Goldman Sachs raised its run-rate revenue forecast for China’s artificial intelligence model market by 30 per cent to US$13 billion, citing rising cost efficiency and rapidly advancing capabilities from players like DeepSeek and MiniMax. In a research note published on Monday, the US investment bank boosted its year-end annualised recurring revenue (ARR) projection for mainland Chinese AI models from US$10 billion, citing aggressive price cuts, technical breakthroughs and accelerating corporate adoption. Goldman Sachs lifted projected year-end ARRs of Hong Kong-listed Zhipu AI and MiniMax to US$2.5 billion and US$1 billion, respectively. The report said competition for the best performance-to-price balance is expected to intensify among Chinese AI models, noting recent releases had reached new frontiers in performance per dollar. MiniMax launched its H3 model last Friday under an open-weight approach, priced at just 30 to 50 per cent of incumbent market levels, according to Goldman Sachs. On the same day, DeepSeek launched API access for its V4 Flash model, achieving front-end coding capabilities that rival Zhipu’s flagship GLM-5.2. According to Arena AI’s latest leaderboard, GLM-5.2 ranks seventh in front-end coding globally, while DeepSeek V4 Flash closely follows in eighth place.