MiniMax, a Shanghai-based LLM company and DeepSeek rival, closed 100%+ higher in its Hong Kong trading debut, raising $619 million at $13.5B market cap.
A day earlier, Zhipu became the first LLM startup to list globally, raising $558M with shares up 37%. Chinese AI companies are turning to public markets far earlier than US counterparts, which have raised tens of billions privately.
The Structural Difference
Without hyperscaler backing, Chinese startups need public capital to compete:
US AI startups (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI) raised billions from Microsoft, Google, Amazon
Chinese startups lack equivalent backers—Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu have their own AI efforts
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
