China’s AI agents currently lag behind the US in commercialisation but adoption is speeding up, according to new research on the heels of OpenAI’s launch of a ChatGPT agent that is set to push the bar higher.
Orders and revenues of overseas AI agent makers exceeded those of Chinese firms “by an order of magnitude” in 2024 to 2025, according to a report released on Friday by the China International Capital Corporation (CICC).
That was thanks to their corporate clients’ higher IT budgets and a more-developed digital infrastructure, CICC analysts said. Chinese AI agent companies, however, have “relatively weak” digital infrastructure, and their digitalisation budgets have been impacted by the macro environment, according to the report.
In 2024, the US had 100 million users of AI agents, representing a market penetration rate of 40 per cent. China, with 250 million AI agent users last year, had only a 17.7 per cent adoption rate, CICC said.
AI agents are software applications designed to autonomously plan and complete tasks on behalf of users. They have emerged as the latest battleground following large language models, as generative AI rapidly advances.
San Francisco-based OpenAI on Friday launched a ChatGPT agent which it said could handle “complex workflows from start to finish”. CEO Sam Altman wrote on social media X that the agent was a “real ‘feel the AGI’ moment”. AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, or AI with human‑level intelligence.