DataEye puts China AI short drama at ¥40bn for 2026, up 138%
The figures were presented at WAIC on 20 July and had already appeared in a vendor column on 16 July. Of 221,900 AI and manga dramas launched in the first half, 1,055 passed 100m views.
What this basis means: Third-party research vendor estimate. The vendor is named wherever the source identifies it.
DataEye's founder and chief executive Wang Xiangbin (汪祥斌) presented the vendor's China figures on 20 July at WAIC 2026 in Shanghai. The core numbers had already appeared on 16 July in a DataEye-bylined column, with the top-100 component dated 15 July. Chinese-language recirculation on 28 July carried the same figures with no new data, so the numbers date to 15 to 20 July.
On DataEye's count, China's AI short drama segment reaches ¥40bn in FY2026, up 138% year on year, with ¥22bn recorded in the first five months. It counts 221,900 new AI and manga dramas launched in the first half of the year, of which 1,055 passed 100m views - a rate of 0.47%.
The distribution is as notable as the total. On these figures, 99.5% of the titles produced in the half-year did not reach that threshold.
Companies DataEye
Sources
- DataEye