China’s AI Dragons Risk Choking Each Other
中国 AI 巨头恐陷内斗困局

It’s a story that has played out many times in the history of China’s tech sector. Notoriously fierce competition means that whenever a new craze comes along, scores of rivals emerge ready to pounce.
这在中国科技发展史上屡见不鲜。每当新风口出现，残酷的行业竞争总会催生大批跃跃欲试的挑战者。

Firms are then locked in a race to the bottom when it comes to pricing. The food delivery wars forced out smaller players over the years and led bubble tea — another consumer fad fallen prey — to be sold this month for as little as 1.68 yuan (less than 25 cents). A similar cutthroat market has left behind a trail of zombie cars in the electric-vehicle sector. Now the same forces are in full swing in the booming artificial intelligence industry.
企业随即陷入价格战的恶性循环。这些年的外卖大战淘汰了小玩家，导致另一个沦为牺牲品的消费潮流——奶茶——本月售价低至 1.68 元（不到 25 美分）。类似的残酷竞争在电动汽车行业留下了大量僵尸车企。如今，同样的力量正在蓬勃发展的人工智能行业全面展开。

The stakes could not be higher. The government is betting that the technology will uplift swaths of the economy. Eager to not be left behind, AI startups, including the so-called Little Dragons, are awash with funding, and even the Big Tech companies like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. are going all-in.
形势已到紧要关头。政府押注这项技术将提振多个经济领域。包括所谓"小龙头"在内的 AI 初创企业因担心掉队而获得大量资金涌入，就连阿里巴巴集团等科技巨头也纷纷全力投入。

For now, AI firms in China are focused on the tech industry’s classic playbook: scaling up userbases and racing for market share. But a key difference this time around is that nobody has actually cracked the key to getting consumers to pay. DeepSeek and open-sourcing breakthroughs have made some headway in cutting down on costs, but eventually something will have to give.
目前中国 AI 企业仍遵循科技行业传统策略：扩大用户规模并争夺市场份额。但本轮竞争的关键差异在于，尚未有人真正找到让消费者买单的秘诀。深度求索（DeepSeek）和开源突破虽在降本方面取得进展，但最终必将面临瓶颈。

It has all undoubtedly spurred a vibrant innovation ecosystem and the widespread adoption of AI applications. But it has also forced players to slash prices and even offer services for free, making the industry’s path to monetization uncertain. The intense competition means the biggest risk for Chinese AI firms may not be Washington’s chip curbs or other external factors, but each other.
这无疑催生了一个充满活力的创新生态系统，并推动了人工智能应用的广泛普及。但也迫使参与者大幅降价，甚至免费提供服务，使得该行业的盈利前景变得不确定。激烈的竞争意味着中国人工智能企业面临的最大风险可能不是华盛顿的芯片管制或其他外部因素，而是彼此之间的内耗。

It represents a stark contrast to the dominance of a few large players in Silicon Valley. For example, China’s top 10 global AI chatbots generated just $1 million in revenue from Apple’s iOS app store in the last 12 months ending in May, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts wrote in a note last week. Most of this came from Baidu Inc.’s Ernie Bot, which stopped charging consumers in March. By contrast, OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot alone garnered iOS revenue of $669 million in the same period.
这与硅谷由少数巨头主导的局面形成鲜明对比。彭博智库分析师在上周的报告中指出，截至 5 月的过去 12 个月里，中国十大全球人工智能聊天机器人在苹果 iOS 应用商店仅创造了 100 万美元的收入。其中大部分来自百度公司的文心一言，而该应用已于 3 月停止向用户收费。相比之下，仅 OpenAI 的 ChatGPT 同期在 iOS 平台就获得了 6.69 亿美元的收入。

The dilemma has been simmering for a while. At a tech conference last year, Baidu Chief Executive Officer Robin Li criticized the abundance of AI models in China, complaining of a “significant waste of resources, particularly computing power.” At the same conference, the CEO of MiniMax, one of the Little Dragons, predicted a major consolidation on the horizon.
这个困境已酝酿多时。去年一场科技峰会上，百度首席执行官李彦宏批评中国 AI 模型泛滥，痛陈"资源尤其是算力的巨大浪费"。同场会议上，小巨头之一 MiniMax 的 CEO 预言行业即将迎来大规模整合。

An industry concentration would help ameliorate some of the pressures. But instead, the release of DeepSeek’s market-moving reasoning model earlier this year has only spurred fresh pandemonium. Nobody seems willing to back out of the rat race anytime soon.
行业集中本可缓解部分压力。但今年初深度求索发布撼动市场的推理模型后，反而引发了新一轮混战。短期内似乎无人愿意退出这场激烈竞争。

There were more than 3,700 registered generative AI tools operating in China, according to one analysis of government registration data as of April, and cyberspace administrators were approving roughly 250 to 300 new products per month. Not all will survive.
截至四月的政府备案数据显示，中国在运营的生成式 AI 工具超过 3700 个，网信部门每月批准约 250 至 300 个新产品。并非所有都能存活。

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Some firms may be tempted to seek growth abroad. But geopolitical realities may get in the way of making it in overseas markets, where consumers have shown more willingness to pay for AI services. Already, countries from Australia to Italy are restricting the use of DeepSeek or banning it on government devices. There was brief hope that the rise of AI agents would offer a way to differentiate a company’s products, but even this has already become a crowded field.
部分企业或许会考虑向海外市场寻求增长。但地缘政治现实可能阻碍它们在海外市场的发展——这些市场的消费者已表现出更愿意为 AI 服务付费的倾向。从澳大利亚到意大利等多个国家已在限制 DeepSeek 的使用，或禁止其在政府设备上运行。AI 智能体的兴起曾短暂带来产品差异化的希望，但如今这个领域也已变得拥挤不堪。

This puts the Little Dragons at higher risk. Tech giants like Alibaba, ByteDance Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. have more resources to play the long game, especially in a sector marked by high costs for chips and computing resources.
这使得这些"小龙"面临更高风险。阿里巴巴、字节跳动和腾讯控股等科技巨头拥有更多资源打持久战，尤其是在芯片和算力成本高昂的行业领域。

Official support and insatiable hype remains a strong propellant of China’s AI sector. A former top official predicted earlier this week that the nation is on the cusp of generating more than 100 DeepSeek-like breakthroughs. But in the long run, it seems just as likely to produce at least a hundred zombie chatbots or AI agents.
官方支持与无休止的炒作仍是中国人工智能产业的强劲助推剂。一位前高级官员本周早些时候预测，中国即将迎来百余项类似深度求索的重大突破。但从长远来看，同样可能出现的情况是催生至少上百个僵尸聊天机器人或 AI 智能体。

More From Bloomberg Opinion:
更多彭博观点精选：

• AI Hype Is Proving to Be a Solow’s Paradox: Stephen Mihm
  《人工智能热潮正印证索洛悖论》——斯蒂芬·米姆
• Labubu’s Biggest Threat Is Not Wakuku, or Lafufu: Shuli Ren
  《拉布布的最大威胁并非哇库库或拉夫夫》——任淑莉
• College Grads Are Lab Rats in the AI Experiment: Parmy Olson
  大学毕业生沦为 AI 实验的小白鼠：帕米·奥尔森

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