Chinese Tech Stocks kicked off 2026 by testing how far their AI-powered rally can go.
Shares of Shanghai Biren Technology, an AI chip designer, jumped nearly 120% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange midday Friday after the company raised HK$5.58 billion, or $717 million, in an initial public offering.
The stock opened at HK$35.70, well above its IPO price of HK$19.60.
This appetite was reflected across the offering, with the retail portion subscribed more than 2,300 times, according to stock exchange filings, highlighting the intense interest in China’s AI hardware sector.
Enthusiasm has increased more generally. Chinese AI and semiconductor stocks have rallied since the release of the China-made DeepSeek-R1 AI model in January last year, which helped push the Hang Seng Technology Index up 23% in 2025. The index jumped as much as 3.9% on Friday.
Washington’s tightening export controls on advanced Nvidia chips also fueled the boom by accelerating demand for domestic alternatives.
“Nvidia’s once-dominant position in China’s AI chip market has effectively evaporated in 2025, marking a seismic shift in the global intelligent computing landscape,” Andrei Zakharov, an analyst who publishes on Smartkarma, wrote in a note last week.
More AI-related Chinese IPOs are coming
Shanghai Biren’s superb stock market debut highlighted The AI rally in China, which ended a difficult few years for the country’s technology sector, amid a regulatory crackdown and broad economic challenges.
Following DeepSeek-R1’s breakthrough, startups such as Cambricon, Moore Threads and Metax have raised billions of dollars in funding as they race to deliver chips for data centers, large language models and industrial AI applications.
This increase in capital also translates into personal fortunes, with The AI chip boom in China creating billionaires at breakneck speed, even as the broader economy continues to falter amid a long-running housing crisis.
The Shanghai Biren’s successful debut is set to be followed by a new offering, with Hong Kong becoming the key location for this fundraising campaign.
Baidu, a major Chinese technology company, said on Friday that its artificial intelligence chip unit had confidentially filed for listing in Hong Kong.
At least 25 companies debuted on the Hong Kong market last month, marking the busiest month for IPOs since November 2019, according to Bloomberg data. About half of these listings were for technology companies.
More listings on Chinese AI-related technologies are expected this month. These include startups MiniMax Group and Knowledge Atlas Technology, also known as Zhipu AI, which are expected to debut next week.