Chinese tech stocks started 2026 by testing how long the AI-powered bull market will last.
Shares in AI chip design company Shanghai Blue Lian Technology soared nearly 120% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by midday Friday after the company raised HK$5.58 billion ($717 million) in an initial public offering.
The stock price opened at HK$35.70, well above the public offering price of HK$19.60.
That ambition is reflected in the product as a whole, with more than 2,300 applications for the retail portion, according to exchange filings, highlighting the strong interest in China's homegrown AI hardware sector.
Enthusiasm is growing even more broadly. Chinese AI and semiconductor stocks have been on the rise since the Chinese-made DeepSeek-R1 AI model broke out in January last year, helping the Hang Seng High-Tech Index rise 23% in 2025. The index rose as much as 3.9% on Friday.
The Washington government's tightening of export controls for advanced NVIDIA chips also accelerated demand for domestic alternative chips, spurring the boom.
“Nvidia’s once dominant position in China’s AI chip market will virtually disappear by 2025, marking a major shift in the global intelligent computing landscape,” Andrei Zakharov, an analyst publishing in Smartkarma, wrote in a note last week.
More AI-related IPOs in China are planned in the future
Shanghai Bilian's stunning debut on the stock market highlighted China's rise in AI, reversing years of pain for the country's tech industry amid a regulatory crackdown and broader economic challenges.
In the wake of the DeepSeek-R1 breakout, startups like Cambricon, Moore Threads, and Metax are vying to supply chips for data centers, large-scale language models, and industrial AI applications, raising billions of dollars in funding.
This surge in capital is also reflected in personal wealth, with China's AI chip boom creating billionaires at breakneck speed even as the overall economy remains stagnant amid a long-running real estate crisis.
Following Shanghai Meilian's blockbuster debut, further new supply is expected, with Hong Kong emerging as a key location for its fundraising efforts.
Chinese tech giant Baidu announced on Friday that its artificial intelligence chip unit has confidentially applied to list in Hong Kong.
At least 25 companies made their market debut in Hong Kong last month, making it the busiest month for IPOs since November 2019, according to Bloomberg data. About half of those listed companies were technology companies.
More AI-related Chinese technology listings are expected this month. These include startups MiniMax Group and Knowledge Atlas Technology, also known as Zhipu AI, which are set to debut next week.
