generation model (Mar 2026). Paragraph-level text control; enhanced mixing quality, vocal expression, and style richness.
Kunlun Tech	Matrix-Game 3.0 Closed	Text	2026-03	—			Physics-simulation interactive world model (Mar 2026). 5B params; 720P @ 40FPS; covers 1,000+ scenarios with Unreal Engine data. Industrial-grade real-time interactivity.
ByteDance	Seed2.0 Pro Closed	Multimodal	2026-02	272K	$0.47/1M tokens	$2.37/1M tokens	ByteDance's flagship multimodal model. Understands text, image, and video. Ranks #3 globally on LMSYS Vision Arena and #6 on overall text arena. AIME 2025: 98.3, SWE-bench: 76.5%.
ByteDance	Seedream 5.0 Lite Closed	Image Gen	2026-02	—	$0.026/image		Unified multimodal image generation with chain-of-thought visual reasoning, real-time web search, and native editing. Supports up to 14 reference images. Up to 4K output at 2048×2048.
ByteDance	Seedance 2.0 Closed	Video Gen	2026-02	—			Unified audio-video joint generation model. Accepts text, image, video, and audio inputs; outputs native 2K video (up to 15s) with synchronized audio. 30% faster than Seedance 1.5 Pro.
Alibaba	Qwen3.5 Open	Multimodal	2026-02	262K (1M w/ YaRN)			Unified vision-language MoE family. Flagship: 35B-A3B (35B total / 3B active) and 397B-A17B. Thinking mode on by default. Supports image, video, text input. 201 languages. Apache 2.0.
Alibaba	Qwen3-Coder-Next Open	Code	2026-02	256K			80B total / 3B active MoE coding agent. Excels at long-horizon agentic tasks, tool use, and IDE integration (Claude Code, Cline, Qwen Code). No thinking mode.
Zhipu AI (Z.ai)	GLM-5 Open	Text	2026-02	200K	$1.40/1M tokens	$4.40/1M tokens	754B MoE (40B active); 28.5T token pre-training; top-tier SWE-bench score of 77.8
MiniMax	MiniMax-M2.5 Open	Agent	2026-02	1M tokens	$0.30–$1.00/hr	$0.30–$1.00/hr	229B; SOTA SWE-Bench (80.2); 80% of MiniMax's own code generated by this model; M2.5-Lightning at 100 tok/s
Baidu	ERNIE 5.0 Closed	Multimodal	2026-02	128K			2.4 trillion parameter unified multimodal (text + image + video + audio) in a single autoregressive framework. LMArena Text: 1,460 (#1 China, #8 global); Vision: 1,226 (#1 China, #8 global). Released Feb 6, 2026.
Ant Group	LingBot-VLA Open	Embodied	2026-02				Open-source VLA foundation model trained on ~20,000 hours of real-world dual-arm robot data across 9 embodiments
Ant Group	Ring-2.5-1T Open	Text	2026-02	256K			World's first open-source 1T-parameter thinking model. Gold medal level at IMO 2025 (35/42 pts) and CMO 2025 (105/126). 3× throughput for sequences >32K.
Ant Group	Ming-flash-omni-2.0 Open	Multimodal	2026-02	—			Any-to-any omni model: accepts image, text, video, and audio; outputs image, text, and audio. 100B total / 6B active MoE. Supports zero-shot voice cloning and image generation/editing.
Ant Group	LLaDA-2.1-flash Open	Multimodal	2026-02	—			Novel diffusion-based language model — not autoregressive. 103B params. Generates text by iterative token editing rather than left-to-right decoding. 102K monthly downloads.
Baichuan AI	Baichuan-M3 Open	Text	2026-02	—			235B medical model (Feb 2026) built on Qwen3 architecture. Former world #1 on HealthBench. Hallucination rate 3.5%. Outperforms human doctors in diagnostic accuracy. 48GB VRAM with W4 quantization.
Moonshot AI	Kimi K2.5 Open	Multimodal	2026-01	256K	$0.40/1M tokens	$1.90/1M tokens	1T MoE (32B active); trained on 15T vision+text tokens; thinking & instant modes; agent swarm support
DeepSeek	DeepSeek-OCR-2 Open	Multimodal	2026-01	—			3B visual OCR model with document-to-markdown conversion, layout-aware grounding, and dynamic resolution. 1.66M monthly downloads.
Tencent	HunyuanImage 3.0 Open	Image Gen	2026-01	—			80B MoE (13B active); text-to-image and image-to-image with reasoning. Open weight on HuggingFace. Released Jan 26, 2026.
Meituan	LongCat-Flash-Lite Open	Text	2026-01	256K			68.5B MoE, 2.9–4.5B active; fast and efficient
AIsphere	PixVerse R1 Closed	Video Gen	2026-01	N/A			Real-time world model; 1080p, <15s latency, physics-aware, infinite temporal continuity
SenseTime	SenseNova V6.5 Omni Closed	Multimodal	2026-01	—			Real-time multimodal streaming model. Powers SenseChat's live audio/video interaction. Successor to V6 Pro.
DeepSeek	DeepSeek-V3.2 Open	Text	2025-12	128K	$0.252/1M tokens	$0.378/1M tokens	685B MoE with DeepSeek Sparse Attention (DSA). V3.2-Speciale variant won gold at 2025 IMO and IOI. 4.16M monthly downloads on HuggingFace.
