While some are under pressure from layoffs, others are raking in hundreds of millions in just half a year — who exactly is making money from AI short dramas?

The "wealth gap" in the short drama track is getting wider.

On the one hand, the revenue on the platform side continues to reach new highs. Publicly reported data shows that the monthly revenue of Seedance 2.0 has reached 1 billion yuan and is still on the rise. In terms of advertising investment, the daily consumption of the entire domestic AI short drama industry has exceeded 200 million yuan. ByteDance, which sells tools and traffic, has become the biggest winner in the industry.

On the other hand, more than 90% of the comic drama companies in the industry are not making money. Although the industry scale is still growing, and the production capacity has exploded exponentially with the support of AI, there is a shortage of hit dramas despite the production capacity explosion. Most players are just accompanying runners. As of the second quarter of 2026, the hit rate of AI short dramas is extremely low: less than 0.2% of single works have exceeded 100 million views. The total playback volume of AI dramas/comic dramas in the first quarter of the whole network reached 130 billion (including 75 billion for simulated human dramas), but more than 99% of the works have a playback volume of less than 1 million. The playback volume is linked to the income of hit dramas. The lower the playback volume, the less the income of short dramas.

When the biggest promoter of AI short dramas stops, the players in the track are forced to reshuffle together. After Douyin and Hongguo adjusted the revenue - sharing coefficient and cancelled the guaranteed - minimum mechanism, the players in the track experienced serious project contractions and personnel optimization. Leading companies and medium - sized companies, including Jiangyou, are all making lay - off adjustments. In some companies, the lay - off ratio is even close to one - third.

Is the short drama track really profitable? Who is actually making money?

The leading companies that were the first to enjoy the dividends have annual profits of hundreds of millions

ByteDance is definitely the most profitable player in the industry. From the copyright of novel script IPs to the advertising investment consumption, and the AI video tools like "Seedance" provided during the creation process, it has achieved a closed - loop business. Almost all the most profitable links are in the hands of ByteDance.

In addition to ByteDance, leading content producers and distributors are most likely to enjoy the industry dividends. Of course, it is not excluded that individual OPC players can achieve an income of hundreds of thousands of yuan on their own. However, overall, the Matthew effect in the industry is relatively obvious. Leading players have more capital to sit at the table and share the cake.

Most comic dramas adopt the distribution model. "Advertising investment consumption" is an important dimension to measure the scale of players.

Data from Shenzhen Chuangliang shows that in the past six months, there is only one leading company with an advertising investment consumption of over 2 billion yuan: Huasheng. There are four leading companies with an investment of over 1 billion yuan: Qimao, Jiuzhou, Maiya, and Dianzhong. There are three companies with an investment of over 500 million yuan: Zhangwan, Shanhai, and Difu. These are relatively stable leading companies.

The profit of distributors is usually relatively transparent, about 1 - 5%. If calculated at the highest rate of 5%, Huasheng's profit in the past six months is about 100 million yuan. The profits of other companies are about 25 - 50 million yuan.

As one of the leading companies, Dianzhong had an income of 14.5 billion yuan last year. On June 10th, Chen Ruiqing, the founder and chairman of Dianzhong Technology, left a message under an article about Dianzhong Technology on GrowData, revealing that the company's revenue in 2025 was 14.5 billion yuan, including 10.9 billion yuan in the domestic market and 530 million US dollars overseas.

Dianzhong Company publicly responded two years ago that the company's overall gross profit margin is about 10%, and the net profit margin of the short drama business is less than 1%. If calculated at a net profit margin of 1%, Dianzhong's net profit in 2025 will be 145 million yuan.

Huang Haonan, the founder of another leading company, Jiangyou Culture, once revealed that the annual revenue in 2025 was about 1 billion yuan, and the net profit was 200 - 300 million yuan. It is one of the companies that were the first to enjoy the dividends of comic dramas.

It is worth mentioning that hit comic dramas are scarce, and the industry concentration is not high. A single hit comic drama may also bring amazing returns to the producer. Data from Shenzhen Chuangliang shows that from January to May 2026, the AI simulated human dramas with the highest advertising investment consumption are: "The Real - life AI Version of Zhantai Xian", "Yuxin Xiangyi", "Secret File 749: The Fallen Dragon", "The Real - life AI Version of Puti's Advent", and "Turning the Tables". Among them, "The Real - life AI Version of Puti's Advent" has a high ROI (Return on Investment). Someone spent more than 4 million yuan a day on distributing "The Real - life AI Version of Puti's Advent" and earned more than 1 million yuan.

"The losses are real, but the profits are not guaranteed." Revenue shrinks and teams make lay - offs

Of course, leading companies are not always profitable.

Li Yang works for one of the leading comic drama companies. According to him, although the company's absolute revenue this year is higher than last year due to the expansion of the business scale, the profit margin has declined, and the company may not be profitable in the current month. Since March and April, platform reviews have become stricter. Although the production of comic dramas is large, it is difficult to get them on the shelves. The one - time passing rate has dropped significantly from 60% to about 30% or even lower, which directly affects the revenue, equivalent to a direct reduction of about one - third of the income. With a reduction of about one - third in revenue and a significant decline in the profit margin, the company even faced the pressure of losses in April and May.

