China’s AI Startups Surge as Tech Giants Falter Post-Holiday

Shares of Zhipu AI, officially Knowledge Atlas Technology, jumped 25% on Friday, while fellow startup MiniMax climbed 12%. This rally extends a period of intense growth; during the week ending Feb. 13, Zhipu’s valuation surged nearly 140% while MiniMax rose 50%. Since their respective listings, both companies have seen their share prices increase more than five-fold, reflecting a robust demand for domestic alternatives to Western AI models.

Product Innovations Drive Market Momentum

The surge in valuation follows a flurry of technical updates released during the holiday period. Zhipu recently launched an updated large-language model with enhanced coding and agentic capabilities. Meanwhile, MiniMax introduced a new model tailored for office productivity, which the company claims rivals the performance of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 in complex task execution. Other major players are also accelerating their pace:

• ByteDance recently debuted its Seedance 2.0 video generation tool.
• Alibaba Group released a significant update to its Qwen model.
• Zhipu’s latest LLM features improved autonomous "agentic" functions.

The performance of these "Little Dragons" stands in stark contrast to the broader market. The Hang Seng Tech Index fell 2.5% on Friday, tracking overnight losses on Wall Street. Industry heavyweights Alibaba and Baidu dropped 3.6% and 5.5% respectively. Despite these broader headwinds, Jefferies analysts maintain a bullish outlook on the startup sector, initiating coverage on MiniMax with a buy rating and a target price of HK$1,118.00. Analysts cited the firm's cost-effective approach and strong growth potential within the early-stage global foundation model market.