Central Ring Bell Sound: The First 100 Days of AI Tech Leaders Rushing to Hong Kong Stocks

By Xin Zhi Dong Neng, Author | Peilin, Editor | Mufeng

Since 2025, the gong sounds at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange have been frequent, especially in the past three months, as a collective migration of tech companies is reshaping the landscape of Hong Kong's capital market.

From WeRide and Pony AI competing for the title of 'Robotaxi First Stock,' to MiniMax and Zhipu AI engaging in large model showdowns, to embodied intelligence, AI drug development, and domestic GPU companies making consecutive debuts — almost every top player in cutting-edge sectors is gathering here.

The former 'valuation lowland' is now transforming into a high ground for hard-tech financing.

Over the past 100 days, the gong sounds in Central have not only been celebrating IPOs but also declaring: A new capital era where hard technology serves as the hard currency has been initiated by Hong Kong.

On January 9, 2026, MiniMax officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the most anticipated capital event at the start of the year.

On its first day of trading, MiniMax’s performance was nothing short of explosive: opening up 42.7% and closing with a staggering 109% surge. As of January 13, its market value had surpassed 115.7 billion Hong Kong dollars.

Behind this feast stand top-tier players like Alibaba (the second-largest shareholder), Tencent, and IDG. Its early investor, Ming Shi Venture Capital, openly stated that this investment brought not just outsized returns but also a profound realization of AI’s disruptive power.

In terms of business layout, MiniMax has built a three-layer architecture consisting of foundational large models at the base, AI-native applications for consumers, and developer services for enterprises.

Among its operations, the C-end business targeting individual consumers serves as the absolute revenue pillar, contributing over 70% of the company’s income. Its most profitable product, 'Talkie,' is an AI role-playing application that generates revenue by offering emotional value to users, carving out a differentiated growth path for the large model industry.

The company’s revenue surged from more than $3 million in 2023 to $66 million in 2025. Despite accumulating losses of $1.3 billion over three years, this strategy of trading high growth for market space continues to gain approval in the secondary market.

Around the same time, Zhipu AI, part of the Tsinghua University ecosystem, also crossed the finish line successfully, claiming the title of 'the world's first large-model stock.'

As a top performer with strong backing from the 'national team,' Zhipu AI focuses on customized solutions for government entities, state-owned enterprises, and financial institutions. Its deep roots in state-owned capital and Tsinghua heritage have become its strongest competitive moat.

To add more tension to its story, starting in 2025, Zhipu AI aggressively promoted its API invocation services, with daily token processing skyrocketing to 4.6 trillion.

In the AI computing infrastructure race, TianShu ZhiXin made its debut on January 8. As the first domestic company to achieve mass production of 7nm general-purpose GPUs, it is attempting to carve out a niche for domestic alternatives amidst NVIDIA's monopoly.

On January 2, 2026, Biren Technology, a highly anticipated GPU enterprise and the 'first domestically produced GPU stock,' debuted with its shares surging 82% on the opening day, pushing its market value toward HKD 80 billion.

The logic is straightforward: against the backdrop of NVIDIA’s restrictions, Biren's self-developed architecture and chiplet technology have become essential for domestic substitution.

The concentrated wave of IPOs marks a collective coming-of-age moment for China’s AI industry: companies are no longer just benchmarking scores in labs but are officially entering the secondary market to face scrutiny from global investors.

Although the gong at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange rings frequently, not every ring signals a wealth creation myth. Companies in different sectors receive varying market responses, akin to undergoing a brutal vote of value.

The most disappointing sector is autonomous driving.

In November 2025, Pony AI and WeRide—two highly anticipated Robotaxi leaders—both saw their stocks drop on the first day of trading. Despite impressive road test mileage, the secondary market still views such long-term cash-burning projects without clear paths to large-scale profitability as too risky.

The most successful are companies that produce capable intelligent agents.