Kuaishou	Kling I2V 2.0 Closed	Multimodal	2025-12	N/A	$0.16/video (5s)		Image-to-video with industry-leading subject preservation
Xiaomi	MiMo-V2-Flash Open	Text	2025-12	N/A	$0.01/1M tokens	$0.30/1M tokens	309B MoE, 15B active; trained on 27T tokens; open-source release
AIsphere	PixVerse V5.5 Closed	Video Gen	2025-12	N/A			Text/image-to-video; HD output, multiple aspect ratios, character consistency
Tencent	Hunyuan3D 3.0 Closed	3D Gen	2025-11	—			3D asset generation from text, image, or sketch input
iFlyTek	Spark X1.5 Closed	Text	2025-11	—			MoE reasoning model (29.3B total / 3B active parameters). Supports 130+ languages. Runs on a single Huawei Ascend server. Launched Nov 2025.
MiniMax	MiniMax-M2 Open	Agent	2025-10	1M tokens			230B MoE (10B active); interleaved thinking; open-source under Modified MIT; free API available
Infinigence AI	Megrez2-3x7B-A3B Open	Text	2025-09	—			MoE edge model: 3×7B experts, 3B active parameters. Open-weight, Apache 2.0.
Alibaba	Qwen-Image Open	Image Gen	2025-08	—			Image generation and editing foundation model. Exceptional Chinese + English text rendering. Supports style transfer, object insertion/removal, layered editing, and depth/edge estimation. Released Aug 2025.
ModelBest	MiniCPM-V 4.5 Open	Multimodal	2025-08	—			8B multimodal model (Qwen3-8B + SigLIP2). Apache 2.0.
Moonshot AI	Kimi k2 Open	Text	2025-07	128K	¥0.12/1K tokens	¥0.12/1K tokens	Agentic model with tool use, web browsing, and code execution
MiniMax	MiniMax-M1 Open	Text	2025-06	1M tokens	$0.80/1M tokens	$2.20/1M tokens	First open-weight large-scale hybrid-attention reasoning model; test-time compute scaling
MiniMax	Hailuo-02 Open	Video Gen	2025-06	N/A	$0.06/video (5s)		Physics-aware video generation; top-3 globally on VBench
Shengshu Technology	Vidu Q3 Closed	Video Gen	2025-06	—	~$0.07/sec		World's first storytelling-focused video model. Up to 16 sec, 1080p 24fps, native audio sync. Multilingual. Pro and Turbo variants. MCP integration.
DeepSeek	DeepSeek-R1-0528 Open	Text	2025-05	128K	$0.50/1M tokens	$2.15/1M tokens	Latest R1 update: 685B, adds system prompt support, deeper reasoning (23K avg tokens on AIME vs 12K prior). Distilled 8B version achieves 86% on AIME 2024.
Kuaishou	Kling 2.0 Closed	Video Gen	2025-04	N/A	$0.16/video (5s)		4K-capable video generation; advanced camera controls and scene coherence
Kuaishou	Kolors 2.0 Open	Image Gen	2025-04	N/A	$0.004/image		Upgraded photorealistic image model; open-source available
SenseTime	SenseNova V6 Pro Closed	Multimodal	2025-04	256K	¥2.8/1M tokens	¥8.4/1M tokens	620B MoE hybrid. Real-time audio/video streaming. Ranked #1 in China in multimodal reasoning at launch. Lowest reasoning cost in industry at launch (Apr 2025).
Kunlun Tech	Skywork-OR1-32B Open	Text	2025-04	—			Open-source math and coding reasoning model (Apr 2025). 32B params; rivals DeepSeek-R1 on competitive programming benchmarks. 7B variant also available.
Baidu	ERNIE X1 Closed	Text	2025-03	128K	$0.28/1M tokens	$1.10/1M tokens	Baidu's first dedicated reasoning model with extended chain-of-thought
Baidu	ERNIE 4.5 Closed	Multimodal	2025-03	128K	$0.55/1M tokens	$2.20/1M tokens	Improved multimodal and reasoning; best ERNIE for Chinese enterprise tasks. The flagship ERNIE 4.5 model is closed-source, though several variants in the ERNIE 4.5 family are openly available on HuggingFace.
StepFun	Step-3 Closed	Text	2025-01	1M	$0.57/1M tokens	$1.42/1M tokens	StepFun's 2025 flagship; 1M token context and native reasoning mode
Baichuan AI	Baichuan-M2 Open	Text	2025-01	—			32B medical reasoning model (2025) built on Qwen2.5-32B with innovative Large Verifier System for real-world clinical reasoning.
ModelBest	MiniCPM-o 2.6 Open	Multimodal	2025-01	—			8B any-to-any model (text + vision + speech). Surpasses GPT-4o and Gemini 1.5 Pro on single-image understanding benchmarks. Launched Jan 2025.
Kuaishou	Kling 1.6 Pro Closed	Video Gen	2024-12	N/A	$0.14/video (5s)		Previous flagship; supports 1080p, 5-10s clips, camera controls
Infinigence AI	Megrez-3B-Omni Open	Multimodal	2024-12	—			3B omni model processing text, vision, and audio. Outperforms LLaVA-NeXT-Yi-34B on vision benchmarks. Optimised for on-device and edge deployment.
Kunlun Tech	Skywork-o1 Open	Text	2024-11	—			Reasoning model (Nov 2024) — among China's first o1-style models with chain-of-thought Chinese logical reasoning. Open-source 8B variant (Llama 3.1 base) plus proprietary advanced version.
