Rise of AI Agents Could Make China's Open-Source Models Commercially Viable

Summary

The South China Morning Post reports on how the growing adoption of AI agents may finally create viable revenue paths for Chinese open-source AI model developers. The article explores the thesis that while open-source foundation models from Chinese companies have struggled to generate direct revenue — given the free availability of model weights — the emerging agentic AI ecosystem creates new monetization opportunities through agent platforms, tool-use integrations, and enterprise deployment ser