China’s AI listing boom leaves investors flying blind

issued Tuesday, March 3, 2026 · 1:30 p.m.

[HONG KONG] A spate of stock market listings by Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) companies is leaving a hole in analyst coverage as brokerages struggle to keep up with the breakneck pace of listings.

Of the 27 AI-related companies that listed in Hong Kong over the past year, nearly 80% had fewer than three analysts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The list of lesser-covered companies includes Shanghai Bilian Technology and One Robotics Shenzhen, whose stock prices have soared more than 60% since their listings.

A new crop of chip designers and large language modeling companies has helped China stand out in a global market shaken by concerns about AI disruption. But investors are entering the rising stars’ first earnings season with little guidance from analysts, making it difficult to assess the merits of further bets, especially since most of the companies are unprofitable.

“From an investment perspective, things are going to be quite difficult,” said Winnie Wu, head of Asia-Pacific equity strategy at Bank of America. That “requires deeper analysis and understanding of the industry, the company’s founders and management, corporate governance, and judgments about financial health, which may also be difficult for an international investor 3,000 miles away.”

Mainland China listings especially fall into this category. Chip design company Moore Threads Technology has soared more than 400% since it began trading in Shanghai in early December, but no analysts yet cover the company. MetaX Integrated Circuits Shanghai scored 693% in its December debut, claiming the Moore Threads record, which has two records.

In contrast, analyst onboarding at larger U.S. companies typically begins after 25 days. York Space Systems raised $629 million in January, about half of Moore Thread’s offering, and is currently covered by 10 analysts tracked by Bloomberg. EquipmentShare.com’s US$859 million IPO in January was about the same as Biren’s IPO in the same month, and is also followed by 10 analysts.

There are signs that coverage is expanding, at least among major companies. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs recently began covering MiniMax Group and Knowledge Atlas Technologies, which rose more than 60% last month. Bank of America technology analysts recently started naming Chinese AI companies some new names, in part because of their growing importance in global supply chains. Morningstar also plans to selectively expand coverage.

JPMorgan, as Knowledge Atlas is known, rates both MiniMax and Zhipu stocks as buys, predicting that both companies could become profitable by 2030 and trade at P/E multiples of 30x, citing “the sector’s strong growth and premium over China’s internet peers.” Meanwhile, Goldman gave Zhipu a Neutral rating based on estimated EBIT margin assumptions through 2035.

MiniMax on Tuesday announced its financial results for the first time as a publicly traded company. It posted a better-than-expected 159% revenue increase in 2025, reflecting the breakneck growth that has drawn investors to China, OpenAI’s main rival. The company’s net loss was $1.87 billion, compared with $465.2 million in the same period last year.

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One reason Wall Street has been so selective is a lack of resources after China’s economy shrank during years of recession, forcing companies to change existing insurance coverage. Morningstar analyst Felix Lee is planning a shift from smartphone makers to chip makers.

To be sure, this is not the first time the analyst community has taken a tentative stance when a new industry emerges. During the wave of Chinese consumer companies listing in Hong Kong in the 2000s, it took quite a while for analysts to begin providing meaningful coverage. In the case of sportswear maker Li Ning, fewer than two analysts covered the company in the first nine months after going public in 2004, and its stock price soared 56%.

For the AI ​​industry, the challenges will only increase in the short term, and a healthy listing pipeline is not yet complete. And since many of them remain unprofitable, a lack of analyst coverage can become an under-the-radar investment risk, especially when so many companies compete in the same space.

“Attitudes about how long you’re willing to stay in these kinds of loss-making companies will depend on liquidity,” said Gerald van der Linde, head of Asia-Pacific equity strategy at HSBC. “For Chinese technology companies, there are often three or four reasons to change their future status at any given time. It is very difficult to identify the true key players.”Bloomberg