Baichuan AI	Baichuan4-Turbo Closed	Text	2024-10	192K			Enterprise flagship general LLM (late 2024). 10%+ usability gain vs prior generation; priced at ~80% of GPT-4o. Supports multimodal input.
Baichuan AI	Baichuan4-Air Closed	Text	2024-10	192K			MoE variant (PRI architecture) of Baichuan4. High performance at low cost for API deployments.
01.AI	Yi-Lightning Closed	Text	2024-10	16K	$0.14/1M tokens	$0.14/1M tokens	MoE flagship API model (Oct 2024). Ranked #6 on Chatbot Arena at launch — joint 3rd among LLM companies. 40% faster inference than prior Yi models. Final model before 01.AI halted pre-training in early 2025.
StepFun	Step-1V Closed	Multimodal	2024-09	200K	¥0.034/1K tokens	¥0.1/1K tokens	Vision-language model supporting image input
01.AI	Yi-Coder Open	Code	2024-09	128K			Code model (Sep 2024); 1.5B and 9B variants; supports 52 programming languages; 128K context window.
iFlyTek	Spark 4.0 Closed	Text	2024-08	—			Flagship LLM (Aug 2024). Claims comparable performance to GPT-4 Turbo on Chinese language benchmarks.
StepFun	Step-2 Closed	Text	2024-07	256K	¥0.038/1K tokens	¥0.12/1K tokens	Very long context window; strong document understanding
StepFun	Step-1X-Image Closed	Image Gen	2024-07	N/A	¥0.04/image		High-resolution image generation model
01.AI	Yi-1.5 Open	Text	2024-05	—			Open-source series (May 2024); 6B–34B variants. Improved coding, math, reasoning, and instruction-following over original Yi.
01.AI	Yi-VL-34B Open	Multimodal	2024-01	—			34B vision-language model (early 2024). Open-weight multimodal extension of Yi-34B.
01.AI	Yi-34B Open	Text	2023-11	200K			Founding open-source model (Nov 2023). Topped HuggingFace Open LLM Leaderboard and C-Eval at launch. 200K-token context variant (Yi-34B-200K) also available.
Kunlun Tech	Skywork-13B Open	Text	2023-10	—			Founding open-source bilingual LLM (Oct 2023). 13B params; pretrained on 3.2T tokens. Led same-scale models on CEVAL, CMMLU, and MMLU at launch.
Baichuan AI	Baichuan2 Open	Text	2023-09	4K			Open-source bilingual LLM series (Sep 2023); 7B and 13B variants; trained on 2.6T tokens. Available on Hugging Face under permissive license.
Baidu	ERNIE-Speed Closed	Text	—	128K			Free tier for prototyping and light production
Meituan	LongCat-Image Open	Image Gen	—	N/A			Image generation model, ~6B params; data-quality focused; released Dec 2025
Meituan	LongCat-Video Open	Video Gen	—	N/A			Text-to-video generation model; released Oct 2025
Meituan	LongCat-Flash-Omni Open	Multimodal	—	256K			Text + vision + audio multimodal
Meituan	LongCat-Flash-Thinking Open	Reasoning	—	256K			Chain-of-thought reasoning variant of LongCat-Flash
Meituan	LongCat-Flash-Chat Open	Text	—	128K			560B MoE, 27B active; open-source; 500K free tokens/day
WeRide	WeRide GENESIS Closed	Embodied	—	—			Generative Engineered Neural Environment for Simulated Intelligence in Self-driving. WeRide's proprietary general-purpose simulation platform combining physical AI with generative AI. Rapidly builds photorealistic simulated cities in minutes, generates diverse edge-case scenarios from billions of km of real-world data, and models realistic pedestrian and driver behavior — all at centimeter-level fidelity. Supports L2++ through L4 AV development and validation via four modules: AI Scenarios, AI Agents, AI Metrics, and AI Diagnosis.
Pony.ai	PonyWorld 2.0 Closed	Embodied	—	—			Second-generation world model underpinning the Virtual Driver L4 autonomous driving platform. Introduces an Intention layer — a structured representation of decision-making that enables the system to evaluate its own driving decisions, identify accuracy gaps across scenarios, and direct targeted data collection rather than broad undirected improvement. Direct sensor-to-action architecture with no language models in the inference pipeline; runs on 1016 TOPS across three NVIDIA DRIVE Orin-X SoCs with redundant failover.
Unisound	UniGPT (Shanhai 山海) Closed	Text	—	—			60B+ parameter general large model (v5.0); underpins all Unisound vertical products. Medical, enterprise, and consumer deployments.
Unisound	U2-ASR 2.5 Closed	Audio	—	—			First LLM-based semantic ASR model for Chinese. Covers 100+ dialects across 7 dialect systems. >90% accuracy. Available via Token Hub API.
Unisound	U2-TTS / U2-TTS-Clone Closed	Audio	—	—			Text-to-speech and voice cloning with full-duplex millisecond response. Available via Token Hub API.
Unisound	U1-OCR Closed	Multimodal	—	—			Industrial-grade document intelligence model for OCR and document understanding. Launched February 2026.

