DeepSeek re-evaluates China's AI assets? Alibaba leads a surge in Chinese concept stocks, with inflows into technology stock ETFs reaching the highest level since October
Driven by the strong performance of Alibaba's AI large model Qwen 2.5-Max and DeepSeek, investors are optimistic about the prospects of China's AI technology. On Thursday, Chinese concept stocks rose broadly, with Alibaba leading the gains at 6.22%. Meanwhile, the KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF saw an inflow of $105 million, reaching a new high since October last year. Analysts believe that the low-cost and high-performance advantages of China's AI may trigger asset revaluation, driving up technology stocks
Chinese concept stocks surged, and inflows into Chinese internet ETFs reached a four-month high. Is DeepSeek about to reassess Chinese AI assets?
On Thursday, Chinese concept stocks experienced a broad rally, with the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index (HXC) closing up 4.33%. In particular, Alibaba led the charge with a 6.22% increase, showing particularly strong performance. Other Chinese tech giants such as Baidu, JD.com, and NetEase also rose by 5.76%, 5.07%, and 3.95%, respectively. Meanwhile, the new energy vehicle sector also performed strongly, with Li Auto, XPeng, and Nio rising by 4.20%, 5.13%, and 5.21%, respectively.
Additionally, Bloomberg data shows that the KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB) saw the largest single-day inflow in nearly four months on Wednesday, reaching $105 million, a new high since October last year. Due to this influx of funds, the ETF's size grew by 1.9%, reaching $5.7 billion, marking the highest level since December last year.
Analysis indicates that behind this wave of gains, in addition to the renewed interest from overseas investors in Chinese tech stocks, there is another important factor—China's AI technology strength has once again gained global recognition. In particular, Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen team quietly launched Qwen 2.5-Max on January 29, demonstrating performance comparable to the world's top AI models in several authoritative benchmark tests.
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This breakthrough not only enhances Alibaba's competitiveness in the AI field but also further boosts investor confidence in Chinese tech stocks. Morgan Stanley's latest research report suggests that if Qwen 2.5-Max's performance can indeed meet expectations, coupled with its cost advantages and comprehensive cloud ecosystem support, it may trigger a new round of reassessment of Chinese AI assets.
Following DeepSeek, the release of Qwen 2.5-Max is seen as another significant breakthrough in China's AI technology along the high-performance, low-cost technology route. Market analysis points out that the market has previously focused too much on DeepSeek while neglecting the overall progress of Chinese AI, including Alibaba. If Qwen 2.5-Max's performance can truly surpass OpenAI's GPT-3.5, it will generate greater expectations for Chinese AI technology, especially in the application of reinforcement learning and reasoning models.
Moreover, on the same day that Alibaba Cloud released Qwen 2.5-Max, it immediately opened up full toolchain support, allowing developers to directly call it in the cloud. This supercomputing cluster + open-source ecosystem + cloud-native trinity architecture stands in stark contrast to the business models of North America's three major cloud service providers: AWS, Azure, and GCP, showcasing Alibaba's comprehensive strength in the AI field