China’s ‘AI tigers’ see shares surge after Nvidia CEO touts OpenClaw as ‘next ChatGPT’

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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang gestures during the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 17, 2026.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

Chinese artificial intelligence stocks surged Wednesday following upbeat comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the promise of AI agents and OpenClaw.

Huang on Tuesday said that OpenClaw was “definitely the next ChatGPT,” calling it a transformative step in expanding what users can achieve with AI.

OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent that has seen growing adoption in China, with many local tech companies integrating it into their offerings and launching their own versions.

MiniMax and Knowledge Atlas Technology, also known as Zhipu, skyrocketed 22% and 14% in Hong Kong, respectively. Both AI companies have been ramping up their agentic AI offerings and recently rolled out tools built on OpenClaw.

Minimax and Zhipu are among China’s rising “AI tigers,” a group of companies building large language models to rival the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.

Zhipu last month also unveiled GLM-5, an open-source large language model designed with stronger coding abilities and support for extended agent-based tasks. The company said its performance nears Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 on coding benchmarks and exceeds Google’s Gemini 3 Pro in some tests, though CNBC has not independently verified these claims.

SenseTime, which has pivoted from facial recognition surveillance to AI software platforms and recently integrated one of its AI assistants with OpenClaw, saw shares gain 2.43%. Cloud computing firm UCloud Technology listed in Shanghai advanced 13%.

“China’s rapid uptake of artificial intelligence reinforces its position as one of the world’s leading AI markets,” Moody’s said in a recent note.

However, adoption remains uneven across sectors, reflecting differences in digital readiness and creating varied credit implications. Large technology firms are driving the most advanced and financially meaningful AI integration, while consumer and industrial companies are adopting the technology more selectively to improve efficiency.

Other tech stocks in Asia also rose after Huang said he expects purchase orders between Blackwell and Vera Rubin to reach $1 trillion through 2027. SK Hynix gained nearly 9% while Samsung Electronics added 7.53%.

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