Krux
February 15, 2026
China's AI Titans Drop Mega Models, Stocks Explode 29%
Published: February 15, 2026 at 8:12 AM
Updated: February 15, 2026 at 8:12 AM
100-word summary
Zhipu AI unleashed GLM-5, a colossal 744-billion-parameter open-source model built on Huawei chips with 200k-token context windows, sending its Hong Kong shares rocketing 29% to HK$402. Not to be outdone, MiniMax dropped M2.5—a 230B-parameter beast activating just 10B per task—achieving 80.2% on SWE-Bench for roughly $0.15 per million tokens. Both fresh off IPOs raising over $1.1 billion combined, the duo joins ByteDance and Ant Group in China's feverish "AI Tiger" sprint, all turbocharged by Beijing's policy blessing. This blitz signals China's bid to challenge Western AI dominance through cost-efficient, open innovation—potentially reshaping global model accessibility and enterprise adoption economics.
What happened
Zhipu AI unleashed GLM-5, a colossal 744-billion-parameter open-source model built on Huawei chips with 200k-token context windows, sending its Hong Kong shares rocketing 29% to HK$402. Not to be outdone, MiniMax dropped M2.5—a 230B-parameter beast activating just 10B per task—achieving 80.2% on SWE-Bench for roughly $0.15 per million tokens. Both fresh off IPOs raising over $1.1 billion combined, the duo joins ByteDance and Ant Group in China's feverish "AI Tiger" sprint, all turbocharged by Beijing's policy blessing.
Why it matters
This blitz signals China's bid to challenge Western AI dominance through cost-efficient, open innovation—potentially reshaping global model accessibility and enterprise adoption economics.