Growth Dragons Weekly: Cambricon Reclaims Most Expensive Stock, Alibaba Spins Off Cainiao REIT
What happened in China this week:
Cambricon Reclaims China’s Most Expensive Stock Title on AI Boom
Alibaba Spins Off Cainiao Warehouse into a REIT
China Resources Power Spins Off One of Largest Renewable Energy IPOs at 20+ Billion Yuan
HKEX’s Record Revenue and Earnings, But Share Price Still 30% Below All-Time High
WuXi AppTec Posts Record Quarter, Share Price Jumps 10%
#1 Cambricon Reclaims China’s Most Expensive Stock Title on AI Boom
China’s AI sector is surging right now. And at the center of it all is Cambricon Technologies, a company most people outside China may not be familiar about.
Cambricon just became the most expensive stock by share price on mainland China’s markets again. First-quarter revenue surged 160%, and profits jumped 185%. Those are eye-popping numbers.
The story is straightforward. AI is moving from experimentation to real-world deployment across China, in both enterprise and consumer sectors. That means demand for AI computing power is exploding. And with US export controls blocking access to Nvidia’s best chips, Chinese companies are stepping in to fill the void.
US restrictions were meant to slow China down. Instead, they’ve created a protected market for domestic players. Companies like Cambricon and MetaX, a newer GPU designer, are scaling fast and capturing demand that would’ve gone to Nvidia.
MetaX, for example, is shipping aggressively despite still being loss-making. That’s typical for early-stage semiconductor firms. Burn cash now, dominate later. Whether they actually get there is another question.
These AI chip stocks have rallied hard over the past month, riding the global AI wave. Cambricon alone surged about 70%. MetaX and others have joined the party too.
But here’s the catch: these stocks trade on the Shanghai STAR Market, China’s version of Nasdaq. And foreigners can’t invest directly. So how do you get exposure? ETFs. Two options are listed in Hong Kong:
CSOP STAR 50 Index ETF (SEHK: 3109)
Global X China Semiconductor ETF (SEHK: 3191)
Not perfect proxies, but they give you a way in.
One of the more interesting developments is the rise of alternative computing. Lightelligence, a photonics chipmaker, debuted in Hong Kong and its shares surged nearly 400% on listing day.
Instead of using electrons like traditional chips, optical computing uses photons (light). The potential benefits are significant: faster speeds, better energy efficiency, and improved data transmission. These are exactly the bottlenecks holding back large-scale AI systems today.
Other semiconductor names like Victory Giant and Montage Technology have also debuted on the exchange recently. There’s clearly a wave of Chinese chip companies tapping the capital markets right now.
Both global and China’s AI boom are real. It’s backed by hard technology, particularly semiconductors, not just apps and chatbots. The convergence of domestic demand, government support, capital market enthusiasm, and ironically, US restrictions, is pushing China toward building a vertically integrated AI ecosystem. From chip design to novel computing architectures, they’re building it all.
