Moonshot AI is unwinding its Cayman Islands holding structure, a restructuring reported by Dow Jones Newswires, moving the next wave of Chinese AI equity toward Hong Kong and Shanghai rather than New York.
Early backers who put in dollars will have their shares bought back, with the option to reinvest that capital in the China entity.
The company plans to list early next year and could raise up to $5B at a valuation of about $50B. Some investors worry that recent market turbulence could pressure valuations and delay the timeline, and Moonshot declined to comment.
The listing queue is already forming. Zhipu AI became the first independent Chinese foundation-model company to go public when it listed in Hong Kong on Jan. 8.
MiniMax followed within days and is now preparing a second listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, with CITIC Securities as its adviser. Enflame's September debut on the STAR Market popped 179% after online demand ran 6109 times the shares on offer, capping a run that saw MetaX, Moore Threads, and Biren list over the prior months. The first AI model IPOs set the reference prices for the rest of the independent-lab cohort.
SiliconFlow, which runs a neutral inference layer serving 170 models, filed its Hong Kong prospectus on Jun. 30 at a ¥7.74B post-money valuation and a 2025 gross margin of -24%.
China's AI IPO wave is being priced in the tens of billions
Valuation for Moonshot AI and DeepSeek in US dollars, day-one market cap for Zhipu AI in Hong Kong dollars, as reported; bar heights are not comparable across currencies
Bar chart. Billions, currency as labelled. Moonshot AI ($50B): Valuation 50. DeepSeek ($71B): Valuation 71. Zhipu AI (HK$57B): Valuation 57.
Source: Dow Jones Newswires, Fortune, Latent East China AI IPO Tracker
DeepSeek is the outlier. The Hangzhou lab raised $7.4B in June at a valuation north of $50B and is reportedly seeking fresh capital at a valuation as high as $71B.
It is aiming at Shanghai's STAR Market, the city's Nasdaq-style tech board, with a listing as early as the second quarter of 2027. Companies treated as national champions tend to list at home first, and GPU maker Moore Threads chose Shanghai for its IPO in December 2025.
Hong Kong still draws an international investor base, though Chinese regulators treat a Hong Kong listing as an overseas one, so approval from China's securities regulator stands in front of any debut.
Export controls are the backdrop
China warned the US against imposing additional semiconductor export controls after the scandal that ended Jensen Huang's run as Nvidia chief executive.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing opposes the abuse of export control measures, which she said disrupt global supply chains and serve no party's interests.
Huang resigned on Thursday after admitting to an affair. The Nvidia succession question has its own story.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said a growing consensus in Congress favors tighter chip export rules, which could push Chinese labs further toward domestic chips and domestic money.
The next wave of frontier AI equity is set to trade in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Anthropic's pending IPO will list in the American market in the same months that Moonshot and DeepSeek reach for listings at home.
Beijing's answer to the American AI listing boom is not to compete for it. It is to build the exchange next door.