Funding & Markets

Private funding rounds and public market data for China's leading AI companies

Data methodology: Funding data on this page is compiled from publicly available sources — company press releases, regulatory filings, and media reports — and fact-checked by Tony Peng with the assistance of AI. Where a round appears in both a company disclosure and press report, company disclosure takes precedence. All figures may be approximate.

16 Public · 16 Private

Companies tracked

~$22.2B

AI startup funding · 12 AI-native cos

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Funding timelines · AI-native cos

Most Active Investors in AI

by portfolio companies

Tencent 12 cos

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Alibaba 9 cos

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HongShan Capital 8 cos

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IDG Capital 8 cos

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Shunwei Capital 7 cos

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Qiming Venture Partners 6 cos

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Ant Group 5 cos

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Lenovo Ventures 5 cos

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Zhongguancun Science City 4 cos

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Xiaomi 4 cos

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Shenzhen Capital Group 4 cos

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Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund 4 cos

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Source Code Capital 3 cos

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DST Global 3 cos

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CCB International 3 cos

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ByteDance

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

$600B

Total Raised

~$12.61B+

Seedance ARR

¥12B May 2026

Last round: 2026

Alibaba

Public — BABA / 9988.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Cloud Revenue (FY25)

¥158B

AI ARR

¥10B June 2026

NYSE: BABA · HKEX: 9988

Zhipu AI (Z.ai)

Public — 2513.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Total Raised

~$1.75B

Revenue

$105M FY 2025

HKEX: 2513

MiniMax

Public — 0100.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Total Raised

$2.17B

ARR

$300M June 2026

HKEX: 0100

Moonshot AI

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

$20B

Total Raised

~$4.7B+

AI ARR

$200M April 2026

Last round: 2026

DeepSeek

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

$50B

Total Raised

$7.35B

Last round: 2026

StepFun

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

$4B

Total Raised

$3.23B+

Last round: 2026

Baidu

Public — BIDU / 9888.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

NASDAQ: BIDU · HKEX: 9888

Ant Group

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

~$78B

Total Raised

$20.53B+

Last round: 2020

Tencent

Public — 0700.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Revenue (FY25)

