Pacific Money | Economy | East Asia

Could Zhipu Emerge as the AI Stock of 2026 Amid Wider Market Uncertainty?

Zhipu has soared on its Hong Kong debut. Now, following the launch of its GLM-5 model, the stock appears to be well-positioned to capitalize on increasingly uncertain global markets. 

Founded in 2019, Zhipu (HKG: 2513) was the first of China’s six “AI tigers” to go public. Upon its listing in January 2026, its stock popped 16 percent above its offer price of HK$116.20 (US$15) before closing at HK$131.5.

Zhipu has posted a seismic rally in excess of 250 percent since then, leading to fresh speculation over how far the stock can climb in 2026, even as geopolitical tensions are carrying far-reaching consequences for global markets. 

The recent flare-up of conflict in Iran has sparked a pullback for many stocks and shares across different sectors, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index posting a 1.4 percent decline to 25,408.46. 

However, China’s reputation for resilience in the face of international trends could help to create a stronger tailwind for Zhipu at a time when Wall Street’s artificial intelligence leaders are being forced to contend with a new wave of uncertainty surrounding investors. 

The AI-heavy Nasdaq index has tumbled more than 7 percent from its 2026 highs in late January, with stocks tumbling more than 2.5 percent over the first week of March alone. 

With Zhipu’s prospectus stipulating that the company intends to use 70 percent of its IPO proceeds to focus on the R&D of its general-purpose large language models, strength in the Hang Seng could see the stock outpace its U.S. peers in terms of growth this year. And the launch of the firm’s widely anticipated GLM-5 model in February could be a watershed moment for the stock.

Zhipu’s GLM-5 delivers enhanced coding capabilities and provides users with the ability to perform long-running agentic tasks. GLM-5 can directly compete with Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 in coding benchmark tests and surpasses Google’s Gemini 3 Pro in certain benchmarks. Critically, the model was developed using domestically manufactured chips, including Huawei’s Ascend chip, underlining China’s recent successes in building domestic chip self-sufficiency. 

This self-sufficiency is helping to grow the pricing power of Zhipu’s releases. According to OpenRouter, on the week of GLM-5’s launch, the model was available at around $0.80 per million input tokens and $2.56 per million output tokens – around six times cheaper than rivals like Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6.

With more leading U.S. firms, such as Airbnb, opting to use low-cost Chinese models like Qwen, we’re seeing the disruptive pricing structures used by the likes of Zhipu win over more global users, particularly with GLM-5’s open-source MIT License to sweeten the deal. 

Despite their growing strength and attractive pricing power, some of China’s AI tigers have drawn derision from their U.S. counterparts. Anthropic accused three AI labs of illegally extracting capabilities from its Claude model to advance their own artificial intelligence models. While Zhipu hasn’t been identified as a culprit, Anthropic alleged that three other Chinese firms – DeepSeek, Minimax, and Moonshot AI – created over 24,000 fraudulent accounts and trained their models using more than 16 million exchanges with Claude as a “distillation” tactic. 

Although the accusations could harm the credibility of Chinese AI models, undermining the long-term outlook for Zhipu, recent market movements suggest that China’s AI stocks are well-positioned to capitalize on market conditions to out-grow their U.S. peers over the foreseeable future.

Zhipu hasn’t been alone in launching new AI models in China. Minimax also launched M2.5, a model that’s reportedly competitive with the likes of Claude 3 Opus and GPT-5. These launches helped to generate sweeping gains throughout China’s AI sector amid a growing wave of positive sentiment. 

The direct impact of Zhipu’s latest model launch prompted a 20 percent jump in the value of the stock, emulating the level of exponential growth that spread throughout Wall Street during the early stages of the AI boom in the West. 

Recent market jitters have caused more Wall Street investors to question whether the United States is in the midst of an AI bubble, but analysts appear to retain a cautiously optimistic tone for the year ahead. 

“As AI’s capabilities skyrocketed, so too did the share prices of its biggest companies,”  suggested a recent Wealthify thought piece on the ongoing artificial intelligence boom. “…Although bubble-related questions may linger, our outlook for 2026 is one of cautious optimism. As AI’s growth story continues, the focus will expand beyond major chipmakers to companies using it to improve efficiency and develop new products.”

With a market capitalization of around HK$256 billion (US$33 billion), Zhipu has a long way to go before it draws level with the likes of Wall Street’s AI leaders, but this more modest valuation could provide greater resilience in the face of global market disruptions. The ever-evolving AI landscape in China coupled with its attractive open-source frameworks and low adoption costs could all contribute to a significant competitive advantage over international rivals. 

At a time when value-driven market propositions may outperform competitors, Zhipu’s launch of its GLM-5 model could hardly have been better timed to prosper amid wider disruption. 

