First surge of the Year of the Horse: AI stocks go wild
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First surge of the Year of the Horse: AI stocks go wild
The wealth-creation effect of AI is indeed astonishing.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsThe AI boom in the Hong Kong stock market has surged from before the Spring Festival into the post-festival period, with MiniMax and Zhipu standing out as the brightest stars in this frenzy.
On February 20—the first trading day of the Lunar Year of the Horse—China’s domestic AI large language model “twin stars” saw their share prices soar. By market close, Zhipu surged 42.72%, closing at HK$725 per share; MiniMax rose over 14%, closing at HK$970 per share. Together, the two companies’ market capitalizations surpassed the HK$300 billion mark.
What does HK$300 billion mean? For context, JD.com’s current market cap stands at approximately HK$294.58 billion—meaning that these two AI startups, founded less than a decade ago, have quietly overtaken an established internet giant with over twenty years of operational history.
Indeed, AI’s wealth-creation effect is astonishing.
Share Prices Up Over 400% in Two Months
The share-price miracles of MiniMax and Zhipu did not begin with the Spring Festival—they were seeded from the moment both companies went public. As among the first AI large-model enterprises to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, both firms have since embarked on a spectacular upward trajectory.
First, consider Zhipu—the “world’s first large-model IPO.” It officially listed on the HKEX on January 8, 2026, at an offering price of HK$116.2 per share. On its debut day, it delivered an immediate “red opening,” pushing its market cap to HK$57.89 billion. Notably, during the pre-listing public offering phase, it attracted nearly 1,160x oversubscription—a clear signal of intense market enthusiasm.
After listing, Zhipu’s share price rose steadily. Especially in February, an enigmatic anonymous model dubbed “Pony Alpha” ignited buzz overseas. Market rumors suggested this was Zhipu’s upcoming next-generation large model, GLM-5. Fueled by this news, Zhipu’s shares entered “rocket mode”: between February 9 and 12 alone—just four trading days—the cumulative peak gain exceeded 110%.
On February 12, Zhipu officially open-sourced its new flagship model GLM-5 and simultaneously announced price hikes for its GLM Coding Plan subscriptions, with overall increases starting at 30%. The very next trading day, its share price jumped 20.65%. Then, on February 20—the first trading day of the Lunar Year of the Horse—Zhipu surged another 42.72%, adding HK$96.7 billion to its market cap in a single day—equivalent to the entire market value of Bilibili.
Just 43 days after listing, Zhipu’s share price had risen over 524%, lifting its market cap to HK$323.24 billion.
Compared with Zhipu, MiniMax delivered an even more dazzling debut. On January 9, MiniMax listed on the HKEX, closing its first day up 109.09% at HK$345 per share—immediately catapulting its market cap to HK$106.7 billion.
Since February, MiniMax’s share price has risen in tandem with the broader AI sector—from HK$515 per share on February 9 to HK$970 per share on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year. In just over ten days, its share price gained nearly 90%; from its HK$165 IPO price, it surged 4.88-fold. Its market cap likewise climbed from HK$106.7 billion on listing day to HK$304.23 billion.
Notably, on February 13, MiniMax officially launched its next-generation text model, MiniMax M2.5—an event widely viewed as a key catalyst behind its sustained share-price strength.
From “red openings” on Day One to share-price gains exceeding 400%, Zhipu and MiniMax have delivered near-perfect debuts in capital markets. Their robust performance on the HKEX hasn’t only filled the pockets of secondary-market investors—it has also triggered a massive payout under their employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).
Per prior prospectuses, both companies rolled out ESOPs ahead of listing. Zhipu allocated 51.2% of its equity to employees; MiniMax adopted an almost universal employee-ownership structure. Based on current valuations, a substantial number of core employees have already achieved “financial freedom” through their holdings.
Investors Celebrate a Strong Start to the Year
Of course, compared with retail investors who bought shares during the IPO or employees holding equity, the primary-market investment institutions that backed these companies from their earliest days are the most prominent beneficiaries of this wealth bonanza.
