The era of AI agents is accelerating, with publicly traded companies actively deploying strategies

“Future AI agents may surpass humans, and humans will live in a world with hundreds of millions, even billions, of AI agents,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted in an interview program this July. A Bank of America report also noted that AI evolution is on the eve of the third wave—Agentic AI is just about to arrive.

In the second half of this year, AI Agents are all the rage, becoming a hot area that tech giants such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, and OpenAI are racing to push forward. In the domestic market, large-model vendors, internet companies, and listed companies are all actively laying out AI Agent plans.

As more and more enterprises roll out AI Agent products and ecosystems, industry insiders expect 2025 to be the breakout year for AI Agents. Galaxy Securities, in its research report, predicted that by 2028, the size of China’s AI Agent market will surge to 852 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 72.7%.

Manufacturers Kick Off the AI Agent Tug-of-War

An AIAgent—short for an artificial intelligence agent, also known as an “AI intelligent agent”—is a system driven by a large language model as its “brain.” It has the ability to autonomously understand, perceive, plan, remember, and use tools, and can automatically execute complex tasks. Unlike traditional artificial intelligence, an AI Agent can achieve a given goal step by step through independent thinking and by calling tools.

For a simple example: if a user wants to go out for a meal, a large language model can provide the user with suggestions on restaurant locations and shop-related information. But an AI Agent can do more—it can not only recommend where to eat, but also search for cuisines and restaurants based on the user’s budget, execute reservation operations, add the itinerary to the calendar, and send itinerary reminders.

Since the second half of this year, AI Agents have been highly sought after. Tech giants including Microsoft, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic have all announced related progress.

In June, Apple showcased its latest AI achievement, Apple Intelligence, at its developer conference. In November, Microsoft released more than 10 commercial AI Agents at the “Microsoft Ignite 2024” conference. Google followed closely, announcing full-scale promotion of commercial AI Agents as well, launching a series of incentive activities and products—plus it specifically announced one of the very few commercial AI Agent markets globally. OpenAI plans to release a new AI Agent product codenamed “Operator” in January 2025.

In the domestic market, vendors represented by Zhipu are also focusing on AI Agents, and a competition around “AI Agents” is quietly underway.

On October 25, Zhipu released AutoGLM Intelligent Agent. It can read voice commands to understand users’ intentions, simulate human behavior, and automatically complete tasks such as ordering takeout, booking flights, and hotels. On November 29, Zhipu launched an upgraded version of AutoGLM Intelligent Agent, supporting autonomous execution of long-step tasks with more than 50 steps, and capable of flexibly switching among different APPs while completing tasks.

Zhipu believes that AI large models are shifting from “Chat” to “Act.” In the future, a unified AI intelligent agent will operate various hardware devices to improve the efficiency of human-computer interaction. As computing power increases, models adapted to AI-native devices and a terminal-to-cloud collaborative architecture will gradually emerge. Various smart devices—such as smartphones, PCs, cars, glasses, and home appliances—are rapidly appearing.

Apart from Zhipu, companies including ByteDance, Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba are also rolling out AIAgent plans, including ByteDance’s Coze Agent platform, Baidu’s Qianfan AgentBuilder agent development tool, and Kunlun Wanwei’s TianGong skyAgents.

Multiple Listed Companies Deploy AI Agents

As domestic vendors begin their AI Agent tug-of-war, multiple listed companies in China’s A-share market are also actively laying out AI Agents.

For example, iFlytek has launched AI assistants for sectors including education, healthcare, the judiciary, and government services. Jincai Hulian’s “Xinzhi Yuecai Taxation and Finance Large Model” adopts an open architecture design. By combining the company’s taxation and finance products with an open platform, it builds a taxation-and-finance AIAgent intelligence agent.

The Zhongke Jincai AI Agent development and operation platform provides functions such as agent creation, multi-base model invocation, and workflow definition. It can automatically route and schedule the most suitable large model based on industry scenario needs and complete agent creation. The company states that Zhongke Jincai’s AI Agent achieves multi-intent understanding: it can automatically execute multiple tasks based on user instructions or context information. After learning and understanding user preferences, it can provide personalized services and achieve highly human-like end-to-end natural-language interaction.

