Moonshot and DeepSeek are raising record sums. But most Chinese AI start-ups still raise single-digit millions, and the larger ones are turning to Hong Kong’s stock market earlier than their US peers.
Moonshot AI, the Beijing developer behind the Kimi large language models, was valued at about $50 billion after its latest private round, up from $31.5 billion in the summer and five times the valuation at which it raised $700 million in January.
It is now preparing a Hong Kong listing of up to $5 billion for the first quarter of 2027. DeepSeek is close to raising at least 80 billion yuan from investors including Tencent and CATL, Euronews reported. Its reported valuation target is about 500 billion yuan.
PitchBook data show annual AI deal volume in China holding at about $10 billion to $11 billion since 2024, below the 2021 peak of $23.3 billion. The median Chinese AI deal in 2026 was $7.4 million as of May. In 2020 it was $4 million. Chip companies raise more per round: the median Chinese semiconductor deal this year was about $30.5 million, four times the AI figure. US start-ups, by Boston Consulting Group’s count, have raised around $380 billion in AI venture capital since 2023.
How well Hong Kong absorbs the leaders’ listings will decide whether the rest of the sector gets a route to larger sums or stays dependent on state-guided funds and small venture rounds.
Behind on spending
Capital spending by the top US technology companies passed $400 billion in 2025 and is expected to exceed $800 billion this year, BCG estimates. The comparable figure for China in 2025 was $63 billion, about a sixth as much. The US ended last year with more than 50 gigawatts of data-centre capacity against China’s 31 gigawatts. The EU had 12 gigawatts. BCG puts US computing power optimised for AI at eight times China’s.
But on model performance the distance is shorter. Epoch AI finds that since January the most capable open-weight models, many of them Chinese, have trailed closed frontier models by an average of about four months. Staying that close costs money; each new model needs more computing power, and a developer without a cloud business of its own has to buy it.
Government-linked investors backed more than 140 Chinese AI deals in 2025, up from fewer than 10 a year before 2018. State-guided funds tend to favour later-stage companies, which leaves early-stage developers dependent on a private venture market that is only now recovering from a three-year fundraising drought.
Listing earlier
KPMG counts more than HK$388 billion raised from 116 Hong Kong listings in the first three quarters of 2026 and expects the full year to reach as much as HK$500 billion, above the 2010 record of HK$427 billion. More than half of the money went to technology sectors including AI, semiconductors and robotics.
Much of the HK$388 billion came from established mainland companies adding a Hong Kong listing: 37 such A+H deals supplied nearly 70% of the proceeds. Companies listed under Chapter 18C, the exchange’s route for pre-profit specialist technology firms, raised HK$36.2 billion across 19 deals.
Zhipu AI listed first, on 8 January. It raised HK$4.35 billion, about $558 million, and the offering was oversubscribed. MiniMax listed the next day. It sold about 29.2 million shares at HK$165 each, or roughly $620 million. By comparison, Anthropic raised $65 billion privately in May.
In July Zhipu placed new H shares worth about HK$31.4 billion, or $4 billion, more than seven times its IPO proceeds. Linklaters, which advised on the deal, described it as one of the year’s largest equity fundraisings in Asia and by far the largest in the technology and AI sector.
DeepSeek may list closer to home. It has hired CITIC Securities to prepare for a possible listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market. No timing or size has been set.
The tier below
A listing brings public disclosure, half-yearly reporting and a share price that moves with sentiment. The queue is also long, with more than 430 applicants in Hong Kong’s IPO pipeline for the second half of the year. Asia-Pacific private credit assets are projected to rise from $59 billion in 2024 to $92 billion by 2027, but those lenders generally favour larger borrowers with revenue to service the debt.
In an October commentary for Fortune Asia, Alvin Yap, Asia chief executive of EquitiesFirst, set out what remains for founders: earlier listings, private credit, revenue-sharing arrangements with customers and financing against their own equity. The last option opens up after a listing, once the shares trade and can be valued daily. Financing raised against a listed shareholding lets a founder fund the next stage while maintaining long-term exposure to stock. It also ties the founder’s position to the share price of a young company.
Moonshot’s offering will test how much Hong Kong can absorb. Meetings to gauge investor demand were due to begin in October. The deal is being coordinated by Bank of America, with China International Capital Corp, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs as sponsors. At up to $5 billion, it would be more than four times what Zhipu and MiniMax raised in their two IPOs combined. A strong book would make it easier for the next group of developers to list. A weak one would leave them relying on state-guided funds and the small venture rounds that have defined the sector so far.
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