Zhipu's stock price skyrocketed, creating another wave of multi-millionaires in Haidian

This scene is astonishing.

In the past four days, Zhipu's $KNOWLEDGE ATLAS (02513.HK)$ share price has skyrocketed, with a cumulative increase of over 70%. Its market value once surpassed 170 billion Hong Kong dollars, reaching three times its IPO valuation. With the official release of Zhipu’s new foundational model GLM-5 today (February 12), the upward trend continues.

Watching the soaring stock price, it's safe to say that Zhipu employees are thrilled. About half of them hold company shares, and the agreements signed years ago are now gradually turning into tangible wealth. A rough estimate shows that these employees hold an average stock value of more than ten million Hong Kong dollars each, even giving rise to several billionaires.

As netizens summarized: 'Overnight, another group of people in Haidian achieved financial freedom.'

This is just a glimpse. In Zhipu’s home base of Haidian, Beijing, a series of mega-IPOs like Cambricon and Moore Threads have emerged, turning batches of employees into protagonists of AI wealth creation. Meanwhile, there are also numerous AI unicorns ready to take off, including DarkSide of the Moon and Galaxy General. This land is witnessing a grand AI era.

Zhipu soars

Birth of 400 multi-millionaires

The story of Zhipu begins in Tsinghua Garden, located in Haidian.

Back in 2006, the Knowledge Engineering Lab (KEG Lab) of Tsinghua University's Computer Science Department launched the AMiner platform, which uses artificial intelligence methods to uncover the objective laws of natural sciences or technological development, laying the foundation for Zhipu's future establishment.

In 2019, in order to maximize the value of its research achievements, Zhipu was born. Among the three founders, Tang Jie, a renowned professor from Tsinghua University's Computer Science Department, serves as the chief scientist; Zhang Peng, a doctoral graduate in innovation leadership engineering from Tsinghua, serves as CEO and general manager; and Liu Debing, an alumnus of Tsinghua, serves as chairman.

Since then, a wave of large-scale model innovation has swept the globe. In early January this year, Zhipu officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the 'world's first large-scale model stock,' with a market capitalization exceeding HKD 50 billion on its first day of trading.

Investors backing Zhipu are set to receive substantial returns. Before the IPO, Zhipu gathered over 50 institutional shareholders. According to the order of changes in the prospectus, these include CAS Star, Huakong Technology Transfer Co., Ltd., Tongzhi Investment, Dachen Capital, Huakong Fund, Legend Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Today Capital, Lightspeed China Partners, Shunwei Capital, Sequoia China, Hillhouse, Yunhui Capital, China Merchants Venture Capital, Prosperity7, 5G Fund, Zhuhai Technology Industry Group, Zhongguancun Science City, Ceyuan Capital, Lenovo Capital, and other venture capital institutions; industrial capital such as Meituan, Ant Group, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Kingsoft, Boss Zhipin, TAL Education; as well as local state-owned enterprises from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Tianjin, Hangzhou, and more.

With Zhipu's successful listing, a group of multi-millionaires and billionaires emerged within the company. According to the prospectus, as of the end of June 2025, Zhipu had 883 employees, 452 of whom held shares, accounting for 51.2% of the total workforce.

Specifically, two employee shareholding platforms, Huihui and Zhideng, were both established in 2021. Among them, the general partner of Huihui is Liu Debing, who holds 30.33% of the partnership interests; there are 426 limited partners in total, with Zhang Peng and executive director Zhang Xiaohan holding 20.98% and 0.46% of the partnership interests, respectively.

According to announcements, as of January this year, the Huihui platform held a 7.62% stake, while 424 employees outside the senior management collectively held 48.23% of the equity in Huihui.Based on the latest market capitalization of HKD 170 billion, each of these 424 employees holds shares worth over HKD 14 million on average.

Similarly, the general partner of Zhideng is also Liu Debing, who holds 39.01% of the partnership interests. The limited partners consist of 25 individuals, all company employees and advisors, including executive director Zhang Peng, who holds 4.63% of the partnership interests. Sixteen advisors are full-time interns, all algorithm experts appointed by Zhipu, and they are all independent third parties.

The equity ratio of Zhideng is slightly lower than that of Huihui at 5.25%. Based on the same HKD 170 billion valuation, the total shareholding value of the platform amounts to HKD 8.925 billion, with 24 employees and advisors holding 56.36% of the interests, resulting in an average individual shareholding value of up to HKD 200 million.

So, what has driven Zhipu's market value to nearly triple?