¥751.8B

HKEX: 0700

Kuaishou

Public — 1024.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Platform DAU

416M

Kling AI ARR

$500M April 2026

HKEX: 1024

Xiaomi

Public — 1810.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Revenue (FY25)

¥457.3B

HKEX: 1810

Meituan

Public — 3690.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Revenue (FY25)

¥364.9B

HKEX: 3690

AIsphere

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

~$1B+

Total Raised

~$530M+

Last round: 2026

Unitree Robotics

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

~$1.65B

Total Raised

~$14.96B+

Last round: 2025

SenseTime

Public — 0020.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

Revenue (FY25)

¥5.01B

HKEX: 0020

Baichuan AI

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

$2.7B

Total Raised

$1.04B

Last round: 2024

01.AI

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

$1B

Total Raised

$300M+

Last round: 2023

Kunlun Tech

Public — 300418.SZ

PUB

Market Cap

—

Revenue (FY25)

¥8.2B

SZSE: 300418

Evoken

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

$2B

Total Raised

$430M+

Last round: 2025

iFlyTek

Public — 002230.SZ

PUB

Market Cap

~¥190B

FY2025 Revenue

¥27.1B

SZSE: 002230

Infinigence AI

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

Undisclosed

Total Raised

~$251M+

Last round: 2026

Enflame Technology

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

—

Total Raised

—

Last round: —

SiliconFlow

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

—

Total Raised

$294M

Last round: 2026

Cambricon

Public — 688256.SH

PUB

Market Cap

~¥443B

FY2025 Revenue

¥6.5B

STAR Market: 688256

ModelBest

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

Undisclosed

Total Raised

Undisclosed

Last round: 2026

Moore Threads

Public — — (SSE)

PUB

Market Cap

—

FY2025 Revenue

¥1.505B

SSE (Shanghai)

WeRide

Public — WRD / 0800.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

FY2025 Revenue

~$93.6M

NASDAQ: WRD · HKEX: 0800

Pony.ai

Public — PONY / 2026.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

FY2025 Revenue

$90.0M

NASDAQ: PONY · HKEX: 2026

Shengshu Technology

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

Undisclosed

Total Raised

~$440M

Last round: 2026

DiDi Autonomous Driving

Private Company

PRI

Valuation

Undisclosed

Total Raised

$1.39B+

Last round: 2025

Unisound

Public — 9678.HK

PUB

Market Cap

—

FY2025 Revenue

¥1.21B

HKEX: 9678

Applications

AI products from China's leading companies, by category

Est. 2026

The essential tracker for
China's AI ecosystem

One place to follow every major model release, funding round, product launch, and breakthrough from China's AI ecosystem.

About the creator

Tony Peng

AI observer · Journalist · Communications professional

China AI Index is a personal research project built and maintained by Tony Peng — a long-time observer of the AI industry with a background in journalism and communications — with the assistance of Claude Code. Tony is also the writer behind Recode China AI, a weekly (sometimes biweekly) newsletter tracking the latest advances and news stories in intelligent technologies — AI, autonomous vehicles, biocomputing, and chips.

This database exists primarily for research purposes — to give English-speaking researchers, investors, journalists, and developers a single structured reference for tracking China's rapidly evolving AI ecosystem. Most authoritative information about Chinese AI labs is published in Chinese; China AI Index synthesizes and translates that into one accessible place.

What we track

Models

Every major LLM, reasoning model, vision model, and generative AI model from Chinese labs — with benchmark scores, context windows, and live API pricing so you can compare apples to apples.

Financing

Full funding histories for private companies (ByteDance, DeepSeek, MiniMax, Moonshot…) and market data for public ones (Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Kuaishou). Valuations, investors, round sizes.

Newsfeed

News covering model launches, research breakthroughs, product announcements, and strategic moves — presented in a clean timeline with company tags and category filters.

People

Key founders, CEOs, CTOs, and researchers behind China's AI labs — with titles, Chinese names, and links to their social profiles so you know the faces shaping the industry.

Regulation

A timeline of China's AI rules — generative AI measures, algorithm filing requirements, model approval lists, data law touchpoints, and provincial subsidy programs. Click any entry for the original text.

Chips

Domestic AI accelerators, training clusters, and memory chips — specs, interconnect bandwidth, process nodes, and deployment status for China's emerging chip ecosystem.

Data Disclaimer

All pricing, benchmark scores, funding amounts, and valuations are sourced from public company announcements, tech media reporting, and developer documentation. They are provided for informational purposes only and may be approximate or subject to change.

Stock prices shown are approximate historical ranges — not real-time quotes. Always verify with a live financial data source before making investment decisions. Benchmark scores reflect results at the time of model release and may not account for subsequent updates.

