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

“AI agents of the future may outnumber 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 show this July. A report from Bank of America also pointed out that AI evolution is on the eve of the third wave—Agentic AI is about to arrive.

In the second half of this year, AI Agents have been all the rage, becoming a hot area that tech giants such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, and OpenAI have been throwing their efforts into. In the domestic market, large model vendors, internet companies, and listed companies are all actively moving to deploy AI Agents.

As more and more enterprises roll out AI Agent products and ecosystems, industry observers 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 of 72.7%.

Manufacturers Kick Off the AI Agent Talent-and-Territory Battle

An AIAgent—also called an “AI intelligent agent”—is a system driven by a large language model as its “brain.” It has capabilities such as autonomous understanding, perception, planning, memory, and tool usage, and it can automatically carry out complex tasks. Different from traditional AI, AI Agents can accomplish given goals step by step through independent thinking and by calling tools.

Take a simple example. If a user wants to go out for dinner, a large language model can provide recommendations and prompts for restaurant locations and information about the shops. But an AI Agent can not only offer advice on choosing a restaurant; it can also search for cuisines and restaurants based on the user’s budget, execute the reservation, 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 such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic have all released related updates.

In June, Apple demonstrated its latest AI achievement, Apple Intelligence, at its developer conference. In November, Microsoft announced more than 10 commercial AI Agents at the “Microsoft Ignite 2024” conference. Google followed suit, also announcing a full-scale push for commercial AI Agents, launching a series of incentive programs and products, and additionally releasing one of the few global markets for commercial AI Agents. 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 their efforts on AI Agents, and a battle over “AI Agents” is quietly getting underway.

On October 25, Zhipu released AutoGLM Intelligent Agent. It can read voice commands to understand user intent, 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 of more than 50 steps, and enabling it to flexibly switch between different apps while executing tasks.

Zhipu believes that AI large models are moving from Chat to Act. In the future, a unified AI intelligent agent will operate various hardware devices to improve human-computer interaction efficiency. With computing power increasing, model-and-terminal-to-cloud collaborative architectures that adapt to AI-native devices will gradually emerge, and various smart devices such as smartphones, PCs, cars, glasses, and home appliances are rapidly rolling out.‌

Besides Zhipu, companies such as ByteDance, Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba are also rolling out AIAgent— including ByteDance’s Coze Agent platform, Baidu’s Qianfan AgentBuilder intelligent agent development tool, and Kunlun Wanwei’s TianGong skyAgents, among others.

Multiple Listed Companies Roll Out AI Agents

As domestic companies kick off the AI Agent battle, multiple A-share listed companies are also actively deploying AI Agents.

For example, iFlytek has launched AI assistants for fields including education, healthcare, judiciary, and government services. Jincai Hulin’s “Xinzhi Yuecai Tax and Finance Large Model” uses an open-architecture design. By combining the company’s tax and finance products with an open platform, it builds tax-and-finance AIAgent intelligent agents.

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

The subsidiary Shanghai Shierqu of Xinguodu Holding is dedicated to developing General Purpose AI Agent technology and conducting research on multimodal AI technologies and products.

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

On December 9, when asked by investors whether the company has already deployed AI Agents, Zhongkechuangda said that the company has been continuously advancing product and technological development related to AI Agents. For example, the company’s Rubik Avatar is an integrated innovative product that combines multiple technologies including AI Agents. It includes AI technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. Based on on-device intelligent technologies and naked-eye 3D technology, and on Qualcomm’s high-computing-power chip platform, it uses Zhongkechuangda’s Kanzi 3D rendering engine to render 3D graphics and images in real time.

Naxing Co., Ltd. recently responded to investor questions by stating that its subsidiary, Weiyiwang, is based on cutting-edge AI large model technology and has carried out in-depth cooperation with leading AI industry companies such as Microsoft, to provide efficient and intelligent AIGC application products and solutions for industry customers. XiaoLu is an AI assistant based on AIGC, supporting intelligent chat and Q&A for knowledge bases.

On December 17, Kute Intelligent responded to investors’ questions by saying that the company’s Kute AI Agents 2.0 is targeting to become a universal digital intelligence tool and assistant, helping traditional enterprises carry out digital transformation upgrades. At present, Kute AI Agents 2.0 is under development.

2025 May See a Breakout for Commercial AI Agent Deployment

For AI Agents, industry consensus is that 2025 will be the year of explosive growth for AI Agents.

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

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

“Currently, tech giants such as Apple, Google, and OpenAI have already treated Agents as one of their key focuses for 2025. 2025 may become the breakout year for Agents, thereby driving the rollout of AI applications,” said Zong Jianshu, an analyst at Changjiang Securities.

From Tang Fangxin, head of government and enterprise business at Wanshing Technology, the development of AI Agents is transitioning from an “experiment” stage to an “application” stage, but it has not yet reached maturity. However, with continued improvements in computing power and advances in machine learning and natural language processing, AI Agents’ capabilities to understand user intent, provide personalized services, and execute complex tasks are being enhanced continuously. At present, AI Agents have already been deployed in multiple areas including customer service, smart homes, and personal assistants, and they are expanding into more industries and scenarios.

Tang Fangxin believes that AI Agents will continue to evolve—gradually moving from a “usable” stage to a “really easy-to-use” stage. In some commercial scenarios, deployments are already underway. For instance, the interactive digital human business launched by Wanshing Technology can largely solve scenarios such as exhibition explanations, smart demonstrations, speech reports, and corporate receptions, using AI digital humans to introduce service content in specific scenarios to audiences and consumers. This is using AI to reinvent traditional interaction methods and enhance audience experience.

However, Tang Fangxin noted that introducing AI Agents involves collecting and processing large volumes of user data. Therefore, security and privacy issues are crucial and may trigger potential privacy concerns, such as data misuse and privacy leakage. AI Agents must also rely on local computing power and large models, which impose high requirements on technical maturity, vendors’ integration and implementation capabilities, and operational service capabilities. Going forward, efforts should shift from penetration in a single scenario to penetration across related scenarios, continuously consolidating 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 be the inevitable path to the era of artificial general intelligence,” Galaxy Securities’ research report said. With large models rapidly iterating and upgrading, AI intelligent agents based on large model technology have entered a stage of rapid development. The rise of AI intelligent agents is reshaping the AI industrial chain and bringing new investment opportunities. It is expected that by 2028, the market size of China’s AI agent market will surge to 852 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 72.7%. The AI intelligent agent industry chain is a diversified and highly collaborative ecosystem, and the future market space is broad.