Southbound funds have concentrated their buying on domestic large language model stocks for two consecutive months: snapping up large volumes of Zhipu in July and buying up MiniMax in August.

Beating AI News Brief: Southbound funds have made domestic large language model (LLM) companies the top Hong Kong-listed stocks purchased by them for two consecutive months. In July, Zhipu AI was the most bought Hong Kong stock by southbound funds, with buying volume exceeding that of Alibaba and Tencent. In August, the top spot shifted to MiniMax, with monthly purchases totaling HK$10.6 billion, also outstripping Alibaba and Tencent. MiniMax attracted capital even faster after its Hong Kong Stock Connect debut. It only officially joined the program on August 6, so mainland investors could not access it via this channel before that. On its first trading day, southbound funds net bought HK$2.697 billion; on the second day, they added HK$2.226 billion, bringing the two-day total to over HK$4.9 billion. In less than a month, southbound funds’ shareholding in MiniMax surged to 9.7%. Zhipu AI was added to the Stock Connect earlier, joining on June 8. It saw HK$920 million in net southbound buying on its first day, followed by net purchases of HK$13.7 billion across five consecutive trading days in July’s first week, plus another HK$10.6 billion the next week. Currently, southbound funds hold around 11% of Zhipu AI’s shares, a larger stake than in MiniMax. Both companies remain in a phase of high growth and heavy losses. MiniMax reported first-half revenue of US$116.6 million, up 283% year-over-year, but posted a net loss of US$358 million. Zhipu AI generated RMB 954 million in revenue over the same period, up roughly 400% year-over-year, with a net loss of approximately RMB 2 billion.