This database is independently maintained and has no affiliation with any of the companies listed. Information is updated manually on a best-effort basis.

Get in touch

Leave a message

Have a correction, suggestion, or just want to say hello? Send a note — Tony reads every message.

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2025 Mar

LabelingWatermarkingGenAIKey

Effective: Sep 1, 2025 Issuer: CAC / MIIT / MPS / NRTA Type: Administrative Measure

Mandates two-layer labeling for all AI-generated text, images, audio, video, and virtual scenes: an explicit label visible to users (text, voice, or graphic indicator) and an implicit label embedded in file metadata as a digital watermark carrying generation information and producer details. Download, copy, and export functions must preserve labels. Content distribution platforms must verify metadata and add indicators when redistributing AI content. Users publishing AI-generated content must declare its origin. Prohibits malicious deletion, tampering, forgery, or concealment of required labels, and bans tools that enable such conduct. Issued March 7, 2025; effective September 1, 2025.

View Official Text ↗

2024 Sep

DataSecurityCross-borderKey

Effective: Jan 1, 2025 Issuer: State Council (Order No. 790) Type: Administrative Regulation

Nine-chapter framework governing network data processing activities within China, including foreign entities handling Chinese citizens' data. Mandates that data processors implement encryption, backup, access control, and security authentication. Requires transparent processing rules and individual consent for sensitive personal data, with rights to access, correct, delete, and cancel accounts. Processors handling data on 100M+ people must appoint a security officer, conduct risk assessments, and file annual reports. Establishes conditions for cross-border data transfers via security evaluation or certification. Requires major platforms to verify apps, implement recommendation controls, and publish transparency reports. Issued Sep 24, 2024; effective Jan 1, 2025.

View Official Text ↗

2024 Sep

SafetyFoundation ModelsFrameworkKey

Effective: Sep 9, 2024 Issuer: 全国网络安全标准化技术委员会 (TC260) Type: Governance Framework

China's first dedicated AI safety governance document, issued by the National Cybersecurity Standardization Technical Committee. Establishes four core governance principles: inclusive caution with safety assurance, risk-oriented agile management, combined technical and administrative approaches, and open international cooperation. Addresses three categories of internal risk — model algorithm safety, data security, and system safety — and four application risk domains spanning network, physical, cognitive, and ethical dimensions. Provides technical countermeasures and guidance on secure AI development practices. Non-binding but signals regulatory direction for future standards.

View Official Text ↗

2023 Aug

GenAIRegistrationContentKey

Effective: Aug 15, 2023 Issuer: CAC / MOST / MPS / MIIT / MCI Type: Administrative Measure

China's first dedicated generative AI regulation. Requires providers offering GenAI services to Chinese consumers to register with the CAC, comply with "core socialist values," label AI-generated content, conduct security assessments, protect user privacy, and maintain complaint mechanisms. Introduced the model filing and approval requirement that led to the published approval lists. Applies to any entity providing GenAI services in China, regardless of where the service originates.

View Official Text ↗

2023 Jan

DeepfakeLabelingSynthetic Media

Effective: Jan 10, 2023 Issuer: CAC / MIIT / MPS Type: Administrative Measure

Regulates AI-generated synthetic media including deepfake video, cloned audio, generated images, and virtual digital humans. Issued jointly by CAC, MIIT, and MPS on November 25, 2022, effective January 10, 2023. Requires real-name authentication for users of deep synthesis services and mandates prominent labels on identity-altering content so audiences know it is AI-generated. Providers serving content with public opinion attributes must conduct security assessments. Training data must meet legal sourcing requirements. Includes complaint and reporting mechanisms. Prohibits synthesizing disinformation, deepfake news, or content that harms national security.

View Official Text ↗

2022 Mar

AlgorithmRecommendationPlatform

Effective: Mar 1, 2022 Issuer: CAC / MIIT / MPS / SAMR Type: Administrative Measure

Regulates algorithmic recommendation systems used by internet platforms. Requires platforms to register recommendation algorithms with authorities, give users the ability to opt out of personalized recommendations, prohibit algorithmically induced addiction or excessive consumption, and disclose how recommendation systems work. Affects search engines, social media, e-commerce, and short-video platforms. First major regulation specifically targeting AI-driven content distribution.

