Who are China’s “six AI tigers”?
A Chinese media label for six foundation-model startups: Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, Baichuan, StepFun and 01.AI.
The label
Chinese tech media call six venture-backed foundation-model startups the “six little tigers”: Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI (maker of Kimi), MiniMax, Baichuan, StepFun and 01.AI. They were founded between 2019 and 2023.
It is a media label, not an official ranking. DeepSeek and the model teams inside big tech companies such as Alibaba (Qwen), ByteDance (Seed) and Tencent (Hunyuan) are discussed separately.
How to follow them
Most of them publish open weights on Hugging Face, and each runs its own website and API platform. On AIGC.NEWS every model entry says whether it has a global API, a China-only API, open weights or a waitlist, with the page that shows it.
Strategies differ and change: some focus on consumer apps, some on enterprise and some have narrowed their model work. Check the company page for the latest verified Events.