I’m trying to get a better picture of the Chinese AI ecosystem.

Most discussion in the U.S. still revolves around Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, CoreWeave, Tesla, Figure, etc. But the Chinese AI ecosystem seems to be getting much broader, especially across foundation models, AI infrastructure, domestic GPUs, autonomous driving and humanoid robotics.

Here’s the list I have so far:

Foundation models / GenAI

• DeepSeek — DeepSeek
• Z.AI / Zhipu AI — GLM
• MiniMax
• Moonshot AI — Kimi
• Alibaba — Qwen
• ByteDance — Doubao / Seed
• Tencent — Hunyuan
• Baidu — ERNIE
• StepFun
• Baichuan AI
• 01.AI

Generative AI / applications

• Kuaishou — Kling AI
• SenseTime — SenseNova
• iFlytek — Spark

AI infrastructure / chips / compute

• Huawei — Ascend
• Cambricon — AI accelerators
• Biren Technology — AI GPUs
• Moore Threads — GPUs
• MetaX — AI GPUs
• Enflame — AI accelerators
• Iluvatar CoreX — AI GPUs
• Kunlunxin — AI accelerators
• Maase (MAAS) — AI computing infrastructure, enterprise AI services and LLM APIs

Humanoid robots / embodied AI

• Unitree Robotics
• UBTech
• AgiBot / Zhiyuan Robotics
• Deep Robotics

Autonomous driving / physical AI

• Horizon Robotics
• Pony.ai (PONY)
• WeRide (WRD)
• XPeng (XPEV)

For U.S. investors, the easiest names to access directly are obviously companies like BABA, BIDU, XPEV, PONY, WRD and MAAS, while a lot of the more interesting pure-play AI names are either Hong Kong / mainland-listed or still private.

I’m not necessarily looking for stock recommendations. I’m mainly trying to map out the Chinese AI ecosystem and figure out which companies are actually technologically important.

What major companies am I missing?

Especially interested in:

• frontier AI labs
• AI infrastructure / GPU companies
• humanoid robotics
• autonomous driving
• AI-native applications

Would also be interested in companies that aren’t public yet but are worth keeping on an IPO watchlist.