Rhodium Estimates Chinese AI Models Generate One-Tenth of U.S. Leaders’ Revenue

Rhodium Group’s new estimates put a stark number on the commercial gap in AI: Chinese models collectively generate about one-tenth of the annual recurring revenue attributed to OpenAI and Anthropic. The finding does not settle who will win adoption, but it sharpens a more immediate test: whether fast use of lower-cost models can turn into durable revenue.

The comparison uses annual recurring revenue, or ARR, a run-rate measure that annualizes a recent monthly revenue figure. It is useful for tracking rapidly growing companies, but it is not the same as reported full-year revenue.

A distribution strategy meets a revenue test

Rhodium’s earlier work characterized China’s approach as deploying and spreading cheap, near-frontier open-weight models, partly in pursuit of cost-efficient capability and technology sovereignty. The new revenue estimates expose the business-model pressure alongside that strategy.

At the company level, Rhodium estimates ARR of $500 million for DeepSeek, $800 million for MiniMax and $1 billion for Moonshot. Its estimates are higher for ByteDance at $4 billion and Alibaba at $2.4 billion, yet still well below the figures it assigns to the two U.S. leaders: $40 billion for OpenAI and $65 billion for Anthropic.

About 10%Chinese AI models combined

Rhodium estimates Chinese AI models collectively generate about one-tenth of the revenue attributed to OpenAI and Anthropic.

Valuations are running ahead of the estimates

The report’s concern is not simply that Chinese labs are smaller. It argues that some private-market valuations look unusually high relative to the revenue estimates. Rhodium puts Moonshot’s valuation-to-revenue ratio at 50 times and DeepSeek’s at 163 times, versus 34 times for OpenAI and 21 times for Anthropic.

Those ratios are estimates, not a verdict on any company’s future. But they make growth in monetization more consequential: a valuation can be supported by expectations, while revenue has to be captured from customers and partners.

The next move is taking a larger share

There are signs the revenue picture is still moving. Z.ai told investors its latest ARR was $1.8 billion and raised its year-end forecast to $3 billion from $2.4 billion. A forecast, however, is not a completed result.

Rhodium says Chinese labs are exploring ways to take more revenue from third-party providers that offer access to their models. It also estimates that state-affiliated sources supplied more than 60% of equity investment in Chinese AI chips and servers. The unresolved issue is whether broader distribution and new revenue-sharing arrangements can close the gap quickly enough to justify the valuations now attached to leading labs.