Zhipu leads rally in Chinese AI stocks, surging 30%, as a wave of new releases hits market
Information on Zhipu’s AI service on the web, dubbed Z.ai, arranged on a computer in Shanghai, Jan. 7, 2026.
Raul Ariano | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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.
DeepSeek, which took the world by storm last year, also 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.
The releases also lifted investor sentiment on suppliers to AI companies. Shanghai-listed shares of UCloud Tech that provides computing support for Zhipu, surged by 20% 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.
Zhipu AI
Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday called for a comprehensive push to implement AI “in diverse scenarios to unlock the potential of the technology.”
The rally in 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%.
