Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups are overhauling their business models as they fight to remain competitive following the widespread adoption of rival DeepSeek’s technology across the country.

Zhipu, once considered China’s most prominent large language model start-up, has pinned its hopes on an initial public offering to sustain its cash-intensive growth as it focuses on building up its enterprise sales business, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Among China’s other leading generative AI start-ups, 01.ai has stopped “pre-training” large language models to focus on selling tailored AI business solutions using DeepSeek’s models; Baichuan has opted to concentrate on the healthcare market; and Moonshot has slashed its marketing budget for its Kimi chatbot to focus on model training.