An artificial intelligence billboard at the China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. booth at the MWC Shanghai Tech Show on Thursday, June 19, 2025 in Shanghai, China.
Shen Qilai | Shen Qilai Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares in Chinese AI model developer Zhipu soared on Monday as Wall Street banks bet on the company’s ability to capture global AI demand and the U.S. government tightens restrictions on foreign access to the company’s most powerful models.
Knowledge Atlas TechnologyThe Hong Kong-listed entity behind Zhipu parlayed gains after soaring as much as 48% on Monday. It last traded at around HK$1,461 ($186), up 33%, according to LSEG data.
The stock’s move comes as JPMorgan reportedly maintains an overweight rating on the company and raised its price target from HK$950 to HK$1,400, citing the visibility of the company’s model and what the bank sees as pricing power in a highly competitive market. At the same time, it downgraded its domestic rivals. mini maxas reported by Bloomberg.
Minimax stock rose 7.4% on Monday.
Zhipu, Mini Max
Separately, bank of america Analysts initiated coverage on the pair on Monday with a buy rating and set a price target of HK$1,250 for Zhipu and HK$500 for MiniMax.
The assessment comes after the Trump administration on Friday ordered Anthropic to cut off access to its cutting-edge AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, by foreign nationals, including Anthropic’s non-national employees, citing national security concerns.
On the same day, Zhipu announced that its latest and most capable open source large model, GLM-5.2, will be released this week as open source software with no usage restrictions.
Mr. Zipu appears to have framed the release as a direct reaction to Washington’s intervention. “Cutting-edge intelligence should not belong to just a few people, nor should it be withdrawn at any time,” the company said. “It needs to be open, available, extensible, and built to serve any developer.”
Preliminary community feedback indicates that GLM-5.2 performs on par with Claude Opus 4.7 in coding and long-term agent tasks, said Ellie Jiang, head of Asia internet and media research at Macquarie Capital.
The launch will strengthen Zhipu’s pricing power in future subscription plans and is likely to further increase its revenue, Zhang added, maintaining its “outperform” rating with a target price of HK$1,221.4.
As pressure mounts for U.S. developers to restrict access to the frontier, Chinese companies are leaning toward open distribution, tapping demand from particularly cost-sensitive corporate users.
According to BofA analysts, China is positioned to capture a significant share of the global AI market in the area of “value for money” as the price of US Frontier models rises, while Chinese models attract attention as “cheap and high-performance” as the price of US Frontier models rises.
Zhipu increased the price of its cloud API by 8% to 17% in conjunction with the launch of GLM-5.1 in April, the second price increase this year, in response to surging demand for AI services and pressure from investors to secure profits.
Human regulations are also reigniting the debate over the AI talent race between the US and China.
Peter Alexander, managing director at Z-Ben Advisors, estimates that about 40% of U.S.-based AI engineers were born in China, and the latest directive effectively bars many of these people from accessing the systems they helped build.
“The very individuals who took significant, if not total, responsibility for creating perhaps the most powerful AI model in the world are now persona non grata,” Alexander said in a memo on Monday, warning of a potential “brain flight” to Chinese AI companies such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI.
Zhipu’s stock price has soared more than tenfold since its initial public offering in January on growing optimism about China’s position in AI. MiniMax also went public earlier this year, but its trajectory hasn’t matched that as investors assigned it a deeper discount.
Zhipu’s market capitalization was HK$489 billion as of Monday, nearly four times MiniMax’s HK$124.2 billion. Both Zhipu and MiniMax plan to list on Shanghai’s STAR market, which is similar to China’s Nasdaq.
“Zhipu’s premium reflects accelerated ARR (annual recurring revenue) growth, stronger talent density (and) public support, and the company’s lead in corporate earnings exposure,” BofA analysts said.
Wall Street banks view MiniMax as a potential catch-up trade because its estimated price-to-sales multiple compares favorably with Zhipu’s, but the gap is currently too wide given MiniMax’s product breadth.
