As Beijing pushes commercialization, investors are rewarding companies seen as capable of closing the gap with American AI rivals
Chinese artificial intelligence stocks rallied Thursday after a wave of upgraded models and fresh policy backing signaled Beijing’s determination to accelerate adoption of the technology.
Hong Kong-listed Zhipu AI, which trades as Knowledge Atlas Technology, surged 30% after unveiling GLM-5, an open-source large language model with stronger coding capabilities and support for long-running agent tasks.
The company said the model approaches Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 in coding benchmarks while surpassing Google’s Gemini 3 Pro on some tests. Impact Newswire could not verify those claims.
MiniMax saw shares in Hong Kong jump 11% following Wednesday’s launch of its updated M2.5 open-source model with enhanced AI agent tools on its overseas website.
The company describes M2 as “a model built for Max coding & agentic workflows.”
The rally underscores intensifying competition in artificial intelligence as Chinese developers race to match U.S. rivals with a rapid succession of model and agent releases.
Investor sentiment has strengthened across AI-linked firms. Shanghai-listed UCloud Tech, which provides computing support for Zhipu, surged 20% on Thursday to hit its daily limit. SenseTime, which has shifted focus from facial recognition surveillance technology to AI software platforms, saw its Hong Kong shares climb 5%.
The Shanghai STAR AI Industry Index rose 1.7% before trimming gains.
DeepSeek, which took the world by storm last year, upgraded its flagship AI model on Wednesday by adding support for a larger context window and more up-to-date knowledge, according to a report from the South China Morning Post.
Ant Group also released its open-source AI model, Ming-Flash-Omni 2.0, on Wednesday. The “unified multimodal model” is capable of generating speech, music, sound effects and visuals.
ByteDance on Monday launched the newest version of its AI video generation app, Seedance 2.0, sparking a rally in Chinese AI app stocks. The company is also reportedly working with Samsung to develop in-house chips.
Policy signals added further momentum. Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday stressed a comprehensive push for “scaled and commercialized application of AI,” calling for better coordination of power and computing resources to advance the technology.
Li also emphasized Beijing’s plans to improve the environment for AI talent and companies.
The rally in pure-play AI startups contrasts with a broader slump among Chinese tech giants that also operate AI divisions. Shares of Tencent and Alibaba fell 2.6% and 2.1%, respectively, while the Hong Kong Hang Seng Tech index dropped 1.7%.
On Wall Street, the AI trade has been volatile this year as investors swing between optimism over the technology’s transformative potential and concerns about stretched valuations.
Tai Hui, APAC chief market strategist at JP Morgan, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that talk of an AI bubble is “a little premature,” pointing to plenty of quality names globally backed by solid fundamentals.
Investors are becoming more selective, making discerning bets among major cloud and AI infrastructure providers whose large spending is supported by underlying earnings rather than heavy borrowing, Hui added.
Chinese technology companies have taken a relatively frugal approach to AI development, with far lower capital expenditures than their American rivals while concentrating on the domestic market, said Rolf Bulk, analyst at Futurum Group.
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