Amid heightened volatility across Asian markets in recent days, Hong Kong equities, valued for their relatively cheap multiples, are drawing renewed investor attention. Capital inflows have been particularly noticeable in the tech sector, as represented by the Hang Seng Tech Index, with the Huatai-PineBridge Hang Seng Tech ETF (513130) recording average daily turnover of 2.073 billion yuan for the trading week spanning August 17-20. The fund's latest share count and net asset scale stand at 56.116 billion units and 33.002 billion yuan respectively, giving it a distinct edge in both liquidity and scale.

On the corporate news front, a leading Hong Kong-listed tech giant reported its latest quarterly earnings on August 20. While net profit declined year-over-year, quarterly revenue climbed 9% annually, with external commercialization revenue from its AI cloud segment accelerating to a 45% growth rate, marking the strongest performance in 22 quarters. The bottom-line pressure was primarily attributed to a sharp rise in capital expenditures driven by surging demand for AI infrastructure. In its outlook, the company indicated that as supply capacity expands, revenue growth from both AI and cloud operations is expected to pick up pace over the coming quarters, which should also lead to sustained improvements in profitability. Further bolstering sentiment, data from the open-source AI platform Hugging Face shows that a recently released open-source model from this tech heavyweight has surpassed 3 billion global downloads over the past six months, making it the most-downloaded open-source AI model worldwide.

As the performance of open-source AI models improves and commercial applications mature, the industry is likely poised for a fresh redistribution of profits along the AI value chain. The global AI sector appears to be entering a phase where cloud revenue growth is continuously accelerating. A recent research note from China Merchants Securities highlights that the latest earnings from North American cloud providers confirm this acceleration trend, offering a positive read-through for major cloud operators listed in Hong Kong. Combined cloud revenue for the four largest North American cloud companies reached approximately $116.2 billion in their most recent quarter, representing roughly 43% year-over-year growth. More crucially, their total backlog of unfilled orders reached about $2.33 trillion, an astonishing 188% increase year-over-year, providing high visibility for revenue expansion over the next two to three years.

China Merchants Securities further argues that the prevailing market logic is shifting toward AI profits transitioning from hardware to cloud providers. Consequently, Hong Kong-listed companies, with their emphasis on "soft tech" such as cloud services, stand to benefit significantly from this trend. In terms of value distribution across the AI ecosystem, the market is likely to move away from concentration in a single link toward a more balanced allocation. Cloud providers, leveraging their advantages in computing infrastructure, model deployment platforms, and AI application access points, are well-positioned to enhance their value-capturing capabilities in areas like model invocation and enterprise services. The recent launch of several high-performance open-source models is expected to further reinforce this dynamic. The rapid iteration of large language models is also set to foster a more diverse and flourishing AI application landscape.

Designed for same-day trading (T+0), the Huatai-PineBridge Hang Seng Tech ETF (513130) closely tracks the Hang Seng Tech Index, which spans multiple core segments of the AI industry chain, including computing infrastructure construction, large model research and development, and AI applications. The ETF brings together leading tech enterprises with deep expertise in AI, along with strong technological and scale advantages, positioning them to capture the pivotal window where AI transitions from concept to commercial reality. The ETF, along with its feeder funds (Class A 015310/Class C 015311), is managed by Huatai-PineBridge Fund Management, one of China's pioneering ETF managers. With over 19 years of experience in index investing, the firm offers transparent, cost-effective, and easily tradable index tools, such as the Huatai-PineBridge CSI 300 ETF (510300) and the Huatai-PineBridge CSI A500 ETF (563360). As of the end of June 2026, its ETFs have generated cumulative profits exceeding 180.6 billion yuan for investors over the past two years, ranking the firm among only three public fund companies in the entire A-share market to achieve cumulative profits of over 160 billion yuan during that period.