If you blinked in January, you probably missed the busiest Hong Kong IPO tape in years.
While a lot of investors were still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes after the holidays, nearly 100 companies lined up at the Hong Kong Exchange asking to go public.
Ninety-six listing applications in a single month!
That’s more than triple what showed up a year earlier, and roughly a fifth of everything that listed in all of 2025.
For context, 2025 was already one of Hong Kong’s strongest IPO years since the post-COVID market reopened.
Twelve companies managed to list in January, pulling in about US$4.2 billion.
That’s a 447% jump from the same time last year. Yes, the Lunar New Year made last January look quieter than usual, but even allowing for that, this was one of the strongest opening months since 2021.
What changed? Simple answer: money is flowing back to risk.
The Hang Seng briefly poked its head above 28,000 points in January for the first time since mid-2021.
When the secondary market starts running hot, companies smell blood in the water.
Valuations look better, bookrunners get bullish, and founders suddenly remember they’ve always loved the public markets.
China tech is back on the runway
And who’s leading the charge?
No prizes for guessing. Tech. More specifically: China tech.
AI group MiniMax pulled in US$711 million.
Chipmaker OmniVision raised US$616 million.
GigaDevice, another semiconductor name, grabbed US$600 million.
This is China’s tech supply chain rolling onto the Hong Kong bourse in size.
Not coincidentally, all three sit right in the middle of Beijing’s self-reliance push: chips, AI, advanced manufacturing.
The macro is ugly, but the IPO mood isn’t
Share prices of IPOs in Hong Kong this year have jumped an average of about 30% on debut, beating the broader IPO average.
One GPU maker, Shanghai Biren, ripped 76% higher on day one.
Even the “worst” tech debut still delivered a positive return.
And the theme is very clear: if China is serious about building its own tech stack, investors want front row seats.
The backdrop makes this more interesting, not less.
China’s consumer economy is still sluggish. Property prices are still leaking air. Global macro is messy. Gold is ripping higher. Geopolitics hasn’t magically gone away.
Normally, that’s the kind of soup where IPO markets curl up and die. Instead, Hong Kong is acting like it’s 2021-lite again.
That’s what policy support does.
When Beijing nudges companies to go global and Hong Kong tweaks listing rules to welcome pre-profit tech firms, capital tends to follow the path of least resistance.
What’s in it for investors?
The real story here is pipeline.
There are more than 400 companies sitting in the Hong Kong IPO queue right now.
Tech, healthcare, consumer brands. That’s years of deal flow.
If Hong Kong really does clear HK$300 billion in fundraising this year, as some forecasts suggest, you’re looking at a steady drip feed of new public companies into sectors where global investors have been underweight since China tech fell out of favour post-2021.
The risk though, as always, is timing. Companies list when markets are generous.
But January’s surge tells you founders and private equity think the music is good enough to cash in some chips.
Read another story on China: China’s next tech boom isn’t on your phone…
Follow us on X for more under-the-radar tech and biotech plays from Asia: https://x.com/ChairmanAsiaX