View Official Text ↗

2021 Nov

PrivacyDataLawKey

Effective: Nov 1, 2021 Issuer: Standing Committee of the NPC Type: Law

China's comprehensive personal data protection law, passed by the NPC Standing Committee on August 20, 2021 and effective November 1, 2021. Structured across eight chapters covering general principles, processing rules, special rules for sensitive information and cross-border transfers, individual rights, and enforcement. Requires a lawful basis (consent, contract, legal obligation, etc.) for all processing. Stricter rules apply to sensitive data and to information about minors under 14. Cross-border data transfers require a CAC security assessment, certification by an accredited body, or an approved standard contract. Individuals have rights to know, access, correct, delete, and port their data. Mandates breach notification and data protection officers for large-scale processors. Fines reach ¥50 million or 5% of annual revenue for serious violations.

View Official Text ↗

2021 Sep

DataSecurityLawKey

Effective: Sep 1, 2021 Issuer: Standing Committee of the NPC Type: Law

China's foundational data security statute, passed by the NPC Standing Committee on June 10, 2021 and effective September 1, 2021. Structured across 7 chapters and 55 articles. Establishes a tiered data classification system — general, important, and core national data — with controls scaled to sensitivity. Has extraterritorial reach: applies to data processing outside China that harms Chinese national security or public interests. Prohibits government agencies from providing data stored in China to foreign judicial or law enforcement bodies without state approval. Restricts export of important data by critical infrastructure operators. Fines range from ¥50,000–500,000 for standard violations to ¥2–10 million for violations involving core national data; severe cases trigger business suspension or license revocation. Complements the Cybersecurity Law (2017) and PIPL (2021).

View Official Text ↗

2017 Jul

StrategyNational PlanKey

Effective: Jul 2017 Issuer: State Council Type: National Strategy

Foundational national strategy establishing China's three-stage AI ambition: match leading AI nations by 2020, achieve major breakthroughs by 2025, and become the world's premier AI innovation center by 2030. Designated AI as a national priority and triggered the massive wave of government and private investment that defines today's Chinese AI ecosystem. Widely cited as the starting gun for China's AI decade.

View Official Text ↗

China's Chip Ecosystem

Domestic AI accelerators, large-scale training clusters, and memory chips — tracking the hardware layer behind China's AI buildout.

