Investors now treat China's listed model developers and its chip and robot makers as separate trades, rewarding model revenue while selling hardware outside the US AI supply chain.
Shares of Z.ai, the Beijing developer of the GLM models, rose 8.9% on October 27, one of the few gains among Chinese technology stocks on a day when Anthropic’s IPO filing lifted chip and AI shares across the rest of Asia. Fortune reported that Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.7% and mainland China’s CSI 300 fell 1.3%, while South Korea’s KOSPI rose 3.1% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.7%.
Z.ai, known in Chinese as Zhipu, rose more than 12% at one point in morning trading, and MiniMax, Hong Kong’s other listed large-model developer, rose more than 5%, 21st Century Business Herald reported, citing Shanghai Securities News. The gains came a day after Anthropic filed to list on Nasdaq, disclosing first-half revenue of US$16.3 billion.
China’s hardware names moved the other way. Chipmaker SMIC fell 1.3%, robot maker Unitree fell 4.8% and AI processor designer Cambricon fell 5.7%, according to Fortune. The split shows investors treating Chinese AI software and Chinese AI hardware as two different trades.
The rally passed China’s chip supply chain by
Elsewhere in Asia the Anthropic filing was read as good news for the companies that supply AI hardware. Samsung Electronics rose 4.2% and SK Hynix 5.2%, while in Tokyo SoftBank gained 5.0% and chip-testing equipment maker Advantest almost 9%, Fortune reported. South Korea’s third-quarter growth of 3.4% added to the rally after the KOSPI had fallen 18.2% over the previous month.
Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, told Fortune that "Hong Kong and mainland markets barely budged because they sit outside the main U.S. AI supply chain." She added that Chinese users can already turn to cheaper domestic models such as DeepSeek. Her colleague Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis, said more spending on AI infrastructure can translate into more sales and stronger pricing for Japanese and South Korean chip suppliers if Anthropic’s outlook proves convincing.
Garcia Herrero also pointed to export controls that keep the most advanced chips out of Chinese hands, which leaves China’s chip and robot makers outside the supply chain that Anthropic’s spending feeds. The weakness on October 27 extended a longer slide: the CSI Artificial Intelligence Index, which tracks major Chinese AI-related companies, has at one point fallen nearly 40% from its June peak, led by state-backed chipmakers such as Cambricon, Nikkei Asia reported.
Model revenue gives Z.ai a closer comparison
For Z.ai and MiniMax, the comparison works differently. Both sell access to large language models, the same business Anthropic has just opened to public investors, and Anthropic’s numbers offer a reference point for how fast that business can grow.
Z.ai’s own figures have moved quickly. It reported first-half revenue of RMB953.9 million, up 399.7% from a year earlier, of which RMB825.2 million, or 86.5%, came from its model platform and API services, 21st Century Business Herald reported. Z.ai has disclosed annual recurring revenue of US$1.8 billion and raised its year-end 2026 target from US$2.4 billion to US$3 billion. Goldman Sachs has upgraded the stock to buy and expects year-end recurring revenue of US$3.2 billion.
Amazon’s cloud unit added Z.ai’s GLM-5.3 model to its Bedrock service on October 6, with the two sharing revenue based on usage, a deal EastFrontier examined when it was announced. Z.ai expects to start recognizing revenue from that arrangement in October.
Mainland money is betting on the model makers
The flows show where conviction sits. Southbound investors bought a net HK$431 million of Z.ai shares on October 26, bringing two days of net buying to HK$2.17 billion. The figures, reported by 21st Century Business Herald, reflect mainland money buying a Hong Kong-listed AI developer through the Stock Connect links.
Usage trends support the case. OpenRouter data showed global weekly usage of 188 trillion tokens, the units of text models process, in the week of October 19 to 25, up 14.63% from the week before, with Chinese models handling 93.54 trillion tokens, the newspaper reported. Pricing pressure is the counterweight: The Paper noted that OpenAI launched its GPT-6.1 Terra model the same day as Anthropic’s filing, and 21st Century Business Herald reported that its API prices are 50% lower than the previous generation’s.
Z.ai’s next disclosure of recurring revenue, measured against its US$3 billion year-end target, is the figure that will test whether the October 27 move holds. Anthropic’s IPO pricing will set the valuation benchmark that Hong Kong’s model developers trade against.