Here, we must mention a major model rumor. Recently, a large model named 'Pony Alpha' was listed on the global model service platform OpenRouter and quickly climbed to the top of the platform’s popularity ranking within 24 hours. According to reports, Pony Alpha is a next-generation general-purpose large model, focusing on coding, logical reasoning, and role-playing, optimized for Agent workflows, with extremely high accuracy in tool invocation.

Despite its powerful performance, the model remains anonymous, sparking speculation among tech enthusiasts. Since 'Pony' means 'little horse,' and given it was just before the Lunar New Year of the Horse, the market judged that this model was more likely developed by a company from China, with guesses narrowing down to either DeepSeek-V4 or GLM-5.

Now, the answer has surfaced. In the early hours of February 12, Zhipu officially announced the launch and open-sourcing of GLM-5: achieving state-of-the-art open-source performance in coding and Agent capabilities, with real-world programming usability approaching Claude Opus 4.5, excelling in complex system engineering and long-term Agent tasks.

In the industry's view, this signifies that large-model programming has officially transitioned from the Vibe Coding era of 'writing code snippets' to the Agent Engineering era of 'completing system engineering.'

Haidian, an AI wealth creation wave

This scene feels familiar.

Not long ago, Moore Threads officially went public on the STAR Market, becoming the 'first domestically produced GPU stock,' with its market value exceeding 300 billion yuan on the first trading day. This mega IPO also originated in Haidian, founded in 2020 by former NVIDIA Global Vice President and Greater China General Manager, Jianzhong Zhang. Following the listing, Moore Threads’ stock price skyrocketed like a rocket in just a few days, with its market capitalization briefly surpassing 400 billion yuan.

Similar to Zhipu, Moore Threads also tightly aligned employee interests with corporate growth through employee shareholding platforms. The prospectus reveals that Moore Threads has a total of 722 employees holding shares indirectly through Hangzhou Huaao, Hangzhou Zhongao, Hangzhou Jingao, and 26 employee shareholding platforms named 'Acceleration X Series.' Among them, seven are directors, audit committee members, senior management, or core technical personnel; the remaining 700 current employees collectively hold 7.52% of the equity. Based on the market value at the February 10 closing price, each employee holds stock worth nearly 30 million yuan on average; additionally, 15 former employees hold 0.41% of the equity, with an average stock value exceeding 70 million yuan per person.

This implies that just one company, Moore Threads, created over 700 multi-millionaires. And such AI wealth creation stories continue to unfold across Haidian.

Rewinding the timeline to last October, DeepTech, a company from Haidian, was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the first stock in the 'enterprise-level large model AI application' category in Hong Kong stocks, with a market value of nearly 28 billion Hong Kong dollars. Not long after, the title of 'first stock in physical AI' also went to another Haidian-based company. By the end of 2025, 51Vision successfully went public in Hong Kong as a technology firm driven by its vision of cloning the Earth by 2030, with a market capitalization surpassing 20 billion Hong Kong dollars.

Of course, the most impressive AI company is Cambricon Technologies. In August last year, Cambricon's market value briefly exceeded 500 billion yuan, making it the second stock in A-share history to reach a market cap of 500 billion yuan as a high-priced stock. Not only is Cambricon's headquarters located in Haidian, but its founders, brothers Chen Yunji and Chen Tianshi, both joined the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Zhongguancun one after the other in their early years, ultimately laying the groundwork for the creation of Cambricon.

Moreover, a new wave of talent has been pouring into the AI revolution in Haidian. For instance, Galaxy General AI, which will be featured on the Year of the Horse Spring Festival Gala, originated from Haidian. In December last year, the company announced the completion of a new round of financing exceeding 300 million US dollars led by China Mobile's Chain Leader Fund, with participation from heavyweight investment platforms and industry giants such as CICC Capital, CAS Fund, Suzhou Venture Capital, CCTV Media Integration Fund, and Tianqi Co., Ltd. International investment institutions from Singapore and the Middle East, along with existing shareholders, have also increased their investments. With this, both the single-round and cumulative funding records for embodied intelligence startups in China have been broken again. According to insiders, Galaxy General AI's latest valuation has reached 3 billion US dollars (over 20 billion yuan).

Another well-known unicorn in the large model space, MoonShot, made an announcement at the eleventh hour on the last day of 2025, completing its Series C round of 500 million US dollars with significant oversubscription. Existing investors like Alibaba, Tencent, and Wang Huimin all participated in increasing their stakes. Following this round of financing, MoonShot’s post-money valuation surged to 4.3 billion US dollars (approximately 30 billion yuan).

Looking ahead, the AI industry landscape in Haidian is expanding more than ever.

Why Haidian?

