By Tracy Qu

China's big technology names dropped on the first day of trading in Hong Kong after the Lunar New Year break, but artificial-intelligence stars continued to shine as new rollouts keep investors interested.

Shares of Zhipu AI, officially known as Knowledge Atlas Technology, were last up 25% on Friday, while MiniMax, another of the so-called "Little Dragons" of promising AI startups, gained 12%.

This follows significant momentum prior to the holiday, reflecting persistent appetite for Chinese AI firms as Beijing pushes to become technological self-reliant. During the week ending Feb. 13, Zhipu's shares gained nearly 140% and MiniMax rose nearly 50%.

Since listing, both Zhipu and MiniMax have vaulted more than five-fold.

Both industry heavyweights and startups alike have been stepping up AI offerings as China celebrates its biggest holiday of the year. The rapid pace of advancements underlines the rising competition in the sector, fueled by officials' push to reduce the country's need for foreign technology in strategic areas like AI.

In the runup to the start of the holidays, Zhipu released an updated large-language model featuring improved agentic ability and coding ability. MiniMax unveiled a model designed to complete office work and a range of other tasks that it says matches the speed of Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 in performing complicated agentic tasks.

TikTok parent ByteDance's new video generation model Seedance 2.0 has generated buzz for its video-creation ability in recent weeks, while Alibaba Group unveiled a major update of its Qwen model on the eve of the Lunar New Year holiday.

Though China's AI startups are still loss-making and command much lower valuations than high-profile foreign counterparts, analysts say they hold substantial potential.

MiniMax's outlook is promising thanks to its models' performance and cost-effective approach, Jefferies analysts said in a note this week. Jefferies initiated coverage of the stock with a buy call and a target price of HK$1,118.00, citing a "strong growth outlook in an early-stage global foundation model market."

MiniMax was last trading at HK$947.00 while Zhipu was at HK$635.00.

Large-cap stocks were lower, tracking Wall Street losses overnight and dragging the Hang Seng Tech Index down 2.5%. Alibaba declined 3.6%, and Baidu dropped 5.5%.

Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 20, 2026 00:41 ET (05:41 GMT)

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