China's hottest AI stock raised billions but lock-up structures mean most of those new shares won't trade freely anytime soon
Zhipu AI pulled off one of Hong Kong’s biggest equity deals of 2026. The Beijing-based AI company, officially known as Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC and traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under ticker 2513.HK, priced 19.78 million new shares at HK$1,588 each, raising roughly HK$31.41 billion, or about US$4.01 billion. That makes it the second-largest equity placement in Hong Kong this year.
Here’s the catch: despite the headline-grabbing size of the raise, the actual increase to freely tradable shares is marginal. The placement adds roughly 4.2% to total share capital. Given the lock-up structures that remain in place across a significant portion of existing shares, the new issuance does little to meaningfully expand the free float.
A stock that has already done the impossible #
The shares are up approximately 1,500% from the listing price since the January 2026 IPO.
The timing of the placement was deliberate. A six-month lock-up on 25.68 million shares expired around July 7, 2026, the day before the offering was announced. The lock-up expiry initially sent shares higher by around 13%, as investors interpreted the absence of a selloff by early holders as a vote of confidence. Zhipu then moved quickly to capitalize, launching the placement within 24 hours.
Post-announcement, the stock surged as much as 22% intraday. It ultimately settled around 13% below the prior closing price of HK$1,825. Zhipu’s market cap pushed past the US$100 billion mark at peak prices following the announcement.
What the money is actually for #
Zhipu isn’t raising capital to pad a balance sheet or reassure creditors. The company has a specific, capital-intensive agenda: building out computing infrastructure and accelerating large language model development.
Founded in 2019 by professors from Tsinghua University, Zhipu has positioned itself as a leader in the open-source LLM space. The company’s January 2026 IPO raised around US$558 million at an initial share price of HK$116.20, marking one of the first major Chinese firms specializing in large language models to go public.
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