Analysis: Chinese AI companies such as Zhipu and MiniMax have high valuation multiples, with sales multiples exceeding those of their American counterparts by dozens of times

According to an analysis by Tommy, there is a significant gap in valuation and revenue conversion for Chinese open-source AI companies, with their price-to-sales ratio (P/S) far exceeding that of leading counterparts in the United States.

Data shows that Zhipu, which developed the GLM 5.2 model, currently has a market value of approximately $137 billion, but its revenue for the fiscal year 2025 is about $107 million, resulting in a price-to-sales ratio as high as 1280 times; MiniMax has a market value of about $23 billion, with a price-to-sales ratio of approximately 290 times. In contrast, the valuations of leading AI laboratories in the United States are more solid, with OpenAI (valued at about $852 billion) and Anthropic (valued at about $965 billion) having price-to-sales ratios of only 34 times and 21 times, respectively.

It is believed that due to overseas users' concerns about data privacy, they are unwilling to send data directly to China, resulting in the massive demand for Chinese AI companies not being converted into actual API revenue, leading to significant profit loss to overseas third-party inference service providers (such as OpenRouter, etc.). To support their current high valuations, Chinese AI companies urgently need to prove their data non-retention mechanisms and capture the market at low prices, or explore revenue-sharing and initial licensing collaborations with overseas inference platforms to expand their actual revenue scale.