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 developing generative AI and large language models in recent years, 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%.
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