Leading Chinese artificial intelligence firm Minimax Group on Friday became the latest in a series of technology firms in the country to make bumper gains from listing on the stock market.
MiniMax saw its shares double in value on their first day of trading in Hong Kong after raising HK$4.8 billion ($620 million) in its IPO to fund research and development.
MiniMax shares closed at HK$345 per share, versus their offer price of HK$165.00, valuing the company at about $13.7 billion. At one point, the shares rose as high as HK$351.80.
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Founded in early 2022 by former SenseTime executive Yan Junjie, Shanghai-based MiniMax develops artificial intelligence models that can process text, audio, images, video and music.
Its popular apps include Hailuo AI, a video generation tool, and Talkie, an AI character interaction app that enables users to engage with AI-powered virtual personas.
Minimax is also one of the first large-language model developers in the country to seek a listing.
“This is only the beginning,” Yan said at the firm’s listing ceremony. “We look forward to the next four years, hoping the pace of technological progress in the AI industry will remain as fast.”
Its cornerstone investors include Alibaba, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Boyu Capital, a Hong Kong-based alternative asset management firm, as well as Mirae Asset.
MiniMax is the second of China’s so-called “AI tigers” to go public, the first being Zhipu AI, which made its market debut on Thursday with a solid 13% jump.
“MiniMax’s focus on the consumer market appealed more to investors seeking high-growth opportunities, whereas Zhipu’s enterprise- and government-oriented model was perceived as more stable but less exciting in a market driven by hype,” Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at tech research firm Omdia, said.
Investors were also attracted by the strong performance of the company’s open-source foundation models in key benchmarks, he added.
Rush of AI-linked listings
Meanwhile, Zhipu AI, flagged by OpenAI as a Chinese AI startup gaining significant ground in government contracts, climbed a further 20.6% on Friday. It raised HK$4.35 billion in its IPO and is currently valued at close to $9 billion.
With AI dominating investor interest worldwide, expectations for Chinese AI listings and other deals are high, although China’s most well-known AI firm, DeepSeek, has yet to indicate any IPO plans.
Huawei’s AI server spin-off xFusion has hired Citic Securities in preparation for a mainland IPO, while memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies and Baidu’s AI chip arm Kunlunxin are planning listings too.
Semiconductor specialists OmniVision Integrated Circuits and GigaDevice Semiconductor, both listed in Shanghai, are also due to commence trading in Hong Kong next week after secondary offerings.
Hong Kong saw a resurgence in IPOs last year, becoming the world’s top destination for listings, propelled by regulatory changes and pent-up demand from firms seeking access to capital after years of tough oversight from mainland Chinese authorities. Some $37.2 billion was raised from 115 new listings, the most since 2021, according to LSEG data.
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Chinese AI and chip firms have also flooded Hong Kong’s IPO market in recent weeks.
Shares have held above their offer prices after debut, underscoring strong investor appetite as Beijing ramps up efforts to build home-grown tech in response to US curbs on the sector.
On Thursday, for instance, aside from Zhipu AI, two other newly listed Chinese technology companies made strong market debuts. Shanghai Iluvatar CoreX, a semiconductor firm that designs general-purpose GPUs, started 31.6% higher than the offer price of HK$144.60, and closed 8.4% higher at HK$156.80. On Friday, it jumped another 11%.
Similarly, surgical robotics company Shenzhen Edge Medical jumped 36.4% above the HK$43.24 offer price on Thursday, and ended 30.9% higher at HK$56.60. It cooled about 1% on Friday, however.
Still, in total the strong debuts raised HK$9.3 billion ($1.19 billion).
Chinese authorities are fast-tracking AI and chip listings to strengthen domestic alternatives to advanced US technology, a backdrop that has drawn issuers across the tech sectors.
Zhipu AI – spun out of Tsinghua University – plans to use the bulk of proceeds for research and development.
Dan Ouyang, partner at law firm Baker McKenzie, which advised the Zhipu AI IPO’s sole sponsor and underwriters, said in a statement on Thursday that its listing would “provide the company with significant capital to fuel its next phase of growth.”
Shanghai Iluvatar CoreX, meanwhile, has earmarked the bulk of its listing proceeds for R&D across chips, accelerators and software. Shenzhen Edge Medical will also fund its R&D, commercialisation, manufacturing capacity and strategic acquisitions with its proceeds.
Janice Hu, China country head at UBS and chairperson of UBS Securities, said on Wednesday that China’s listed AI and high‑tech companies are worth about $5 trillion, versus roughly $30 trillion in the US, and China has yet to produce a $1 trillion player.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Hu added.
- Reuters, with additional editing and inputs from Vishakha Saxena
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