Kunlunxin is Baidu's main route to valuing its chip business separately; until the CSRC acts, investors pricing Baidu cannot count on a 2026 listing.
Baidu on November 3 rejected a report that the Hong Kong listing of its AI chip unit Kunlunxin could be pushed into next year, saying the market rumors and related reports were untrue. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, had reported that the offering might slip to 2027 because Kunlunxin was still waiting for approval from China’s securities regulator, according to The Standard in Hong Kong.
Kunlunxin confidentially filed for a US$2 billion Hong Kong listing in January, and approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission had been expected in the summer. Bloomberg reported that the company was still actively preparing the deal. Baidu called the reports untrue but gave no timetable. It said Kunlunxin was in the confidential filing stage, that regulatory rules barred it from disclosing material non-public information, including progress on the listing, and that it would make announcements in due course, The Paper reported.
The exchange leaves the question that matters to investors open: when the regulator will sign off. Baidu shares closed more than 1% lower in Hong Kong on Tuesday and underperformed the market, The Standard reported. Kunlunxin is one of the few ways investors can see the value Baidu attaches to its own chips, which run its AI cloud and serve outside buyers.
Kunlunxin has been preparing a Hong Kong and a mainland listing at once
Baidu announced on January 2 that Kunlunxin had submitted a confidential A1 application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange through its joint sponsors on January 1, seeking a main board listing, Cailian Press reported at the time. After the spin-off, Kunlunxin would remain a Baidu subsidiary and stay consolidated in its accounts, according to BigGo Finance.
The company has also lined up a mainland route. It completed a tutoring filing with the CSRC’s Beijing bureau on April 29 and formally began STAR Market listing tutoring on May 7, with China International Capital Corporation as tutor, the 21st Century Business Herald reported. The tutoring report lists Baidu (China) Co. as controlling shareholder with 57.67%. According to BigGo Finance, the report was posted on the CSRC website on May 8 and dates the company’s founding to June 2011. The market had expected the Hong Kong deal to come first, The Standard said.
Kunlunxin’s last private round valued it at about RMB21 billion after the investment, according to the 21st Century Business Herald, which listed CPE, IDG Capital, Legend Capital and an industry fund of China Mobile among its investors. Its customers include Baidu, China Mobile, Geely and China Southern Power Grid. EastFrontier reported in June on how far Kunlunxin’s Hong Kong valuation ambitions had risen above that private mark.
A confidential filing gives outsiders few ways to track the timetable
The dispute turns on what can be said publicly. A confidential filing, or 保密申报, keeps the application and its progress out of view until a prospectus is posted. That lets Baidu deny a delay report while saying nothing about when approval might arrive. The step Bloomberg’s sources said was outstanding sits with Beijing, not with the Hong Kong exchange: clearance from the Chinese securities regulator.
The business behind the filing is a smaller player in a market led by Huawei. Kunlunxin accounted for 4% of shipments of data-center AI chips in China in the first half of the year, against Huawei’s 28%, according to IDC figures cited by The Standard. Its lineage goes back to Baidu’s Kunlun 1 chip, launched in 2018 and in mass production by 2020, and the unit raised money independently and separated from Baidu in April 2021, IT Home reported.
Several rivals have reached public markets while Kunlunxin waits. The 21st Century Business Herald named Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren and Iluvatar CoreX among domestic GPU makers that have listed in recent years, which gives investors listed peers against which a Kunlunxin offering would be priced.
The CSRC filing notice is the signal to watch
Hong Kong’s IPO market has raised HK$388 billion so far this year, approaching the record HK$427 billion set in 2010, The Standard reported, so the window remains open in principle. The concrete marker would be a completed CSRC filing for Kunlunxin, followed by a public prospectus posted on the Hong Kong exchange. If neither appears before the end of the year, the Bloomberg timeline gains weight regardless of Baidu’s denial.
A second marker is the STAR Market track. A formal application to the Shanghai exchange after tutoring would show whether Baidu intends to run the two listings in parallel or let one wait for the other. Either filing would also put Kunlunxin’s revenue and profit figures in public for the first time.