Jan 2 (Reuters) – Chinese internet search giant Baidu said on Friday its AI chip unit Kunlunxin has confidentially filed \u200ba listing application with the Hong Kong stock exchange on \u200cJanuary 1, paving the way for a spin-off and separate listing.<\/p>\n
Reuters had earlier reported \u200cthat Kunlunxin was planning for a Hong Kong initial public offering after completing a fundraising that valued it at 21 billion yuan ($3 billion).<\/p>\n
China is pushing to develop domestic alternatives to U.S. semiconductors amid escalating \u2060Washington export restrictions on \u200cadvanced chips, and several other Chinese AI chip companies have announced public share debuts.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Chinese AI \u200dstartup MiniMax said it expects to raise up to HK$4.19 billion ($538 million) in its Hong Kong offering, and semiconductor designer Shanghai Biren Technology raised HK$5.58 \u200bbillion in its public offering, according to an exchange filing.<\/p>\n
Semiconductor \u200cspecialists OmniVision Integrated Circuits and GigaDevice Semiconductor have also started bookbuilding for IPOs, aiming to raise about $600 million each.<\/p>\n
Hong Kong raised $36.5 billion from 114 new listings in 2025, its strongest year since 2021, and more than triple the $11.3 billion raised in 2024, LSEG data shows.<\/p>\n
After \u2060the proposed spin-off, Kunlunxin is expected \u200bto remain a subsidiary of Baidu, the \u200bcompany said.<\/p>\n
Details such as the offering size and structure have not been finalised yet, it said.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2012 \u200das an internal \u2060business unit developing AI chips for Baidu, Kunlunxin has since become independently operated, although Baidu retains a controlling stake.<\/p>\n
Kunlunxin mainly supplies \u2060chips to Baidu but has expanded external sales over the past two years.<\/p>\n
($1 = \u200c6.9931 yuan)<\/p>\n
($1 = 7.7847 Hong Kong dollars)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sneha Kumar \u200cin Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 2 (Reuters) – Chinese internet search giant Baidu said on Friday its AI chip unit Kunlunxin has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,5840,114972,240,72257,61,60,6163,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-222638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-baidu","12":"tag-chip-unit","13":"tag-hong-kong","14":"tag-hong-kong-stock-exchange","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-kunlunxin","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}