Li Yang revealed to Tech Planet that compared with the past, the ROI of the team has decreased, and the hit rate has also dropped. Currently, the industry's ROI generally remains between 1.05 - 1.10. The actual hit rate of leading companies is far lower than the 50% - 60% they publicly claim.

Under the pressure of performance and with the further evolution of tool automation, Li Yang's company has optimized the size of its comic drama team by at least 500 people.

In addition, the industry information is not transparent. Some leading companies may claim to be in the red even if they are profitable.

Chen Ruiqing of Dianzhong gave advice to newbies who want to enter the industry: be cautious. "It depends on whether they have IPs, good scripts, and directors who understand AI and aesthetics. If they don't have any of the points I mentioned, my only advice is not to enter." "It's all hard - earned money. The losses are real, but the profits are not guaranteed."

Many comic drama companies have begun to focus on going global to find incremental markets overseas.

Companies such as Kunlun Wanwei, Zhongwen Online, Shanhai Xingchen, and Yuewen Group have collectively bet on "AI short dramas going global". Lu Shaolong, the deputy general manager of Lingju Technology, a leading comic drama company, told Tech Planet that in order to cope with the growth bottleneck in the domestic market, Lingju Technology will focus on overseas development this year.

Lu Shaolong said that the company's business focus this year is going global, and it has made huge investments in the overseas market, including APP development, advertising investment, and content production, which is a heavy - asset model. The heavy investment will undoubtedly directly dilute the company's profits. In order to ensure the overall profit, the team improves the profit margin through multiple operations such as self - produced dramas, undertaking platform dramas, and investing in other companies' dramas as a distributor.

Currently, Lingju Technology's monthly production capacity of AI short dramas is 500 high - quality works, and the company already has multiple works with a network - wide playback volume of over 1 billion. In addition, the production capacity of high - quality local dramas overseas has also reached 50 per month. Overseas, the company has established a local overseas team and gradually deepened its overseas business.

Traffic platforms and computing power companies are guaranteed to make profits

From the perspective of distributors, very few companies can make stable profits.

Wang Xiaoshu, the founder of Jiashu Technology, revealed that the company's core business is short drama distribution. It mainly serves content producers (CPs) and is responsible for promoting their short dramas on platforms such as Douyin through advertising investment. Currently, Jiashu Technology's monthly advertising investment scale (advertising fees) on the Douyin platform has reached hundreds of millions of yuan.

The company is doing both real - life short drama and AI short drama distribution. The latter accounts for 60% of the company's domestic business. The company's overseas business mainly focuses on the YouTube platform, with about 50 million fans, and the proportion of real - life short dramas is relatively high. Overall, the progress of the overseas market is slower than that of the domestic market, but the future growth potential is huge.

Wang Xiaoshu said that the profit of distributors mainly comes from the difference between the advertising investment recovery and the CP share. Usually, the gross profit margin is only 1% - 2%. Sometimes, losses may occur due to strategic mistakes or system adjustments. The profit margin is extremely thin and the capital volume is large, so the profit status highly depends on refined operation strategies. The monthly profit or loss fluctuation is very small, and the company generally plays the role of a "service provider" rather than a highly profitable link in the upstream and downstream of the industry.

In his opinion, platform providers and model providers are guaranteed to make profits: traffic platforms (such as Douyin) make stable profits by selling traffic, and companies that provide computing power or model services (such as C - end model companies) are also in a relatively stable income state. Content providers bear high risks, but at the same time, they may also get high returns. Once a content producer creates a hit drama, they can get far more absolute returns than distributors.

From the perspective of distributors, there is no absolute concept of a "hit drama". As long as a drama can achieve a positive return on advertising investment (ROI > 1), it can be continuously promoted. From the perspective of CPs, usually, a short drama with a playback volume of over 100 million on Douyin is considered a hit.

However, the proportion of AI short dramas that can achieve a positive return on advertising investment is not high. Wang Xiaoshu revealed that among the large number of short dramas launched every day, the proportion of those that can pass the advertising investment test and achieve a positive return is extremely low, only in single - digits. Most dramas are eliminated during the testing stage.

For a single distributor, the ceiling of advertising investment consumption for a single AI short drama is not high. It is usually difficult to exceed 5 million yuan, and most are around 3 million yuan. Even for the AI short drama with the best advertising investment performance, the net profit it brings to the distributor is only between 100,000 and 200,000 yuan, and it is impossible to achieve huge profits from a single hit short drama.

In his opinion, AI short dramas have lowered the production threshold, resulting in an extremely fragmented market. Currently, there is no stable leading brand similar to that in the real - life short drama field. Most are newly established small teams or individual creators. From the perspective of the overall profit margin, although leading companies in the industry are large - scale, limited by high labor costs (usually having thousands of employees), the overall profit margin may not be ideal. There are relatively few CPs that can make stable profits.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tech Planet" (ID: tech618), author: Zhai Yuanyuan, published by 36Kr with authorization.