The Zhipu AI logo will appear on your smartphone screen.
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Shares of Atlas Technology JSC, known as Zhipu, edged higher on its Hong Kong debut after it became China’s first “AI Tiger” to go public in a $558 million initial public offering.
The stock price was about 10% above Thursday’s offering price of HK$116.20 ($15), with the Beijing-based startup offering about 37.4 million shares.
The IPO valued Zhipu at approximately HK$4.3 billion, making it one of the largest AI floating stocks in recent years.
Founded in 2019 by researchers from China’s top universities, Zhipu represents China’s first major language modeling company to go public through an IPO. The listing marks another important milestone for China’s broader artificial intelligence sector, following a recent wave of listings by AI chipmakers.
The company, which has strong backing from the Chinese government, is also considered one of China’s so-called “AI Tigers,” startups building language models at scale that rival the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.
Other notable companies in this group include Deepseek, which famously disrupted the market by releasing one of its LLM models early last year.
Although not as well-known globally as Deepseek, Zhipu gained attention last year when it highlighted the significant progress U.S. AI giant OpenAI has made as a “front-line” competitor in China’s race for AI leadership.
The company reportedly has offices in the UK, Singapore, Malaysia and throughout the Middle East. It also operates joint “innovation center” projects across Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Vietnam.
Zhipu made the move despite being placed on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List in January last year after U.S. officials said it was collaborating with the Chinese military. The company’s ability to train AI models is also limited by U.S. restrictions on access to advanced semiconductor technology and expertise.
According to Zhipu’s prospectus, 70% of the IPO proceeds will be used for research and development of general-purpose large-scale AI models. The company reported sales of 312.4 million yuan in 2024.
Rival Chinese AI startup MiniMax plans to launch its own service on Friday following a confidential filing last year.