Also listed in November, MiningLamp Technology has transformed AI from chatbots into practical task-executing intelligent agents. As the company turned a profit in the first half of 2025, the capital market rewarded it with a significant premium.

MiningLamp Technology’s stock surged 110% on its first day of trading. As of January 13, the share price was still up about 80% from the IPO price, giving the company a total market value of HKD 34 billion.

The most sought-after category is hardcore technology solving physical challenges.

On December 30, 2025, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange welcomed the simultaneous listing of six companies. Among them, three tech representatives—Woan Robotics (embodied intelligence), 51World (digital twin), and Insilico Medicine (AI drug discovery)—saw their share prices rise after going public. Insilico Medicine increased by 24.66%, 51World by 29.90%, and all three firms surpassed a market cap of HKD 15 billion.

The capital market is willing to pay a premium for short-term growth in these cutting-edge sectors, which are on the verge of technological breakthroughs and aim to solve real-world physical problems.

After going public, the divergence in stock performance among these companies sends a crystal-clear signal:

Capital no longer pays for intangible tech stories. In Hong Kong stocks, investors only want two things – a clear business roadmap and verifiable cash flow.

Wind data shows that the Hong Kong stock IPO fundraising amount reached HKD 285.693 billion in 2025, a year-on-year surge of 224%.

What allowed Hong Kong stocks to reclaim the global top spot after years of dormancy?

First, regulatory frameworks provided special fast-track measures.

For cutting-edge tech companies in AI and semiconductors, time is life, and every second of technological iteration burns cash. The stringent profitability thresholds in the A-share market often deter unicorns still in the investment phase.

The Hong Kong market precisely identified this pain point and opened an express lane for these companies through its unique Chapter 18C rules.

It can be said that Chapter 18C is the green channel created by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) for hard-tech unicorns. It’s HKEX telling mainland companies that haven’t yet turned a profit but possess breakthrough technologies: 'Don’t go to the U.S., don’t wait in line for A-shares; come here, we recognize your technological value, and we’ll fund you now!'

Specifically, policies lowered the market capitalization threshold to the extreme (HKD 4 billion for commercialized firms, HKD 8 billion for non-commercialized ones). The confidential filing mechanism introduced in May 2025 allows tech companies to go public discreetly, safeguarding core secrets. Additionally, the optimized 'A+H' fast track enables companies already listed on the A-share market to issue H-shares in Hong Kong with priority review, significantly shortening the listing cycle and achieving a globally impressive Hong Kong speed.

More crucially, southbound funds have allowed domestic investors to regain pricing power.

By the end of 2025, mainland China funds flowing south via Stock Connect (southbound funds) have exceeded 1.4 trillion Hong Kong dollars for the year. This inflow has become the strongest anchor for Hong Kong stocks.

In the past, Hong Kong stocks relied heavily on foreign capital, but now nearly half of the trading volume comes from local investors.

Of course, the impressive figures are inseparable from the strong pull of mega IPOs.

In 2025, the Hong Kong stock market saw the emergence of eight giants with financing exceeding 10 billion Hong Kong dollars each. Among them, CATL raised 41.06 billion Hong Kong dollars, ranking second globally among new listings. More notably, a total of 19 companies already listed on China’s A-share market successfully landed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, and their total fundraising accounted for half of the year’s total amount.

This wave of 'A+H' listings marks the complete departure of the Hong Kong stock market from an era dominated by finance and real estate, confidently transitioning into a new epoch driven by AI, new energy, biomedicine, and other new economy hard technologies.

According to Deloitte's forecast, among the 321 IPO applications queued up for listing in 2026, leading mainland technology companies remain the dominant force.

The frequent sound of gongs ringing in Central is not just celebrating the listing of individual companies; it also signals the prelude to an accelerating industrial era.

As some of China’s top AI hard tech companies collectively choose to list, raise funds, and monetize here, Hong Kong stocks have completed a magnificent transformation—from a traditional international financial center to a core global financing hub for hard tech.

This migration and restructuring continues.

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