Seven Chinese AI companies hit US$10.7 billion ARR, but the harder race is paying for scale

<p class="P1" data-start="2970" data-end="3422">China's leading AI developers are scaling revenue rapidly, but the gap with their US rivals remains substantial &mdash; and the cost of keeping pace is rising even faster. Rhodium Group estimates that seven major Chinese AI companies had combined annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of about US$10.7 billion, based on estimates dated between March and August 2026, roughly one-tenth of the more than US$100 billion attributed to OpenAI and Anthropic combined.