Editor’s be aware: This text was written by Lucia, a TechNode reporter.
At a Sept. 1 on-line media briefing for the twenty third UBS Securities A-Share Seminar, dialogue round China’s AI sector centered on a sensible query: can decrease prices and wider AI use translate into actual enterprise worth?
UBS Securities China web analyst Xiong Wei highlighted three themes to look at in China’s large-model sector: mannequin functionality, “token ROI” and monetization. Whereas Chinese language builders proceed to enhance their fashions — significantly in coding and agentic capabilities — firms utilizing AI have gotten extra selective about how a lot intelligence they really want for a given process.
That marks a shift from “token-maxxing,” or encouraging extra AI utilization, towards “token optimization,” Xiong stated. After rising AI payments made it tougher for enterprises to measure the financial worth generated by their token consumption, patrons have begun paying higher consideration to the steadiness between efficiency and worth. Xiong stated that development favors Chinese language open-source fashions, whose enhancing capabilities and decrease prices make them more and more viable for repetitive or lower-risk workloads.
Xiong estimated that some main Chinese language fashions could value lower than one-tenth as a lot to develop as abroad friends, whereas common API pricing might be round 10% to twenty% of worldwide rivals. Nonetheless, cheaper AI doesn’t routinely translate into extra income.
Kenneth Fong, UBS’s head of China web analysis, stated China’s main web platforms face a extra elementary constraint: person site visitors and time spent on cellular gadgets are not rising a lot. AI can decrease content-production prices and make promoting or advice methods simpler, however customers nonetheless have restricted time and a spotlight. He used AI-generated brief dramas for instance: producing extra reveals at decrease value doesn’t imply they are going to seize extra of viewers’ time and a spotlight.
A brand new experiment from Mango TV illustrates either side of that equation. The Later Journey to the West, an AIGC-produced fantasy sequence, debuted on Mango TV and in Hunan Satellite tv for pc TV’s prime-time slot on Aug. 31, turning into China’s first AIGC long-form sequence to achieve a satellite-TV prime-time slot.
Tailored from an anonymously written late-Ming or early-Qing fantasy novel of the identical title, the story follows a brand new era of characters who reunite for one more journey to acquire Buddhist scriptures after the originals are misunderstood.
Its first season is deliberate to run for 30 episodes of about 40 minutes every. The sequence is being made with Mango Lingchuang, Mango TV’s in-house AIGC manufacturing platform, which had served greater than 40,000 skilled customers and supported over 3,900 initiatives by mid-2026.
The platform generated 109 character property and 143 scene property for the sequence, whereas the challenge can be testing a “produce, evaluation and broadcast in parallel” mannequin, permitting later episodes to stay in manufacturing as earlier ones air. The sequence additionally confirmed some early viewers traction: real-time scores for its Aug. 31 premiere ranked first amongst provincial satellite tv for pc channels in the identical time slot, based on ITHome, whereas ChinaTimes reported that it had logged 27.57 million performs on Mango TV by Sept. 2.
But whether or not these efficiencies and early viewers features can translate right into a sustainable enterprise stays unclear. Earlier than the sequence aired, Hunan’s broadcasting regulator requested the challenge crew to discover each a workable technical path for AI-powered long-form storytelling and a commercialization path for AIGC seasonal dramas.
That problem echoes factors made by each Xiong and Fong: as AI turns into cheaper to make use of and lowers manufacturing prices, the main target is shifting from how a lot AI can produce as to if its use can generate ample financial worth.
