ChatGPT drives crazy Chinese tech stock runs in Hong Kong, Shanghai as investors chase Zhihu, Baidu and Cloudwalk

Zhihu has risen 55 per cent in Hong Kong this year, while Hanwang Tech and Cloudwalk logged more than 128 per cent gain on mainland exchanges
ChatGPT has garnered 30 million view on Chinese microblogging service Weibo

China stock market

Jiaxing Li

Published: 7:30am, 9 Feb 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

Another day, another round of mind-boggling ChatGPT-related stock moves in Hong Kong and mainland China. A slump in Alphabet, the owner of Google, in New York overnight is a timely alarm bell.

Zhihu, China’s Quora-like online forum, surged 40 per cent on Wednesday after briefly hitting an all-time high of HK$36.60 and enriching shareholders by nearly HK$3 billion (US$382 million). The rally has pushed its year-to-date winning to 55 per cent.

Shares of Hanwang Technology, which sells handwriting-recognition software, rose 9 per cent in Shenzhen after hitting the daily limit of 10 per cent in seven preceding trading days, culminating in a 129 per cent advance this year. Cloudwalk, a face recognition technology developer, has logged a 128 per cent gain in Shanghai.

China’s social media platforms have gone into an overdrive mode, with the ChatGPT hashtag capturing over 30 million views on microblogging service Weibo. Traders cited a research note from BOC International, which said platform companies with data and deep pockets stand to benefit the most from a boom in content generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

A screenshot of conversation about ChatGPT, a topic that has garnered more than 30 million views on Weibo. Photo: Weibo

Zhihu’s sudden jump came a day after the nation’s biggest search engine operator Baidu soared 15.3 per cent to HK$158 on Tuesday, the most since March. The rally was linked to its announcement about next month’s launch of Ernie Bot, an application to be embedded in its engine for conversation-style web searches.

“The surge is scary,” one Weibo user said in a post on Wednesday, referring to the steep stock moves. “There’s nothing else to trade on, apart from the ChatGPT [buzz]. Other trends are getting outdated and you can’t make much money by trading on them.”

Meet Edward Tian, the kid from Toronto who is taking on ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a widely-discussed AI technology launched by OpenAI two months ago, instigating a slew of tech companies to produce their own chatbots. Edward Tian, a Toronto-based software engineer, has pledged free access to his GPTZero app.

01:36

AI chip maker ordered by US government to halt exports to China

The two outsize stock moves in Hong Kong are a diversion to the struggle in the broader market as the Hang Seng Index slipped amid worries about corporate earnings and US interest rate outlook. The Tech Index lost 1.9 per cent, taking its pullback to 7.7 per cent since hitting a post-Lunar New Year high on January 27.

Google’s ChatGPT rival Bard gives wrong answer in ad, sending shares diving

Shares of Alphabet crashed in New York trading when its AI chat bot named Bard gave a wrong answer in an online advertisement, erasing US$100 billion of the company’s market value.

Investors should be cautious when chasing the ChatGPT-related rally as some companies are simply riding on the hype without conducting actual related business, China’s state-run media Securities Times said in a commentary on Wednesday.

The ChiNext in Shenzhen, which hosts China’s fledgling technology companies, has risen by more than 7 per cent this year, outpacing the 5.3 per cent rise in the CSI 300 Index of top industrial companies.