Driven by a global surge in AI spending and fierce competition at home, Chinese tech companies are rapidly expanding their international footprint, not just via physical supply chains, but increasingly through cloud-based software and foundation models. The broader push aligns with recent customs data from the first half of 2026 showing a sharp rise in physical tech exports. Integrated-circuit exports nearly doubled in value to US$177.3 billion, a 96 per cent year-on-year surge heavily inflated by global chip price hikes. Meanwhile, exports of automatic data-processing equipment jumped over 41 per cent to US$138.1 billion, and industrial-robot shipments climbed over 18 per cent to US$929 million across 141 countries and regions. However, corporate disclosures reveal a far broader dynamic beyond physical goods: mainland Chinese firms are carving out key positions across both the software and hardware layers of the global AI boom. Shanghai-based AI lab MiniMax generated US$57.7 million, or 73 per cent of its total revenue, outside mainland China in 2025 – up from US$21.3 million a year earlier, according to its financial statements. By the end of 2025, it had cumulatively served more than 214,000 enterprise customers and developers from over 100 countries and regions. Its flagship M2 model became the first Chinese model on OpenRouter to cross 50 billion in daily token consumption, the company said. Chinese AI developers were leveraging lower development costs and competitive product pricing to scale globally, as their models approached performance levels capable of driving broader international adoption, Goldman Sachs said in a recent report. However, commercial strategies among Chinese players vary sharply based on their target markets. Enterprise-focused model developer Zhipu AI, for example, remains deeply anchored at home. Its 2025 revenue was “substantially derived” from customers in China, according to its annual report. On-premise deployments, which require installing AI software onto a client’s internal servers, generated 534 million yuan (US$78.9 million), or nearly 74 per cent of total sales. The divide underscores a growing reality in Chinese software: lightweight consumer apps and developer-facing cloud services can easily go global, while heavy enterprise deployments require localised implementation and support networks. Chinese optical-module makers have become indispensable to global tech giants building massive computing clusters amid a global AI infrastructure boom. Their products carry data between servers, switches and computing nodes within data centres, making them increasingly important as cloud providers expand AI computing and networking capacity. Following the exit of most US and Japanese competitors from the optical-transceiver market by 2020, Chinese vendors stepped in to fill the void, according to research firm LightCounting. Zhongji Innolight has emerged as the leading global supplier to major cloud providers, the research firm said. Its Hong Kong listing prospectus showed that the US market alone generated over 57 per cent of its revenue last year. Meanwhile, Eoptolink jumped to second place globally, according to LightCounting, as it established itself as a key supplier of 400-gigabit and 800-gigabit components to Amazon while also securing product qualification with Nvidia and other major US tech firms. Both Chinese companies generated over 90 per cent of their 2025 revenue overseas, directly reaping the rewards of massive AI capital expenditure by Western tech giants. For Chinese robotics vendors, the overseas push is driven as much by local survival as it is by global opportunity. Pushed outward by intense competition at home, mobile-robot vendors with international operations are significantly outperforming their domestic-only peers, according to Interact Analysis. “The saturated and highly competitive Chinese market is forcing leading players to look outward,” the research firm said. The firm pointed to a stark price arbitrage, estimating that an autonomous forklift selling for US$15,000 to US$20,000 in China can command US$40,000 to US$60,000 in Europe and North America, leaving comfortable profit margins even after localisation and support costs. Beijing-based warehouse-automation company Geekplus illustrates the financial power of this strategy. Its revenue from outside mainland China reached 2.39 billion yuan in 2025, accounting for over 75 per cent of its total, while almost 80 per cent of new orders came from overseas markets – led by a growth rate of more than 50 per cent in the Americas.