Chinese AI companies are making money

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From startups to tech giants, Chinese companies are finding business demand for artificial intelligence services, despite AI models continuing to burn cash elsewhere.

AI is a joint venture with FAW, a Chinese state-owned automobile manufacturer that can be addressed six months ago, allowing it to solve more than 80% of online customer questions and more than 80% of online customer questions. Tencent Cloud told me on Friday. Tencent offers several AI tools to automakers.

And now it only takes about two weeks to get Tencent's AI customer service platform up and running for up to three months, Wu told me.

Over the weekend, Tencent announced an upgrade to the Hunyuan AI model along with releases from other companies as the “World AI Conference” took place in the city.

While not all companies see similar demand for products and services, focusing on business opportunities reflects an ongoing shift in China to acquire AI opportunities. This is also reflected in the recruitment application.

Zhou Yuxiang, CEO of Temasek-backed Startup Black Lake Technologies, said on Saturday that in the past few months he has been getting resumes from AI model engineers who want to move to developing AI for specific industry applications. “Before it's difficult to get an AI engineer,” he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

Black Lake mainly sells AI tools to small factories in China, speeding up production and making better use of capacity.

He added that many business owners have missed out on the direct e-commerce boom for consumers over the past few years, and that they have experienced “FOMO” also saw their AI usage cost drop significantly.

Former Zhipu Z.ai became the latest Chinese startup to reduce operational costs with the release of open source AI models on Monday. That pricing undercuts the Deepseek R1 in January, a Kimi K2 model from Alibaba-backed startup Moonshot, released earlier this month.

The open source AI model is free to use without special permission from the creator. Users who choose not to download models can access them through the cloud and pay per usage.

Many companies recognize that they need to have better data to effectively apply AI. Even when it takes time to monetize AI applications, it is a fundamental layer that is seeing a huge demand, like chips.

Chinese startup Deepexi, backed by venture capital firm Hillhouse and BAI, says that AI systems combine business-specific data analytics with AI models to “provide zero hallucination outputs zero.” This means that generative AI models are very prone to happening, meaning that the system does not constitute the outcome. CNBC was unable to independently verify the claims.

DeepExi lists clients such as Han's laser technology and “named public health operators who oversee 40 public hospitals and 100 clinics.”

Startup's revenues rose 88.3% last year to 242.9 million yuan, Deepexi said it filed a planned list with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in April.

Label data or annotate bits of information for better AI use; Demand is also rising rapidly.

Beijing-based Haitian Louishen estimated last week that revenue for the first half of 2025 increased by at least 61% from a year ago to 148.9 million yuan. In 2024, revenue was nearly 240 million yuan.

According to a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange, after excluding items, profits are expected to more than double from 4.5 million yuan to 4.9 million yuan in the first half.

Haitian Ruisheng counts US “Magnificent 7” companies such as Bytedance, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Microsoft and Amazon as clients.

In China, the company sees the biggest monetization opportunities in education, healthcare and tourism, adding that smartphones and “embodied intelligence” could also be.

Haitian Ruisheng combines automated data annotations with human expert evaluations, adding that AI needs global cooperation and that his company is expanding its overseas markets with a subsidiary in Singapore.

A few days after the US announced its AI Action Plan, the Shanghai-based World AI Conference opened on Saturday, with China's Li Qian unveiling plans for a global AI cooperation organization. China called for support for AI integration across the industry, including manufacturing, healthcare, education and agriculture.

Tencent has already taken steps in that direction.

Wu said it is building local partnerships in Japan for “virtual human services” that domestic companies can purchase. This is a human digital avatar and is often used for live streaming and other digital content.

Other popular AI business lines in regions such as Southeast Asia include “customer knowledge” identification verification of finance, translation services and platforms for developers to develop AI agents, Wu said.

These business projects and ambitions supported by a wider range of states have made China clearly beyond the lab of AI racing around the world.

There is no extension of the US-China trade ceasefire yet. A possible extension of the tariff suspension between Washington and Beijing will not be agreed until President Donald Trump gives him a nod, US negotiators said Tuesday.

At least 30 people will die in the heavy rain. State media reported deaths outside Beijing after the capital issued a red warning about heavy rain on Monday. President Xi Jinping called for further work on flood prevention and disaster relief in the wider northern region.

China is increasing its support for births. The country announced on Monday that it would amount to about $500 a year per child under the age of three, following plans to roll out free kindergarten education.

Mainland China and Hong Kong stocks were mixed on Wednesday as US trade talks with China are balanced.

Mainland China's CSI 300 rose 0.51%, while Hong Kong's Hangsen Index (including Chinese companies) was 0.45% lower as of 10:07am local time (10:07pm on Tuesday).

Mainland benchmarks have scored more than 5% so far this year, LSEG data showed.

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August 1st – 4th: China Joy Games Meeting in Shanghai

August 1st: S&P Global China General Manufacturing PMI

August 5th: S&P Global China General Services PMI