AI Accelerators

Clusters & Supernodes

Company ↕	Chip ↕	Role	Peak Compute ↕	Memory Tech	Capacity ↕	Bandwidth ↕	Interconnect Bandwidth ↕	TDP ↕	Process	Status	Highlights
Huawei	Ascend 910B	Training	256 TFLOPS BF16	HBM2e	64 GB	2.0 TB/s	392 GB/s HCCS 3.0	400 W	SMIC N+2	Production	Most-deployed domestic training chip. Used at Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu, and Tencent.
Huawei	Ascend 910C	Training	800 TFLOPS FP16	HBM2e	96 GB	4.0 TB/s	800 GB/s HCCS	900 W	SMIC N+2	Production	Dual-die upgrade to 910B. Powers the Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD (300 PFLOPS).
Huawei	Ascend 950	Training	1 PFLOPS FP8	—	128–144 GB	—	2.0 TB/s per chip	—	—	Planned	2026 target. Powers Atlas 950 SuperPoD (8 EFLOPS); targets Nvidia B200-class.
Huawei	Ascend 960	Training	2 PFLOPS FP8	—	—	—	—	—	—	Planned	2027 roadmap. Targets 2× Ascend 950 performance.
Alibaba (T-Head) ↗	Hanguang 800	Inference	820 TOPS INT8	—	—	512 GB/s	—	—	12nm	Production	Alibaba's first custom chip (2019). Inference-only for internal search and recommendation.
Alibaba (T-Head) ↗	PPU	Training / Inference	— —	HBM	96 GB	—	— PCIe 5.0	—	—	Production	Domestic H20 rival. ~16,000 units deployed at China Unicom (2025).
Alibaba (T-Head) ↗	Zhenwu M890	Training / Inference	— —	HBM3	144 GB	—	800 GB/s ICN Switch 1.0	—	—	Production	Alibaba's flagship (May 2026). Claims 3× H20 on agentic workloads.
Baidu (Kunlunxin) ↗	Kunlun 2	Training / Inference	128 TFLOPS FP16 / 256 TOPS INT8	—	—	—	—	~120 W	TSMC 7nm	Production	2nd-gen Kunlun (2021). Deployed at Baidu Cloud and third-party customers.
Baidu (Kunlunxin) ↗	Kunlun P800	Training	345 TFLOPS FP16	—	—	—	close to H20 reported	—	—	Production	Latest Kunlun (2025). 30,000-chip clusters handle DeepSeek-scale training.
Cambricon ↗	MLU590	Training / Inference	345 TFLOPS FP16 / FP8 support	HBM2e	64 GB	1.2 TB/s	—	300 W	TSMC 7nm	Production	Cambricon's flagship (2023) with FP8 support. Drove the company to its first profit.
Cambricon ↗	MLU690	Training	H100-class target	—	—	—	—	—	—	Planned	In development. Targets H100-class performance.
Biren Technology	BR100	Training	1,000 TOPS INT8	HBM2e	64 GB	2.0 TB/s	— PCIe 5.0	550 W	TSMC 7nm	Restricted	China's first GPU-class chip. TSMC access cut off by US export controls (2022).
Moore Threads ↗	MTT S4000	Training / Inference	100 TFLOPS FP16	GDDR6	48 GB	768 GB/s	— PCIe Gen5	450 W	TSMC 7nm	Production	Flagship data-centre GPU. MUSIFY layer provides CUDA compatibility.
Enflame ↗	Cloudragon T20	Training	128 TFLOPS FP16	HBM2e	64 GB	1.8 TB/s	— GCU-LARE	300 W	TSMC 7nm	Production	Tencent-backed training chip for domestic cloud deployments.
Iluvatar CoreX	TianGai 100	Training	147 TFLOPS FP16	HBM2	32 GB	—	— PCIe Gen4	300 W	TSMC 7nm	Production	Domestic inference accelerator deployed at Chinese hyperscalers.
Moore Threads ↗	MTT S80	Training / Inference	14.4 TFLOPS FP32	GDDR6	16 GB	448 GB/s	— PCIe Gen5	—	—	Production	Mid-range GPU. 4,096 MUSA cores.
Moore Threads ↗	MTT S70	Inference	11.2 TFLOPS FP32	GDDR6	7 GB	392 GB/s	— PCIe Gen4	—	—	Production	Entry-level GPU. 3,584 MUSA cores.
Enflame ↗	S60	Training / Inference	~128 TFLOPS FP16 est.	—	—	—	—	—	TSMC N6NTO-HPC	Production	3rd-gen accelerator. 70,000+ units shipped by mid-2025.
Enflame ↗	L600	Training / Inference	— FP8 support	—	144 GB	3.6 TB/s	~800 GB/s est.	—	TSMC N6NTO-HPC	Production	4th-gen flagship (July 2025). Targets NVIDIA H20-class performance.
Enflame ↗	i20	Inference	128 TFLOPS FP16/BF16; 256 TOPS INT8	HBM2e	16 GB	~819 GB/s	— PCIe	—	—	Production	Dedicated inference accelerator. 256 TOPS INT8.

Specs marked ~ are estimates from third-party analysis. Click any column header to sort. Interconnect Bandwidth = chip-to-chip fabric bandwidth per chip (bidirectional).

Cluster / Supernode	Operator	Chip	Chip Count	Total Compute	Interconnect Fabric	Notes
Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD (CloudMatrix 384)	Huawei Cloud	Ascend 910C	384	300 PFLOPS FP16	All-optical (OXC)	Huawei's current-generation supernode. Uses optical circuit switching (OXC) for low-latency inter-chip communication. Announced April 2025 as a full-stack domestic alternative to Nvidia GB200 NVL72.
Atlas 950 SuperPoD	Huawei Cloud	Ascend 950	8,192	8 EFLOPS FP8	16.3 PB/s aggregate	Next-generation supernode targeting 2026 delivery. 1,152 TB total memory. Full liquid cooling. Footprint larger than two basketball courts. Would represent a major leap in domestic training capacity if delivered at spec.
Atlas 960 SuperPoD	Huawei Cloud	Ascend 960	15,488	— 2027 roadmap	—	Huawei's 2027 roadmap cluster. No confirmed specs — scale figure from Huawei roadmap slides.
Kunlun Training Cluster	Baidu / Kunlunxin ↗	Kunlun P800	30,000	DeepSeek-scale hundreds of B params	—	Baidu's 30,000-chip P800 cluster reported capable of training models with hundreds of billions of parameters — comparable to DeepSeek-scale workloads. Deployed 2025.
Panjiu Supernode (AL128)	Alibaba Cloud ↗	Zhenwu M890	128 / rack	— —	800 GB/s ICN Switch 1.0	Alibaba's modular supernode architecture. 128 Zhenwu M890 chips per rack unit, fully liquid cooled. Announced May 2026 alongside the M890.

Cluster sizes and compute figures are from official announcements or credible press reports.

The essential tracker forChina's AI ecosystem

China's Chip Ecosystem

The essential tracker for
China's AI ecosystem