Zhipu leads rally in Chinese AI stocks, surging 30%, as a wave of new releases hits market

Chinese artificial intelligence stocks rallied Thursday as several companies unveiled upgraded models and top policymakers renewed calls for a broader adoption of the technology. Hong Kong-listed Zhipu AI — that trades as Knowledge Atlas Technology — surged 30% after releasing its GLM-5, an open-source large-language model with enhanced coding capabilities and long-running agent tasks. The company said the model approaches Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 in coding benchmarks while surpassing Google's Gemini 3 Pro on some tests. CNBC could not verify those claims. MiniMax saw shares in Hong Kong jump 11% following Wednesday's launch of its updated M2.5 open-source model with enhanced AI agent tools, on its overseas website. The company describes M2 as "a model built for Max coding & agentic workflows." The rally comes amid intensifying competition in AI as Chinese developers race to match U.S. rivals with a flurry of new model and agent releases. The new releases have boosted investor sentiment on AI-related companies. Shanghai-listed shares of UCloud Tech that provides computing support for Zhipu, surged by 20% on Thursday to hit the daily limit. SenseTime, which has shifted its focus from developing facial recognition surveillance technology to providing AI software platforms, saw its shares in Hong Kong jump 5%. The Shanghai STAR AI Industry Index climbed 1.7% before paring gains. DeepSeek, which took the world by storm last year, upgraded its flagship AI model on Wednesday, adding support for a larger context window and more up-to-date knowledge, according to a report from the South China Morning Post. Ant Group also released its open-source AI model, Ming-Flash-Omni 2.0, on Wednesday. The "unified multimodal model" is capable of generating speech, music, sound effects and visuals.ByteDance on Monday launched its newest iteration of its AI video generation app, Seedance 2.0, that set off a rally in Chinese AI app stocks. The company is also reportedly working with Samsung for developing in-house chips.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday stressed on a comprehensive push for "scaled and commercialized application of AI," calling for better coordination of power and computing resources to advance the technology. Li also emphasized on Beijing's plans for improving the environment for AI talent and companies. The rally in pure-play AI startups comes amid a broader slump in Chinese tech giants that also have AI divisions. Shares of Tencent and Alibaba fell 2.6% and 2.1%, respectively.

The Hong Kong Hang Seng Tech index dropped 1.7%.

On Wall Street, the AI trade has experienced heightened volatility this year as investors have swung from euphoria over the technology's transformative potential to concerns about AI firms' stretched valuations. Tai Hui, APAC chief market strategist at JP Morgan, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Thursday that he considered the talk of AI bubble "a little premature" with plenty of quality names globally backed by solid fundamentals. Investors are now making more discerning bets among the major cloud and AI infrastructure providers, whose large spending was supported by underlying earnings rather than heavy borrowing, Hui noted. Chinese technology companies have taken a relatively frugal approach to AI development, with far less on capital expenditures than their American rivals while concentrating on the domestic market, said Rolf Bulk, analyst at Futurum Group. Got a confidential news tip? We want to hear from you.Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inboxGet this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services.© 2026 Versant Media, LLC.

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