AI companies pay huge salaries before profit: Zhipu execs average 3.39M yuan/month, topping Tencent
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-09-23
A Jingxiang Studio analysis of 30 listed AI companies across models, chips and robotics shows talent costs soaring before profitability: Zhipu posted 724M yuan revenue with a 4.7B yuan loss in 2025, yet its key personnel earn an average 3.386M yuan per month — surpassing Tencent's 1.043M. Cambricon granted restricted stock to 945 employees, covering 85% of staff.
Executive pay gaps mirror commercialization stages: model/app companies average 358K yuan monthly, chip firms 280K, robotics 122K. ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba now pay AI PhD interns 5,000–6,000 yuan/day; AI job postings grew 789% year-over-year with average monthly pay of 63,160 yuan.
Equity is the retention lever: tech companies' incentive penetration is 73.6% vs A-share average 58.8%; Zhipu leads with 51.2% employee coverage and 16.55% of shares. Half of the top-20 paid executives have technical backgrounds, and core technical staff out-earn non-technical executives at all six disclosing sample firms.
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