OpenAI and Anthropic Generate ~10x Chinese AI Revenue

Estimates from US research group Rhodium show that the combined annual recurring revenue of Chinese AI models is roughly one tenth of the revenue reported by OpenAI and Anthropic, underscoring a large revenue gap despite rapid user growth in China.

Rhodium's methodology and headline finding

Rhodium based its comparison on annual recurring revenue, an industry metric calculated by multiplying the latest monthly revenue figure by 12. Using that approach, the total ARR for China-based AI models amounts to about 10 percent of the ARR reported by OpenAI and Anthropic combined.

Reported ARR for major Chinese and US firms

Rhodium's report lists ARR estimates for several large Chinese AI companies and related platforms. The research group identified DeepSeek as the smallest among the major Chinese players, with ARR estimated at $500 million.

• DeepSeek: $500 million ARR
• MiniMax: $800 million ARR
• Moonshot: $1 billion ARR
• Z.ai: $1.8 billion ARR (latest investor disclosure)
• ByteDance: $4 billion ARR
• Alibaba: $2.4 billion ARR

Even adding those figures, Rhodium finds the aggregate remains far below the reported ARR for OpenAI, which the report cites at $40 billion, and Anthropic, cited at $65 billion.

Valuation multiples and IPO activity

Rhodium also flagged a significant discrepancy between investor valuations and current revenue for some Chinese startups. The group said, "Valuation-to-revenue currently appears very high for Moonshot and DeepSeek." Analysts in Rhodium's report estimate valuation-to-revenue multiples for those two startups at about 50 times for Moonshot and about 163 times for DeepSeek.

On public listings, the report notes that Anthropic is likely to go public in the United States next month, while OpenAI has deferred its initial public offering to next year. The report additionally states that Moonshot has reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO in Hong Kong and that DeepSeek is preparing for a market listing.