Listings on Hong Kong’s stock exchange reached a five-year high in the first quarter of 2026, driven by investor appetite for AI and chips.
The two best-performing IPOs this year, Zhipu and MiniMax, are among China’s “AI tigers,” a group of top-tier firms.
Beijing has looked to cool, but not halt, the IPO boom by restricting some companies that are incorporated overseas but operate mostly in mainland China, in an effort to prevent “low-quality” listings from fueling a market bubble, the Financial Times wrote.
Hong Kong could lose its global lead to the US this year if valuable American AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic go public, as well as SpaceX.