In a sense, the development journey of Haidian mirrors a microcosm of China’s technological innovation history.

Since its establishment in 1952, Haidian has been defined as a 'cultural and educational district.' It has not only nurtured multiple top universities and research institutions but also seized three major waves of technological trends—computers, the internet, and mobile internet—after the reform and opening-up. To this day, Haidian, occupying only 2.6% of Beijing’s land area, generates over a quarter of the city’s GDP and houses more than 70% of the nation's AI companies and over 80% of the top 2000 AI scholars globally.

Tang Chao, Deputy Director of Zhongguancun Science City Management Committee and Deputy District Chief of Haidian, once stated, 'Haidian is the region with the strongest foundational research, R&D innovation capabilities, and product iteration activity in the domestic artificial intelligence field.' Upon closer examination, this confidence stems precisely from the AI industrial ecosystem that Haidian has cultivated over the years.

Data shows that by 2025, the AI market scale in Haidian had reached 360 billion yuan, nurturing 1,900 core AI enterprises. The district is also home to 14 national key laboratories in the AI field, four new research and development institutions, and 21 universities that have been approved to offer AI undergraduate programs, forming a complete chain of 'basic research - talent cultivation - achievement transformation.'

This area also hosts Beijing's largest standalone intelligent computing cluster, which is the first nationally approved advanced artificial intelligence manufacturing cluster. As of December last year, Haidian had completed filings for 124 generative artificial intelligence services, accounting for 66% of the city's total number of filed large-scale models.

Additionally, data shows that about 40% of top artificial intelligence talents gather in Beijing, with over 80% rooted in Haidian, including 12,300 AI scholars and more than a hundred individuals recognized as global top scholars in the AI field. A complete industrial chain deployment, including chips, frameworks, large models, and integrated applications, has basically taken shape.

As early as 2024, Haidian District released the world’s first artificial intelligence district concept within a 53-square-kilometer range in the southern part of Zhongguancun Science City. It focused on creating a 'two zones, one belt, multiple points' pattern: two pilot zones at Wudaokou and Dazhong Temple, an innovation exchange belt along the Jingzhang Heritage Park, and several innovation zones such as Peking University West Gate, Xueyuan Road, and Zhichun Road.

Here, entrepreneurs and scientists are neighbors, and moving between floors connects upstream and downstream industries. After companies like Zhipu and Cambricon rose to become industry benchmarks, giving back to Haidian’s AI ecosystem became their common choice. For example, Zhipu's 'Z Plan' has invested in dozens of upstream and downstream companies, half of which have set up R&D centers in Haidian; Cambricon’s chip technology provides underlying support for AI enterprises in the region.

Zhang Jianzhong, founder of Moore Threads, once remarked, 'In Haidian, there is no need to travel across cities to find upstream and downstream partners; technical alignment and client validation can be completed within an hour’s drive.'

As the saying goes, 'When venture capital thrives, industries gather.' Recall that in February 2025, the third phase of the Zhongguancun Science City Technology Growth Fund was officially launched, with a scale of 10 billion yuan. At this point, the total scale of the Technology Growth Fund increased to 20 billion yuan.

Haidian is fertile ground for startups, scientific research, and investment, boasting abundant research resources, universities, and research institutes, continuously incubating excellent technology innovation enterprises,' said Li Jiaqing, President of Legend Capital at the time. Haidian’s favorable business environment can create good living conditions, educational environments, and medical care, which helps retain top talent.

Another set of data worth noting was released by the Haidian District Finance Bureau in November last year: Since the establishment of the Technology Growth Fund in 2021, it has cumulatively disbursed 5.887 billion yuan, focusing on supporting artificial intelligence companies with outstanding core technologies and development potential. This effort has also attracted 18.8 billion yuan in social capital investments, forming a virtuous cycle of government-led investment followed by private sector participation.

Direct investments totaling 2.218 billion yuan were made into 23 artificial intelligence companies such as Hangji Technology, Zhipu, Unitree Technology, Aibee Intelligence, Deep Potential Technology, Shengshu Technology, and Moore Threads. Through cooperation with institutions like Nine Chapters Venture Capital, Fortune Ventures, Hankang Capital, and Legend Capital, 1.139 billion yuan was invested in ten sub-funds covering artificial intelligence directions.

Looking back forty years ago, Haidian's 'Electronics Street' ignited the initial sparks of China's technological innovation. Forty years later, this vibrant land has nurtured a new chapter in China’s AI development. The most touching aspect here has never been the skyscrapers but rather the lights still shining from laboratories at two o'clock in the morning. Countless figures are forging ahead to create the 'world's number one artificial intelligence city.'

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