A subsidiary of Xinguodu Holdings, Shanghai Shierqu, is committed to developing General Purpose AI Agent technology and conducting research on multimodal AI technologies and products.

In October this year, Xinkaipu launched a campus-life AI product called “Xiaomei Tongxue,” built on the Pangu large model and Tongyi Qianwen large model.

On December 9, when asked by investors whether it has already deployed AI Agents, Zetes Technology (CIC) responded that the company has long been pushing product and technological development in the AI Agent area. For example, its Rubik Avatar is an integrated and innovative product that combines multiple technologies including AI Agents. These include AI technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. Based on edge-side intelligent technologies and naked-eye 3D technologies, and relying on Qualcomm’s high-computing-power chip platform, it uses Zetes Technology’s Kanzi 3D rendering engine to render 3D graphics and images in real time.

Naxing Shares recently responded to investor questions by stating that the company’s subsidiary, Only Network, is based on cutting-edge AI large-model technologies and has carried out deep cooperation with AI industry-leading companies such as Microsoft, to provide efficient, intelligent AIGC application products and solutions for industry customers. Xiaolu is an AIGC-based AI assistant that supports intelligent chat and knowledge base Q&A.

On December 17, Coot Intelligent responded to investor questions by stating that its Coot AI Agents 2.0 version aims to become a universal digital intelligence tool and helper—helping traditional enterprises carry out digital and intelligent transformation and upgrades. At present, Coot AI Agents 2.0 is still under development.

2025****May See a Commercial Breakout for AI Agents

For AI Agents, industry-wide, it is generally believed that 2025 will be the year of AI Agent explosion.

A research report from Shanxi Securities pointed out that Agents are expected to be rolled out in bulk in 2025, boosting demand for computing power and further expanding investment needs for AI infrastructure.

Debon Securities also predicts that by 2025, AI Agents may enter an outbreak period, and the terminal market will achieve a qualitative leap. As the Agent network gradually takes shape, higher market penetration will help build a favorable business-model closed loop for the entire AI ecosystem.

“Right now, tech giants such as Apple, Google, and OpenAI have already regarded Agents as one of their key focuses for 2025, and 2025 may become the breakout year for Agents, which will in turn drive AI applications to be deployed,” said Zongjianshu, an analyst at Changjiang Securities.

In the view of Tang Fangxin, head of government and enterprise business at Wanshang Technology, AI Agent development is in a transition phase from “experimentation” to “application,” and has not yet reached maturity. However, with continued advances in computing power and progress in machine learning and natural language processing, AI Agents’ capabilities in understanding users’ intent, providing personalized services, and executing complex tasks are improving continuously. At present, AI Agents are already being used in multiple fields including customer service, smart home, and personal assistants, and are expanding into more industries and scenarios.

Tang Fangxin believes that AI Agents will continue to evolve as they gradually move from the “available” stage to the “easy to use” stage. They have already been deployed in some commercial scenarios—for example, the interactive digital human business launched by Wanshang Technology can, to a large extent, address demonstration and reception needs in scenarios such as exhibition explanations, smart demonstrations, speeches and reports, and corporate welcoming. Using AI digital humans to introduce service content for specific scenarios, AI is renewing traditional interaction methods and enhancing the audience experience.

However, Tang Fangxin also pointed out that introducing AI Agents involves the collection and processing of large amounts of user data. Therefore, security and privacy issues are crucial and may raise potential concerns such as data misuse and privacy leaks. AI Agents must rely on local computing power and large models, which place high demands on technology maturity, vendors’ integration and implementation capabilities, and operational service capabilities. Going forward, the focus should shift from penetration into single scenarios to penetration into related scenarios, continuously accumulating mature paths and solution experience, while strengthening security and privacy regulation, and exploring and embracing it with an open mindset.

“From ‘training’ to ‘inference,’ AI intelligent agents will become the inevitable path to the era of artificial general intelligence,” said the Galaxy Securities research report. As large models rapidly iterate and upgrade, AI intelligent agents built on large-model technology have entered a stage of rapid development. The rise of AI intelligent agents is reshaping the AI industry chain and bringing new investment opportunities. It is expected that by 2028, the market size of China’s AI agent space will surge to 852 billion yuan, with a CAGR of 72.7%. The AI intelligent agent industry chain is a diversified and highly coordinated ecosystem, and the future market space is broad.