Information on Zhipu's AI service on the web, dubbed Z.ai, arranged on a computer in Shanghai, Jan. 7, 2026.
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 nearly 30% to close at 405 Hong Kong dollars ($51.8), according to LSEG data, 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 13.7% to 70.5 Hong Kong dollars at close 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 new releases have boosted investor sentiment on AI-related companies. Shanghai-listed shares of UCloud Tech that provides computing support for Zhipu, surged by 20% on Thursday to hit the daily limit.
SenseTime, which has shifted its focus from developing facial recognition surveillance technology to providing AI software platforms, saw its shares in Hong Kong jump 6.8% on Thursday.
DeepSeek, which took the world by storm last year, 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.
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