Zhipu said to weigh multibillion-dollar share sale in Hong Kong after 2,000% gain

[HONG KONG] Chinese artificial-intelligence model maker Zhipu is considering a share sale to raise several billion US dollars in Hong Kong, sources familiar with the matter said, after soaring 2,000 per cent since its listing in January.

Zhipu is working with advisers on a potential placement that may take place as soon as next month, the sources said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. A six-month lock-up from its IPO expires on Jul 8.

A deal of that magnitude would dwarf the US$558 million that Zhipu raised in its Hong Kong IPO, when the shares were priced at HK$116.2. They have now climbed to HK$2,448, giving Zhipu, which trades as Knowledge Atlas Technology, a market value above HK$1 trillion (S$166 billion).

The company has said that it also aims to issue shares in Shanghai, bringing in more funds to develop its models.

Issuing shares in Hong Kong soon after listing has echoes of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Limited’s (CATL) US$5 billion placement in April, which followed a share sale of a similar size by the battery maker in May 2025, one of the biggest in the world that year.

CATL, which was already listed in Shenzhen, has risen 170 per cent in Hong Kong over the past 13 months, despite a drop-off since the placement. Its market capitalisation is more than twice as big as Zhipu’s.

Deliberations about a Zhipu share sale are ongoing and may not result in a deal, the sources said. Zhipu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

While sentiment around Chinese tech and AI-related stocks has been strong for months, extra fuel was added ahead of a national holiday last week as authorities introduced more measures to expand AI adoption, promote next-generation advices and deepen integration in e-commerce, logistics and retail.

The regulator also pledged to ease listing requirements.

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Zhipu recently launched its GLM-5.2 AI model and is making the technology free and open for anyone to build upon, expecting to attract developers to its platform and embed its tools into the global market.

With all the hype around the company and its eye-popping rally in Hong Kong, there are some concerns about its profitability and competitiveness against rivals such as US-based Claude developer Anthropic.

Zhipu’s latest model excels at agentic AI coding, but “comparisons with AI titan Anthropic do not stand up to scrutiny, given the latter’s unmatched financial firepower, operational reach and R&D resources”, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Lea and Jasmine Lyu wrote on Tuesday.

“Zhipu will likely remain deeply unprofitable, with rising agentic demand driving its losses higher over the next 24 months,” they said. BLOOMBERG