China's AI-fueled IPO boom hits $54 billion this year, with chipmakers and Shein's $1.7 billion IPO

China’s stock markets are having a very good year, and artificial intelligence is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Money is pouring into new listings in Hong Kong and Shanghai, where companies tied to chips, robots and other advanced tech are getting a far warmer welcome than they would in many other markets.

The latest headline deal is Shein. The China-founded e-commerce and fast-fashion giant is set to start trading in Hong Kong on Tuesday in a $1.7 billion IPO, one of the city’s biggest new share sales this year. But Shein is only the newest symbol of a bigger trend. In July, CXMT, China’s largest memory chipmaker, raised more than $8.6 billion in Shanghai, making it the second-largest IPO on the STAR market and the country’s second-largest IPO overall. Its shares then jumped 466% on the first day.

Unitree, one of China’s leading humanoid robot makers, followed with its own Shanghai debut in August. Its shares rose 460% on day one. That kind of response is exactly what has investors rushing toward the sector. Ruiying Zhao, a senior research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the current boom is being driven by appetite for AI and robotics. In Shanghai especially, retail investors do a lot of the trading, which helps explain the speed of the swings.

The numbers behind the boom are striking. LSEG says IPOs and secondary listings in Hong Kong and Shanghai have already brought in more than $54 billion so far in 2026, above last year’s total of more than $46 billion. That puts the two exchanges at about 21% of global proceeds, behind only Nasdaq’s roughly 55%. SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO in June made the U.S. exchange the year’s biggest IPO market, but China’s pair of bourses are having their own moment.

There’s also a more political edge to this wave. Perris Lee of ION Analytics said CXMT’s listing put China in a strategically significant spot in AI-related tech manufacturing and showed the country’s push for tech self-sufficiency. CXMT, founded in 2016, said revenue in the first three months of 2026 surged more than 700% year on year to 50.8 billion yuan, about $7.5 billion, as demand for AI chips spiked. At the same time, the market is getting pickier about where big Chinese companies list. Stricter scrutiny in the U.S. and China has nudged more of them toward Hong Kong and Shanghai, and some, like Shein, looked at other venues before settling close to home. But after those giant debut gains, the hangover is already showing: Unitree’s share price had fallen more than 40% from its peak by Friday.