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Founded in 2019, Zhipu (HKG: 2513) was the first of China’s six “AI tigers” to go public. Upon its listing in January 2026, its stock popped 16 percent above its offer price of HK$116.20 (US$15) before closing at HK$131.5.

Zhipu has posted a seismic rally in excess of 250 percent since then, leading to fresh speculation over how far the stock can climb in 2026, even as geopolitical tensions are carrying far-reaching consequences for global markets. 

The recent flare-up of conflict in Iran has sparked a pullback for many stocks and shares across different sectors, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index posting a 1.4 percent decline to 25,408.46. 

However, China’s reputation for resilience in the face of international trends could help to create a stronger tailwind for Zhipu at a time when Wall Street’s artificial intelligence leaders are being forced to contend with a new wave of uncertainty surrounding investors. 

The AI-heavy Nasdaq index has tumbled more than 7 percent from its 2026 highs in late January, with stocks tumbling more than 2.5 percent over the first week of March alone. 

With Zhipu’s prospectus stipulating that the company intends to use 70 percent of its IPO proceeds to focus on the R&D of its general-purpose large language models, strength in the Hang Seng could see the stock outpace its U.S. peers in terms of growth this year. And the launch of the firm’s widely anticipated GLM-5 model in February could be a watershed moment for the stock.

Zhipu’s GLM-5 delivers enhanced coding capabilities and provides users with the ability to perform long-running agentic tasks. GLM-5 can directly compete with Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 in coding benchmark tests and surpasses Google’s Gemini 3 Pro in certain benchmarks. Critically, the model was developed using domestically manufactured chips, including Huawei’s Ascend chip, underlining China’s recent successes in building domestic chip self-sufficiency. 

This self-sufficiency is helping to grow the pricing power of Zhipu’s releases. According to OpenRouter, on the week of GLM-5’s launch, the model was available at around $0.80 per million input tokens and $2.56 per million output tokens – around six times cheaper than rivals like Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6.

With more leading U.S. firms, such as Airbnb, opting to use low-cost Chinese models like Qwen, we’re seeing the disruptive pricing structures used by the likes of Zhipu win over more global users, particularly with GLM-5’s open-source MIT License to sweeten the deal. 

Despite their growing strength and attractive pricing power, some of China’s AI tigers have drawn derision from their U.S. counterparts. Anthropic accused three AI labs of illegally extracting capabilities from its Claude model to advance their own artificial intelligence models. While Zhipu hasn’t been identified as a culprit, Anthropic alleged that three other Chinese firms – DeepSeek, Minimax, and Moonshot AI – created over 24,000 fraudulent accounts and trained their models using more than 16 million exchanges with Claude as a “distillation” tactic. 

Although the accusations could harm the credibility of Chinese AI models, undermining the long-term outlook for Zhipu, recent market movements suggest that China’s AI stocks are well-positioned to capitalize on market conditions to out-grow their U.S. peers over the foreseeable future.

Zhipu hasn’t been alone in launching new AI models in China. Minimax also launched M2.5, a model that’s reportedly competitive with the likes of Claude 3 Opus and GPT-5. These launches helped to generate sweeping gains throughout China’s AI sector amid a growing wave of positive sentiment. 

The direct impact of Zhipu’s latest model launch prompted a 20 percent jump in the value of the stock, emulating the level of exponential growth that spread throughout Wall Street during the early stages of the AI boom in the West. 

Recent market jitters have caused more Wall Street investors to question whether the United States is in the midst of an AI bubble, but analysts appear to retain a cautiously optimistic tone for the year ahead. 

“As AI’s capabilities skyrocketed, so too did the share prices of its biggest companies,”  suggested a recent Wealthify thought piece on the ongoing artificial intelligence boom. “…Although bubble-related questions may linger, our outlook for 2026 is one of cautious optimism. As AI’s growth story continues, the focus will expand beyond major chipmakers to companies using it to improve efficiency and develop new products.”

With a market capitalization of around HK$256 billion (US$33 billion), Zhipu has a long way to go before it draws level with the likes of Wall Street’s AI leaders, but this more modest valuation could provide greater resilience in the face of global market disruptions. The ever-evolving AI landscape in China coupled with its attractive open-source frameworks and low adoption costs could all contribute to a significant competitive advantage over international rivals. 

At a time when value-driven market propositions may outperform competitors, Zhipu’s launch of its GLM-5 model could hardly have been better timed to prosper amid wider disruption. 

Dmytro Spilka is an experienced finance, crypto, and investing writer based in London. He is the founder of Solvid, Pridicto, and Coinprompter. His work has been published in U.S.News, Nasdaq, InvestorPlace, Kiplinger, Entrepreneur, InvestmentWeek, Finextra, Financial Express and The Diplomat.

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