Alibaba is preparing to take its chip business public. Late Tuesday, the company said the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will let it spin off T-Head, its semiconductor subsidiary, and that it intends to list the unit through a public offering in Hong Kong.
Two approvals are still outstanding, one from the exchange and one from the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The filing did not set a listing date or a proposed offering size.
Work on the listing began before Tuesday’s news. Alibaba said it had already made a confidential filing on Sept. 11 to list T-Head on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
A muted market response
Investors barely moved. On Wednesday morning, Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares were trading 1% lower, and the stock has lost about 29% so far this year.
Chinese tech stocks in general have lagged their U.S. counterparts, even after last year’s wave of investor enthusiasm over DeepSeek’s AI breakthroughs.
T-Head’s chips
Alibaba unveiled its latest AI chip, the Zhenwu V900, in late September. According to the company, it offers three times the performance of the Zhenwu M890, the previous model, released in May. That 3x figure comes from Alibaba itself.
The chip unit sits inside a larger national effort. Alibaba, Huawei and other Chinese companies are building their own semiconductors to run artificial intelligence while the U.S. continues to tighten limits on China’s access to those chips.
Nvidia in the background
Nvidia is tied to the story in several ways. In May, short seller Culper Research claimed Alibaba had gotten hold of restricted Nvidia chips by indirectly financing entities in Southeast Asia. Alibaba did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Nvidia is dealing with trouble of its own. Reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy involved with one of those entities have sent Nvidia’s stock to its lowest valuation since late March, and the decline has dragged on the broader U.S. stock market.
Other Chinese chip IPOs are on hold
T-Head would not be following an easy route to market. News reports this month said Baidu has delayed the listing of Kunlunxin, its AI chip entity, and that Chinese memory chip maker YMTC has also pushed back its listing. Neither company immediately replied to requests for comment.
The regulator T-Head needs is also tightening up. In recent months, China's financial regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of tech IPOs and of the flood of capital moving into the sector.
U.S. AI listings keep going
Despite a volatile tech market, AI companies in the U.S. are still pressing ahead with listings. In an updated filing Tuesday, Anthropic said it will offer 825 million shares in its upcoming IPO, priced between $70 and $78 per share.
People familiar with the details said trading on the Nasdaq is expected to start on Nov. 19. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
T-Head now has to clear the Hong Kong exchange and the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Until both approve, the chip unit has no listing date and no offering size.