While China’s new “AI tigers” have captured global attention for challenging Silicon Valley front-runners, a quieter wave of domestic technology companies is building in-house artificial intelligence systems serving everyday users. Beyond pure-play AI labs like DeepSeek, Z.ai (also known as Zhipu AI), Moonshot AI and MiniMax, consumer-facing platforms that span e-commerce, video gaming, social media and travel are developing foundation models tailored to their own business ecosystems, in efforts that have drawn far less attention. RedNote, the lifestyle platform often described as China’s answer to Instagram, underscored the trend earlier this month with its latest release. Its AI research arm, Dots Studio, introduced Dots3-Note Preview, a 280-billion-parameter open-weight model. Citing benchmark tests, the company said the system matched or outperformed models from US labs OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as domestic leaders DeepSeek and Z.ai, in specific tasks. The release highlights a growing technical focus for a platform best known for fashion, travel and shopping recommendations. Dots Studio said in a blog post that it aimed to “build AI that benefits everyone and helps people solve the many problems they encounter in life”. Industry analysts said the effort reflected a broader operational shift across China’s technology sector, where digital platforms are building custom AI rather than relying solely on third-party providers. “When non-AI companies invest in AI models, it is primarily because AI has become critical to their business operations,” said Su Lian Jye, a chief analyst focusing on applied intelligence market research across the Asia-Oceania region at Omdia. Su noted that these consumer platforms were “digital native and extremely data-rich”. By marrying proprietary business data with custom AI models, companies could streamline workflows, predict demand, personalise services and unlock new revenue streams, he added. Similar strategies are taking shape across the industry. Meituan, the food delivery and local services giant, has invested substantially in its LongCat model family as it seeks to integrate AI across areas including merchant services, logistics, customer support and recommendations. Trip.com, China’s largest online travel agency, developed its own travel-focused AI system, Wendao, to support applications including itinerary planning, customer service and travel recommendations. Chinese video streaming platform Bilibili and gaming developer miHoYo, meanwhile, have focused on using AI to enhance content creation and develop more interactive digital experiences. Bilibili developed the Index family of language models, including IndexTTS, a multilingual speech synthesis system, which has been used in areas including AI subtitles, translation, video creation and voice generation. miHoYo developed Glossa, an in-house generative AI model aimed at making game characters more interactive, and reportedly uses it in AI features for Honkai: Star Rail, its globally popular role-playing game. The company is also exploring AI applications in game development, including content generation, voice synthesis and production workflows. However, building and scaling in-house AI infrastructure presents steep operational hurdles. According to Omdia’s AI Market Maturity Survey, the biggest barriers included a lack of business data or poor-quality data, regulatory and compliance concerns, shortages of qualified in-house talent and challenges of integrating AI into existing systems. Investing in AI could also “introduce budget pressure due to high infrastructure and personnel costs”, though “the long-term impact can be strongly positive”, Omdia’s Su said.