Where the claim came from

The figure appears to originate from an English-language analysis published in January 2026, built around OpenAI's reported $20 billion annualized revenue milestone in 2025 alongside estimates of Anthropic's run rate and fragmented disclosures from Chinese rivals. Korean-language posts largely spread the claim in reposted form; the original pages could not be fully accessed during verification, and reviewers worked from mirror copies. Posts frequently attached a Rhodium Group chart on Chinese AI funding alongside wire imagery from CNBC and the South China Morning Post, suggesting the comparison had traveled through mainstream financial coverage before reaching Korean audiences.

What the numbers show

OpenAI's 2025 trajectory, anchored by the $20 billion annualized mark, dwarfs any single Chinese competitor for which figures exist, and Anthropic's enterprise-led growth has widened the US pair's combined lead. On the Chinese side, disclosures are opaque: leading developers tied to large platform companies fold AI-related revenue into broader segment results, and revenue definitions differ across markets, with some Chinese figures bundling cloud and consumer subscription income that US rivals book separately. Even so, aggregations of the known figures reviewed for this fact-check consistently placed the Chinese total at a small fraction of the US leaders' combined revenue, in the rough neighborhood of one-tenth.

Why it matters for Korea's chip and hardware beat

For Korean readers, the gap is a proxy for compute spending. Revenue on the scale of OpenAI and Anthropic translates directly into demand for high-bandwidth memory and advanced semiconductors — the home turf of SK hynix and Samsung Electronics — and into the GPU and foundry supply chains Korean suppliers feed. A Chinese AI sector earning an order of magnitude less constrains how much domestic compute its developers can absorb, a dynamic with direct consequences for Korea's memory-led hardware economy and for capex planning across the region.

On the strength of 12 primary sources, a consistent order-of-magnitude gap across every aggregation reviewed, and no credible counter-disclosure from the companies involved, the claim that all Chinese AI developers combined earn only about a tenth of OpenAI's and Anthropic's revenue is Mostly True, with the caveat that private-company figures on both sides remain estimates.