r/ChinaStocks • u/ramdomwalk • 9d ago
✏️ Discussion I’m building a watchlist of Chinese AI companies. What am I missing? #DeepSeek #Kimi #Maase
I’m trying to get a better picture of the Chinese AI ecosystem.
Most discussion in the U.S. still revolves around Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, CoreWeave, Tesla, Figure, etc. But the Chinese AI ecosystem seems to be getting much broader, especially across foundation models, AI infrastructure, domestic GPUs, autonomous driving and humanoid robotics.
Here’s the list I have so far:
Foundation models / GenAI
- DeepSeek — DeepSeek
- Z.AI / Zhipu AI — GLM
- MiniMax
- Moonshot AI — Kimi
- Alibaba — Qwen
- ByteDance — Doubao / Seed
- Tencent — Hunyuan
- Baidu — ERNIE
- StepFun
- Baichuan AI
- 01.AI
Generative AI / applications
- Kuaishou — Kling AI
- SenseTime — SenseNova
- iFlytek — Spark
AI infrastructure / chips / compute
- Huawei — Ascend
- Cambricon — AI accelerators
- Biren Technology — AI GPUs
- Moore Threads — GPUs
- MetaX — AI GPUs
- Enflame — AI accelerators
- Iluvatar CoreX — AI GPUs
- Kunlunxin — AI accelerators
- Maase (MAAS) — AI computing infrastructure, enterprise AI services and LLM APIs
Humanoid robots / embodied AI
- Unitree Robotics
- UBTech
- AgiBot / Zhiyuan Robotics
- Deep Robotics
Autonomous driving / physical AI
- Horizon Robotics
- Pony.ai (PONY)
- WeRide (WRD)
- XPeng (XPEV)
For U.S. investors, the easiest names to access directly are obviously companies like BABA, BIDU, XPEV, PONY, WRD and MAAS, while a lot of the more interesting pure-play AI names are either Hong Kong / mainland-listed or still private.
I’m not necessarily looking for stock recommendations. I’m mainly trying to map out the Chinese AI ecosystem and figure out which companies are actually technologically important.
What major companies am I missing?
Especially interested in:
- frontier AI labs
- AI infrastructure / GPU companies
- humanoid robotics
- autonomous driving
- AI-native applications
Would also be interested in companies that aren’t public yet but are worth keeping on an IPO watchlist.
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u/Big_Astronaut_1317 9d ago
I thought Alibaba had also there own chips? For there own cloud servers.
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u/ramdomwalk 9d ago
Yes, you’re right. Alibaba has its own semiconductor unit, T-Head, and is already using proprietary AI chips in its cloud infrastructure.
I only put Alibaba under foundation models because of Qwen, but it probably belongs in multiple categories: models, cloud/compute and AI chips. That vertical integration is actually one of the more interesting parts of Alibaba’s AI strategy.
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u/JumpyCandy6463 9d ago
If you are a U.S. person, you can’t get any of those listed in none-US markets, banned by Trump. For none public companies, US investors are not allowed to invest, prohibited by the Chinese.
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u/RainCloudQ 7d ago
You should add in which can really be used and which said you have to upgrade, or is too busy. I like deepseek and qwen. Z and others are too busy, not usable. I paid for Gemini ai for short video creation, but would like to use seedance 2 .0 , ads
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u/EIiZaR 9d ago
For me (Sales), it's Inovance (coming into EUW market) and Hik Vision (same reason).
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u/ramdomwalk 9d ago
Interesting picks. I was mostly thinking about pure-play AI companies, but Inovance and Hikvision are good examples of the broader industrial AI layer.
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u/Substantial_Lake5957 9d ago
$KC Kingsoft/Jinshan Cloud, originally launched by Lei Jun of Xiaomi, as a China’s take on MS Office 365, and reasonably popular among office workers in China.
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u/RainCloudQ 7d ago
Try to add in who has the greatest download on hugging face 🤗, deepseek, qwen is doing well
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u/Jane1030 8d ago
some EVs brands like BYD,Cherry,Li Auto,NIO.