What Are China's Top 10 AI Trends for 2025? Insights from Gartner

Gartner released its 2025 China AI Top Ten Trends report, urging enterprises to focus on sustainable AI development, economic benefits, and practical use cases rather than hype.

Senior principal analyst Fei Tianqi noted China’s rapid progress in AI R&D and deployment, including generative AI (GenAI) technologies, strong design and engineering capabilities, and a thriving ecosystem covering IT infrastructure, data, talent, security, and model engineering, driving fast‑moving large language models (LLM) and other applications.

Trend 1: Open‑source GenAI Models

Since January 2025, major cloud AI providers have begun open‑sourcing large‑scale GenAI models, fostering collaboration, innovation, and customization, accelerating AI research and broader societal benefits.

Trend 2: “Self‑Build” Preference

Chinese enterprises increasingly prefer developing AI solutions in‑house rather than purchasing them, integrating proprietary business knowledge, customizing models, and deeply embedding AI into existing systems.

Trend 3: Agent‑type AI

Agent‑based AI is gaining traction for optimizing business processes, improving operational efficiency, and delivering competitive advantage, aligning with global shifts toward AI‑driven digital transformation.

Trend 4: Frugal AI

Frugal AI reduces chip and compute consumption, offering cost‑effective solutions that support both advanced urban markets and less‑developed rural areas, promoting inclusive growth.

Trend 5: Engineering Capability

China emphasizes engineering strength, focusing on engineering‑driven AI model design, implementation, and infrastructure deployment rather than merely adopting off‑the‑shelf products.

Trend 6: Collaborative AI Defense

Growing AI security and risk‑management needs lead 60% of Chinese firms to adopt collaborative AI defense systems, forming cross‑department teams to mitigate cyber threats.

Trend 7: Rapid AI Talent Growth

Demand for AI talent surges, with the government investing in high‑skill talent pipelines, positioning China as a global leader in AI talent development.

Trend 8: Ubiquitous AI

A vibrant digital ecosystem drives widespread AI adoption in everyday life, with user‑friendly AI products resonating with broad audiences.

Trend 9: Inclusive AI Ecosystem

The AI ecosystem evolves toward “co‑opetition,” where major players collaborate on specific value‑chain segments while competing in the market.

Trend 10: From Data to AI Ecosystem

Enterprises shift focus from building advanced models to leveraging unique internal data assets, integrating data ecosystems to sustain AI performance and differentiation.

Gartner forecasts that by 2026, 50% of China’s AI industry will adopt open‑source GenAI models; by 2028, 33% of enterprise software will embed agent AI; by 2030, AI penetration will exceed 50% of the population.