Goldman Sachs Forecasts Shift to Paid Licensing for Chinese AI Models

Analyst Ronald Keung predicts Chinese AI developers will transition from permissive open-weight licenses to commercial paid models as global adoption surges.

Woofun AI reports that Goldman Sachs analyst Ronald Keung anticipates Chinese AI developers may implement commercial licensing fees for cloud platforms hosting their open-weight models. Currently, most Chinese models operate under permissive licenses like MIT, allowing free commercial use. Keung notes that models such as Kimi K3 from the Dark Side of the Moon and GLM-5.2 from Zhiyu AI approach US leader performance, driving rapid adoption among SMEs and large enterprises. The bank suggests developers could monetize this growth by requiring third-party providers to purchase licenses for inference on private infrastructure.