Competitive Landscape of China's AI Agent Market

C Applications & Practices

Overview

China's AI Agent market experienced explosive growth in 2025-2026. The market size was approximately 6.9 billion yuan in 2025 and is expected to surge to 3.3009 trillion yuan by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 100%. The emergence of OpenClaw has further accelerated the competition and development of China's AI Agent market.

Market Information

DimensionDetails
2024 Market SizeApproximately 2.873 billion yuan
2025 Market SizeApproximately 6.9 billion yuan
2028 Forecasted SizeApproximately 3.3009 trillion yuan
Compound Annual Growth RateOver 100%
Enterprise Deployment Expectation60% of enterprises will deploy AI Agents by 2026

Characteristics of the Competitive Landscape

Three Key Features

  1. Concentration at the Top: The "Six Tigers" represented by Alibaba, DeepSeek, ByteDance, Tencent, StepStar, and Zhipu AI dominate the large model layer with their technological, data, and capital advantages.
  2. Ecosystem Differentiation: Different vendors have formed differentiated ecosystem positions.
  3. Deepening Scenarios: Vertical industry applications have become the focus of competition.

BAT's Three Divergent Paths

CompanyPathCore Strategy
BaiduAI InfrastructureERNIE Large Model + Baidu Ecosystem + OpenClaw Integration
TencentEcosystem SynergyHunyuan Large Model + WeChat/QQ Social Ecosystem
AlibabaBusiness ReconstructionTongyi Large Model + DingTalk Intelligence

Major Players

First Tier (Dual-Driven by Large Models and Applications)

CompanyRepresentative ProductMonthly Active UsersCore Advantage
ByteDanceDoubao226 millionLargest user base, full-scenario coverage
BaiduERNIE Bot202 millionAI search, enterprise-level services
AlibabaTongyi QianwenRapid growthLeading in open source, enterprise-level deployment
TencentYuanbaoRapid growthWeChat ecosystem, social scenarios

Second Tier (Vertical Breakthrough/Technical Leadership)

CompanyRepresentative ProductCore Advantage
Moonshot AIKimiLong context, overseas revenue exceeds domestic
Zhipu AIQingyan/GLMTsinghua affiliation, adaptation to domestic chips
DeepSeekDeepSeekLeading in open-source inference models
iFlytekSparkDomestic computing power, industry implementation

Third Tier (Specialized Scenarios)

CompanyRepresentative ProductCore Advantage
MiniMaxConch AIGlobal leader in video generation
Baichuan IntelligenceBaichuanLeading in medical AI vertical
StepStarLeapAskMultimodal capabilities

Industry Pain Points

  1. Supply Side: Technological cost constraints
  2. Demand Side: Implementation obstacles
  3. Supply-Demand Mismatch: Exacerbated mismatch

Commercialization Paths

  • Domestic Model: Driven by government and state-owned enterprise projects, rapidly expanding in sectors like government affairs and finance.
  • Impact of OpenClaw: Accelerated the popularization of agent capabilities but also exposed security issues.
  • Large model companies and cloud computing companies are the biggest beneficiaries of OpenClaw.

2026 Development Trends

  1. Agent capabilities become standard for model vendors.
  2. Rise of multi-agent collaboration frameworks.
  3. Security and compliance become core competitive advantages.
  4. Accelerated deep customization in vertical industries.
  5. Parallel development of open-source and closed-source ecosystems.
  6. Adaptation to domestic computing power becomes a differentiated advantage.

Sources

External References

Learn more from these authoritative sources: