- Zhipu shares soared as much as 48% on Monday before paring gains.
- JPMorgan reportedly maintained its overweight rating on the company and raised the target price to HK$1,400 from HK$950. The bank downgraded its domestic rival MiniMax.
- MiniMax shares rose 7.4% on Monday.
Shares of Chinese AI model developer Zhipu surged on Monday as Wall Street banks raised bets on the company's ability to capture global AI demand, while Washington tightens curbs on foreign access to its most powerful models.
Knowledge Atlas Technology, the Hong Kong-listed entity behind Zhipu, soared as much as 48% on Monday before paring gains. It was last traded 33% higher at around 1,461 Hong Kong dollars ($186), according to LSEG data.
The share moves came as JPMorgan
reportedly maintained its overweight rating on the company and raised the target price to HK$1,400 from HK$950, citing the firm's model visibility and what the bank sees as pricing power in a fiercely contested market. It simultaneously downgraded its domestic rival MiniMax, per a Bloomberg report.
MiniMax shares rose 7.4% on Monday.
Separately,
Bank of America analysts on Monday initiated coverage with "buy" ratings on the pair, setting targets of 1,250 Hong Kong dollars for Zhipu and 500 Hong Kong dollars for MiniMax.
The assessment came after the Trump administration on Friday ordered Anthropic to
suspend access to its most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for any foreign national, including Anthropic's own non-citizen employees, over national security concerns.
On the same day, Zhipu
announced GLM-5.2, its latest and most capable open-source large model, would be released as open-source software this week with no usage restrictions.
Zhipu appeared to frame the release as a direct rejoinder to Washington's intervention. "Cutting-edge intelligence should not belong to only a few, nor should it be withdrawn at any time,"
the company said. "It should be open, available, extensible and built to serve every developer."
Preliminary community feedback indicated GLM-5.2 performs comparably to Claude Opus 4.7 in coding and long-horizon agentic tasks, according to Ellie Jiang, head of Asia internet and media research at Macquarie Capital.
The latest launch will likely strengthen Zhipu's pricing power in subsequent subscription plans, further boosting revenue, Jiang added, maintaining an "outperform" rating with a target price at 1,221.4 Hong Kong dollars.
While U.S. developers face mounting pressure to restrict frontier access, Chinese players have leaned into open distribution, drawing demand particularly from cost-sensitive enterprise users.
China is positioned to capture a substantial share of the global AI market within the "value-for-money" segment, with Chinese models gaining traction as "cheap-and-capable performers" as U.S. pricing for frontier models rises, according to BofA analysts.
Zhipu raised cloud API prices by 8% to 17% alongside its GLM-5.1 launch in April, its second hike this year, responding to surging demand for AI services as well as pressure from investors to begin delivering on profits.
The Anthropic curbs have also revived debates around AI talent race between the U.S. and China.
Peter Alexander, Z-Ben Advisors managing director, estimated that around 40% of U.S.-based AI engineers were born in China, and that the latest directive effectively bars many of those individuals from accessing the systems they helped build.
"The very individuals who were responsible, perhaps not in whole but crucial, for creating the most powerful AI models in the world are now persona non grata," Alexander said in a note Monday, warning of potential "brain flight" toward Chinese AI companies, such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI.
Zhipu's shares have surged more than tenfold since its initial public offering in January, buoyed by increasing optimism over China's position in AI.
MiniMax, which also went public at the start of the year, has not matched that trajectory, as investors have assigned it a steeper discount.
Zhipu's market capitalization stood at HK$489 billion as of Monday, nearly four times larger than MiniMax's HK$124.2 billion. Zhipu and MiniMax are both planning a listing on China's Nasdaq-like STAR Market in Shanghai.
"Zhipu's premium reflects faster ARR [annual recurring revenue] growth, stronger talent density [and] public backing, and its lead in enterprise revenue exposure," BofA analysts said.
The Wall Street bank considers MiniMax a potential catch-up trade, as its estimated price-to-sales multiple compares favorably to Zhipu's, as the gap is currently too wide given MiniMax's product breadth.<small>Source: CNBC</small>
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Zhipu surges 33% as Wall Street raises bets on China AI after Anthropic curbs
CNBC
June 15, 2026
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