China captured roughly 18% of global AI VC in 2025 — an $80B+ flow concentrated in a dozen national-champion labs and one Hangzhou outlier. NeuronFeed tracks 8 Chinese AI companies with disclosed funding above $5.4B, now anchored by Hong Kong listings: MiniMax debuted in January 2026 at HK$291.1B ($37.2B) market cap, Zhipu AI followed at HK$439.6B ($56.1B), and Moonshot AI is closing roughly $2B at a $20B post-money led by Meituan Dragon Ball after raising $3.9B in six months. DeepSeek, still self-funded through quant firm High-Flyer, is targeting a $45–50B valuation in its first external round of $3–4B led by China's National IC Industry Investment Fund — state silicon capital crossing into model-layer bets. Kling AI ($1.2B from Kuaishou) anchors video; 01.AI and Baichuan complete the Beijing axis. By 2026, with US export controls still blocking Hopper-class GPUs, open weights and inference efficiency become Beijing's deliberate export — DeepSeek-V3 and Kimi shipped frontier-class capability on degraded silicon. Provincial guidance funds in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou now stack alongside Alibaba and Tencent strategics, while Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital have largely exited the cap tables.
Hong Kong listings cleared $90B in combined market cap
MiniMax's HK$291.1B (~$37.2B) and Zhipu AI's HK$439.6B (~$56.1B) January 2026 debuts replaced the US growth-round path, with Moonshot AI weighing a similar listing after a $20B post-money led by Meituan Dragon Ball.