Global investors are increasing their wagers on Chinese artificial intelligence companies, betting on the next DeepSeek and seeking to diversify, with concerns growing about a speculative bubble in the sector on Wall Street.<\/p>\n
Demand for China\u2019s AI companies is also being stimulated by Beijing\u2019s push for tech independence. China has fast-tracked blockbuster listings of chipmakers, notably \u200dMoore Threads , dubbed \u2018China\u2019s \u200bNvidia\u2019, and MetaX , which both debuted this month.<\/p>\n
Foreigners see China closing the tech gap with the U.S. as Beijing steps up support for AI chipmakers, spurring bets on Chinese companies just as worries grow over lofty valuations on U.S.-listed AI stocks.<\/p>\n
U.K.-based asset manager Ruffer, for example, said it has \u201cdeliberately limited exposure\u201d to the Magnificent Seven – the U.S. tech giants – and is looking to add positions in Alibaba for a bigger exposure to China\u2019s AI theme.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the U.S. remains the leader in frontier AI, China is rapidly \u2060narrowing the gap,\u201d said Gemma Cairns-Smith, Investment Specialist at Ruffer. \u201cThe moat may not be as wide, or as deep, as many think … The competitive landscape is shifting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruffer is gaining exposure to the AI theme through Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, which operates an AI chip unit, owns large language model Qwen, and is plowing money into cloud infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Global asset managers are increasingly eyeing Chinese AI firms as a wave of startups lists on the mainland and in Hong Kong, seeking to tap into surging investor appetite following the \u200cmeteoric rise of DeepSeek, China\u2019s answer to \u200dChatGPT.<\/p>\n
TECH WAR SPURS DEMAND<\/p>\n
UBS Global Wealth Management in a report this month rated China tech as \u201cmost attractive,\u201d citing investors\u2019 search for geographical diversification and China\u2019s \u201cstrong \u200dpolicy backing, technological self-reliance, and rapid AI monetization.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tech-heavy Nasdaq currently trades at 31 \u200ctimes earnings, compared with a multiple of 24 for Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng Tech, which enables AI bets via stocks including Alibaba, \u2060Baidu, Tencent and chip foundry SMIC.<\/p>\n
Riding the momentum, U.S. investment adviser Rayliant helped launch a Nasdaq-listed fund in September that gives investors access to \u201cChina\u2019s versions of stocks like Google, Meta, Tesla, Apple, \u200band OpenAI.\u201d<\/p>\n
KraneShares Chief Investment Officer Brendan Ahern said the rapid ascent of Chinese AI chipmakers such as Cambricon speaks to the scale and speed of innovation across China\u2019s AI and semiconductor industries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe element of this race narrative, this urgency, is to the benefit of the companies,\u201d he said, referring to the bitter Sino-U.S. tech war.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like yelling fire, right? When you make it an emergency, you get a lot of attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
KraneShares\u2019 exchange-traded fund dubbed KWEB, which invests in offshore-listed Chinese stocks including Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, has \u200bjumped by two-thirds this year to nearly $9 billion.<\/p>\n
Another KraneShares ETF that invests in China\u2019s onshore tech stocks, including chipmakers Cambricon, Montage Technology and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment, has also grown this year.<\/p>\n
In the AI race, the U.S. has an edge in innovation while China has advantages in engineering, manufacturing and power supply, said Jason Hsu, founder of U.S.-based Rayliant Global Advisors.<\/p>\n
Rayliant has partnered with China Asset Management Co in launching a Nasdaq-listed ETF that bets on Chinese stocks with transformative technologies, including Cambricon.<\/p>\n
U.S. tech curbs have \u201cnow forced China to pump money into hard technology and invent from scratch,\u201d said Hsu. \u201cFor investors, the prudent and wise strategy is to capture AI opportunities and manage uncertainty through diversification.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2019DRIVEN BY HYPE\u2019<\/p>\n
Chinese \u2060AI chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits, founded by former AMD executives, jumped 700% in its Shanghai market debut last week, days after larger rival Moore Threads debuted with \u2060a 400% pop.<\/p>\n
However, some global fund managers say China\u2019s tech potential and foreign inflows remain limited.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of the chip companies that are currently listed have any sort of valuation support and are almost \u200centirely driven by hype,\u201d said Kamil Dimmich, partner and portfolio manager at UK-based North of South Capital.<\/p>\n
Dimmich\u2019s fund owns stocks such as Alibaba and Baidu, which have both invested much less than U.S. players on AI development.<\/p>\n
Carol Fong, group CEO of CGS International Securities, said investors should selectively add companies that have benefited from China\u2019s \u201cself-reliance\u201d push in the AI and semiconductor sectors, while keeping global leaders in their portfolio.<\/p>\n
There is a hunt for \u201cpotential leaders in the high-tech segments such as robotics and AI, where they see clearer policy directions and relative value as compared to the \u200cWestern counterparts,\u201d Fong said, expecting more flows ahead.<\/p>\n
Investors should \u201cbalance exposure in the current fragmented, geopolitics-driven chip cycle,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global investors are increasing their wagers on Chinese artificial intelligence companies, betting on the next DeepSeek and seeking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-365003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}