Thousands of Companies Are Driving China’s AI Boom. A Government Registry Tracks Them All

When DeepSeek burst onto the planetary signifier successful January 2025, it seemed to look retired of nowhere. But the ample connection exemplary was conscionable 1 of the thousands of generative AI tools that person been released successful China since 2023—and there’s a nationalist archive of each azygous 1 of them.

The country’s apical net regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), requires that immoderate institution launching an AI instrumentality with “public sentiment properties oregon societal mobilization capabilities" archetypal record it successful a nationalist database: the algorithm registry. In a submission, developers indispensable amusement however their products debar 31 categories of risk, from property and sex favoritism to intelligence harm to “violating halfway socialist values.”

Applicants taxable their filing to their section CAC (say, the Shanghai CAC for Shanghai-registered firms), which forwards applications to the cardinal CAC for last approval. Only past is simply a instrumentality publically listed successful the algorithm registry. While the European Union is pursuing a single, broad AI Act, notes Matt Sheehan, a probe student astatine the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China’s attack to regularisation is much advertisement hoc, targeting circumstantial algorithms and gathering up iterative standards. (The US has nary comparable registration strategy oregon centralized regulatory agency.)

Over time, the CAC has inadvertently created the astir elaborate representation of a nation’s AI ecosystem anyplace successful the world.

Open the CAC’s update from August 2024 and you’ll find DeepSeek listed arsenic introduction 152, a azygous enactment successful a neatly packed table. Scroll done the array and you’ll find an AI that manages homestays and an AI that drafts patents. One assists ob-gyns successful a Shanghai maternity ward; different helps negociate authorities powerfulness grids. Kendra Schaefer and her colleagues astatine Trivium China, a Beijing-based argumentation consultancy, person been compiling the CAC’s updates into a broad database, enriched with their ain research.

A Broad View of the Boom

Nearly 80 percent of China’s generative AI registrations are clustered successful and astir its apical tech hubs—Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. Each metropolis has its strengths: Beijing’s elite universities, nationalist labs, and governmental spot springiness it an borderline successful large-scale innovation; Shenzhen (in Guangdong) is location to a dense hardware proviso concatenation and immense excavation of engineering talent; Shanghai, adjacent to multinationals, excels astatine commercialization; and Hangzhou (in Zhejiang) is fueled by Alibaba’s ecommerce empire.

But innovation spreads acold beyond the coasts. Chongqing is positioning itself arsenic an AI manufacturing and logistics node; and dense authorities concern has helped Hefei, successful Anhui Province, go known arsenic “China’s code valley” for its clump of speech-recognition firms, including iFlyTek. Filings besides originate successful little evident regions similar Guizhou, China’s “Big Data Valley,” wherever monolithic information centers powerfulness Huawei’s Pangu model, and Inner Mongolia, wherever authorities enterprises are integrating AI into mining and agriculture.

In the Trivium dataset, state-linked listings—from state-owned enterprises to government-backed probe institutes—make up 22 percent of filings. Many state-linked firms spouse with Big Tech to physique their AI: PetroChina, for example, teamed up with Huawei and iFlyTek to make lipid and state applications; State Grid utilized DeepSeek to physique a exemplary optimizing powerfulness grids.

Foreign firms marque up conscionable 0.5 percent of filings. Ikea, for example, has a astute shopper algorithm that generates merchandise recommendations. Yum China, the genitor institution that operates Kentucky Fried Chicken successful China, listed a exemplary that generates menus and promotional material.

Zeroing In connected the Competition

More than fractional of the listings successful the algorithm registry are for what Schaefer calls cross-sector technologies. These scope from foundational models to “general purpose” substance generators to a wide array of multimedia tools—voice swappers, 3D renderers, representation makers. “Nobody wants to beryllium caught successful a concern wherever they beryllium connected a competitor’s technology,” Schaefer says. Unlike successful the US, wherever OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind predominate the market, China’s contention to physique foundational AI remains divers and contested. But gathering these models is costly, and the marketplace is opening to consolidate. China’s six “AI tigers”—Moonshot, Minimax, Zhipu, Baichuan, 0.1AI, and Stepfun—are each backed by Alibaba oregon Tencent. ByteDance’s Doubao surpassed DeepSeek arsenic China’s astir fashionable chatbot, but its spot astatine the apical is not assured.

Niche Natives

While the giants duke it retired for chatbot supremacy, startups are hard astatine enactment successful each assemblage imaginable.

Squirrel AI 松鼠

Founder Derek Li says his 12-year-old institution is leaps beyond the ed-tech competition. They “put wheels connected a horse,” helium says, bolting AI onto their existing stale software. Squirrel claims to diagnose cognition gaps, measurement progress, and set lessons successful existent time.

When China banned for-profit tutoring successful 2021, the company’s revenues collapsed overnight. It pivoted to licensing its level to franchisees who besides sold the company’s AI-powered tablets. Squirrel’s web includes much than 3,000 centers crossed China, serving 1.2 cardinal students. Now, the institution is eyeing enlargement to the US.

Li, who withdrew his sons from a backstage schoolhouse successful Shanghai truthful that they could beryllium home-schooled connected Squirrel’s platform, says that “in the future, teachers won’t thatch knowledge.” Instead, helium says, “they’ll go information analysts, knowing learning reports and students’ ability, and psychologists, knowing emotions and shaping their personalities.”

AI Kanshe 看舌

AI Kanshe (translated arsenic “AI Sees Tongue”) is simply a accepted Chinese medicine startup that analyzes wellness done images of the tongue, palms, and face. The institution was founded by Li Wenhua, a erstwhile worker of Yaoshi Bang, 1 of China’s earliest online pharmaceutical platforms. A longtime pupil of lingua and manus diagnosis, Li wanted to harvester the diagnostic methods of accepted Chinese medicine with modern instrumentality vision. The institution serves some consumers and wellness practitioners crossed clinics, pharmacies, and immoderate hospitals, offering tools to enactment diagnosis and decisionmaking. Its exemplary is trained connected much than 100,000 annotated images of tongues, hands, and faces.

Zhongtan Puhui Cloud Technology 中碳普惠云科技

Founded successful 2024 by Wu Song, a erstwhile Wall Street quant trader, Zhongtan Puhui Cloud Technology develops AI-driven tools for c accounting. The greenish transition, Wu says, inactive relies connected cumbersome quality labour that could beryllium automated.

Zhongtan Puhui builds AI agents that grip a fig of c accounting tasks, including c footprinting and emissions audits. Its clients scope from China Minmetals Group and DHL to tiny and medium-sized exporters successful the Yangtze River Delta.