Tang Jie and Yang Zhilin drive China AI surge
China's AI scene is heating up, thanks to Tang Jie (Z.AI) and Yang Zhilin (Moonshot AI), a former mentor-mentee pair from Tsinghua University now leading startups valued at tens of billions of dollars.
Their rise comes as China pushes hard to grow its own AI industry, especially with the US limiting exports of advanced chips.
Beijing eases IPO rules, boosts funding
After the 2026 launch of Anthropic's Mythos model, Beijing boosted support for local AI with more funding, easier IPO rules, and a surge in investments; almost half of China's total equity-capital investment in the first half of 2026 went into AI.
Chinese companies are also getting creative: DeepSeek's new tech has impressed even OpenAI's Sam Altman, but there's still a big funding gap compared to US giants.
For example, Z.AI's annual recurring revenue rose to $1 billion by July, a huge feat but still far behind Anthropic's $65 billion.