China's AI Expands Globally: 20 Must-Know Products in 2024

Overview of Overseas AI: Some Earning Millions Monthly, Some Profitable Right After Launch

Meng Li

Jun 28, 2024

China's AI Accelerates Going Global

In 2024, China's AI industry is clearly speeding up its global expansion.

Domestically, AI competition seems endless, while many Chinese AI products are already thriving abroad.

Excluding non-Chinese entities and discontinued AI products, we identified 20 notable AI products going global.

These 20 AI products come from major companies, startups, and independent developers.

Their target markets vary: some aim globally from the start, some replicate their domestic versions, and some focus on Asia and Belt and Road regions.

Thoughts and Conclusions

1. Internet Giants Going Global: This isn't new, but in this AI wave, ByteDance is leading the charge. In 2018, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming aimed for global expansion within three years. Today, ByteDance's globalization is the most successful. Their Flow department continues to thrive, with over 20 AI applications domestically and 6 globally, earning them the nickname "App Factory."

2. Other Giants Lagging: Apart from ByteDance, other internet giants are not performing as well in terms of the number and traffic of overseas ventures. Perhaps they are content with their domestic earnings.

3. Ambitious AI Startups: Unlike the stable giants, new AI startups are eager to break out. Companies like MiniMax, Moonshot, 01.ai, AiShi Tech, ShiYun Tech, and West Lake Heart are expanding overseas. Some are already profitable, even before domestic large models earn a penny.

4. New AI Products (Post-2023): These mainly focus on entertainment, like AI role-playing (AI girlfriends, wives, lovers, etc.), AI virtual character chat, and AI scriptwriting. These products generally achieve profitability within a quarter.

5. Older AI Products (Pre-2023): These focus on image generation and processing, like background removal, face swapping, and watermark removal. They quickly adapted to generative AI and adopted subscription models, achieving significant revenue. Notably, Fotor, with fewer than 10 employees, earns over a million dollars monthly.

6. Productivity-Focused AI: Some AI products (Coze, PixVerse, Capcut, HeyGen) aim at productivity but haven't found profitable models yet, except HeyGen. HeyGen, which creates marketing videos with digital humans for enterprises, saw its revenue grow from $1M to $35M in a year and relocated to the USA.

7. Independent Developers: Some individual developers are also thriving. For instance, @AiDouBi, a former Tencent engineer, developed an AI search engine that reached 600,000 global visits within three months, covering Japan, Egypt, Russia, and Pakistan. FlowGPT founder Party Jiacheng developed and launched a product demo alone in three days.

8. AI Globalization: There's a saying: "The US leads in technology, China leads in applications, and Europe leads in legislation." For AI to go global, combining the latest US AI technology with China's internet application experience and engineering talent makes perfect sense. Thus, it's not just about going overseas; it's about globalization.

Wishing these Chinese companies good luck in achieving their AI ambitions across the globe.

Overview of Global AI Products

Here are detailed descriptions and usage links for 20 global AI products.

1. Cici

Cici is ByteDance's overseas version of Doubao, based on the GPT model, unlike Doubao which uses ByteDance's own model. According to SimilarWeb, Cici quickly topped download charts in Argentina and Peru.

Website: www.ciciai.com

2. Gauth

Gauth is ByteDance's AI learning assistant. Users can upload photos of questions, and the AI will recognize and solve them step-by-step. It also offers online tutoring services. Gauth's daily active users once exceeded 2 million.

Website: www.gauthmath.com

3. AnyDoor (formerly BagelBell)

AnyDoor, developed by ByteDance's Singapore company SPRING PTE. LTD. is an AI interactive story app available in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and the Philippines. Users can interact with AI characters in various storylines.

Website: www.anybagel.com

4. Coze International

Coze International is ByteDance's AI-Bot platform where users can create and customize AI assistants without coding. It has over 10 million monthly visits.

Website: www.coze.com

5. Capcut International

CapCut International, by ByteDance's Jianying, includes AI editing features, AI models, and AI poster generation.

Website: www.capcut.com

6. PicPic

PicPic, a ByteDance AI image creation app, lets users create digital avatars by uploading 3-8 clear photos.

Website: picpic.liblib.art

7. Ohai

Ohai is an AI role-playing chat app providing 24/7 virtual companionship, developed by Tranquillitatis in California.

Website: beta.ohai.bot

8. Noisee

Noisee is an AI music video generator. Users can upload audio files, and the AI creates videos based on the music.

Website: noisee.ai

9. Talkie

Talkie is an AI virtual character chat app by MiniMax. It offers subscription-based services and has over 18 million downloads.

Website: www.talkie-ai.com

10. PixVerse

PixVerse, by AiShi Tech, is a video creation tool supporting image-to-video and text-to-video generation.

Website: pixverse.ai

11. Monaland

Monaland is an AI companion app by Zero One Things, that offers immersive chat experiences with AI characters.

Website: www.monaland.ai

12. Joyland

Joyland, developed by Generatively, provides AI role-playing and interactive storytelling.

Website:www.joyland.ai

13. HeyGen

HeyGen generates marketing and communication videos using AI, supporting multiple languages and dialects. It has grown its revenue from $1 million to $35 million in a year.