China Equity Strategy: Takeaways from JPM AI expert call: From foundation models to industrial-scale adoption

Research evidence excerpt

China Equity Strategy: Takeaways from JPM AI expert call: From foundation models to industrial-scale adoption

y to reflect this into near-term EPS forecasts. (852) 2800-0511

mixo.das@jpmorgan.com

• Divergent AI playbooks: US frontier ambition vs. China’s ROI-led J.P. Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Limited/

commercialization. The expert argues that the US and China are running two J.P. Morgan Broking (Hong Kong) Limited

different AI races: the US is focused on frontier breakthroughs and AGI, Head of China Research

supported by deeper capital, top talent and abundant compute, while China is Alex Yao

operating under tighter resource constraints and therefore it prioritizes cost- (86 21) 6106 6505

efficient model iteration, vertical use cases and near-term enterprise ROI. This alex.yao@jpmorgan.com

difference shows up in commercialization and pricing: Chinese labs use open SAC Registration Number: S1730523020001

weights to build developer ecosystems, but monetize through paid APIs, fine- J.P. Morgan Securities (China) Company

tuning, private deployment and managed services, often at materially lower cost Limited

than US offerings. The expert also suggests that China’s cost advantage is

supported by lower-cost data procurement and mature model distillation

practices, helping domestic models compete effectively for high-volume

enterprise workloads. As a result, China’s AI ecosystem appears more optimized

for broad real-economy deployment. For investors, we believe the investment

implication is that China’s edge may lie less in matching the US on every

frontier benchmark and more in scalable, cost-effective adoption.

• Monetization shift: From consumer traffic to enterprise revenue. The expert

highlighted a clear shift in China AI monetization from consumer products to