China's AI capex hits $140B, still under 1/6 of US big five's $800B
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-09-19
Highlights from a Rhodium Group report: China's AI capex this year is estimated at $140B, versus roughly $800B for the US big five; leading US AI companies generate 10x+ the revenue of leading Chinese AI companies; and Chinese AI firms have substantially lower gross margins despite free-riding on US progress via adversarial distillation. The poster flips the framing: given that American academic research is effectively dead, how much do US models free-ride on Chinese labs' open research? Plenty of open questions remain on US vs Chinese AI business models — revenue sources, addressable markets, and funding structures.
More from Venture
- Gary Marcus: AI data center demand has already passed its peak as projects get killed — GaryMarcus · 2026-11-04
- Gary Marcus: 'fleecing the public with AI fantasies just got harder' as AI stocks drop — GaryMarcus · 2026-11-04
- Dev's AI agents auto-submit his product to directories, 4 confirmed in 16hrs — pramodk73 · 2026-11-04
- Reddit case study: agent discovery optimization brought $14k MRR in a month — tomarv99 · 2026-11-04
- Indie dev hits $25k MRR in one year after 7 years of failures — rudrank · 2026-11-04
- Chinese AI stocks MiniMax and Zhipu pump 15% in an hour — menhguin · 2026-11-04