China's AI chip firms lead 2025 top 50 ranking: report

BEIJING - A report ranking the top 50 Chinese AI companies has shown that enterprises specializing in AI chips emerged as the most notable performers in 2025, taking seven of the top ten spots.

All three companies at the top of the list - Cambricon, Moore Threads and MetaX - are AI chip-related firms, while among the 18 newly ranked ones, 10 are engaged in AI chip businesses, according to the Hurun China AI Top 50 released on Monday.

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, attributed this corporate prominence partly to the tightening of US export restrictions on high-end AI chips, which has in turn accelerated China's push for self-reliance in computing power.

China's position in AI has strengthened significantly in 2025, according to the report. Citing usage data of 100 trillion tokens from a third-party platform, it reveals that the market share of Chinese open-source models, which stood at just 1.2 percent by the end of 2024, has since grown significantly, at times approaching 30 percent.

AI companies on the list are remarkably young, having been founded an average of 12 years ago. The youngest ranked enterprises - Moonshot AI, Baichuan AI and StepFun - were established in 2023, and are all focused on AIGC large models.

The list also includes companies specializing in emerging AI application areas - such as AI-driven drug discovery, autonomous driving technology and enterprise decision-making - highlighting the rapid real-world adoption of AI technologies in China.

The report indicates that the listed AI companies are increasingly serving as "enablers" to empower Chinese sectors like consumer electronics and new energy vehicles to compete globally.

Beijing leads the list as the home to 19 ranked companies, followed by Shanghai with 14 and Shenzhen with 6, according to the report. Collectively, China's first-tier cities account for more than 80 percent of the enterprises on the ranking, underscoring a clustering effect in the country's AI sector.

The list ranks companies based on corporate value. For listed companies, market capitalization is calculated based on closing stock prices as of Jan. 9. Valuations for unlisted companies are determined with reference to comparable listed firms in the same sector or their latest financing rounds.

Notably, robotics firms like UBTECH, companies whose core business is not primarily AI, including ByteDance and DeepSeek, which focuses on fundamental AI research, were not included in the ranking.