Let’s start with Zhipu. Born from technology transfer by Tsinghua University’s Department of Computer Science, Zhipu traces its roots to Tsinghua’s Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG) Lab, founded in 1996. Its chief scientist and intellectual driving force, Tang Jie, hails from this lab—he led development of China’s first trillion-parameter open-source LLM, “Wu Dao 2.0,” and designed the GLM series model architecture, advancing indigenous large-model technology.
CEO Zhang Peng graduated from Tsinghua’s Department of Computer Science and holds a Doctorate in Innovation Leadership from Tsinghua; Chairman Liu Debing formerly served as Deputy Director of the Tsinghua Institute for Data Science’s Science & Technology Big Data Research Center.
Leveraging dual advantages—its “Tsinghua lineage” and identity as a “scientist-founded startup”—Zhipu drew intense investor attention from inception, rapidly becoming a “star project” in the primary market.
According to CVSource data from Zhongchuang Jiachuan, Zhipu raised funding from over 50 institutions prior to listing. These include VC/PE firms such as Sinovation Ventures, Dawn Capital, Legend Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Today Capital, Lightspeed China Partners, Shunwei Capital, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital, Yunhui Capital, and China Merchants Capital—as well as strategic investors including Meituan, Ant Group, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi—and local government funds from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Tianjin, and Hangzhou.
Most of these non-exiting institutions remain within their lock-up periods, yet their paper gains are already substantial based on current share prices.
Early investors’ returns are especially staggering. At its founding in 2019, Zhipu secured a US$5.4 million angel round from Sinovation Ventures, with a post-money valuation of RMB 375 million. Sinovation still holds ~1.34% of Zhipu’s equity; with Zhipu’s market cap now at HK$323.24 billion, its stake is worth HK$4.33 billion.
Now consider MiniMax. In early 2022, Yan Junjie—then Vice President at SenseTime—resigned just before SenseTime’s IPO, forfeiting his stock options to launch MiniMax, focusing exclusively on multimodal model development.
Over the past three years, MiniMax has assembled a world-class investor roster: top-tier financial backers—including Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, MingShi Capital, and China Life—as well as strategic investors like miHoYo, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaohongshu.
Hillhouse, miHoYo, Yunqi Capital, and IDG were MiniMax’s earliest angel investors, valuing the company at US$200 million (RMB 1.38 billion) post-money. As of February 20’s closing price, those angel-round investors have achieved over 100x paper returns.
Once lock-up periods expire, these institutions will reap truly historic windfalls.
AI Large Models Enter Full “Cash-Generation Mode”
In fact, MiniMax and Zhipu’s share-price surges are merely a microcosm of the AI large-model sector’s broader capital-market momentum—similarly dramatic financing stories are unfolding in the primary market.
The earliest news came from Moonshot AI: on December 31, it announced completion of a US$500 million Series C round led by IDG Capital, with oversubscription from existing shareholders Alibaba and Tencent. Its post-money valuation reached US$4.3 billion.
Then, on January 26, 2026, StepFun announced a RMB 5+ billion Series B+ round co-led by Shanghai Municipal State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission’s Pioneer Fund, China Life Equity, Pudong Venture Capital, Xuhui Capital, Wuxi Liangxi Fund, Xiamen Guotai, and Huaqin Technology—with further follow-on investments from Tencent, Qiming Venture Partners, and WuYuan Capital.
This round set a new record for the largest single financing in China’s large-model sector over the past 12 months.
The heat shows no sign of cooling. Just on February 17, media reported Moonshot AI’s upcoming US$700+ million new round—co-led by existing shareholders Alibaba, Tencent, WuYuan Capital, and Jiuan Capital—with a fresh valuation surpassing US$10 billion.
Meanwhile, Baichuan Intelligence—one of the so-called “Six Little Tigers of AI Large Models”—has signaled its intent to go public, targeting an IPO in 2027.
Within just three months, massive funding rounds have followed one another in rapid succession—a reflection of capital’s re-pricing driven jointly by technological breakthroughs and commercialization potential.
As an early investor in Zhipu, Sinovation Ventures noted that large-model capabilities are undergoing unprecedented leaps—breaking through critical thresholds from “functional” to “excellent” across language, multimodal, video, code, and tool-use domains. A significant large-model opportunity window has clearly opened.
That said, intensifying competition suggests future capital and resources will increasingly concentrate on a select few industry leaders.
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