On Jan. 2, Baidu said in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing that on Jan. 1 Kunlun Chip, through its joint sponsors, submitted a confidential Form A1 listing application to the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, seeking approval for a Main Board listing and trading of its shares.
According to the filing, the proposed spin-off would be carried out via a global offering of Kunlun Chip shares, comprising: (i) a public offering in Hong Kong for subscription by the Hong Kong public; and (ii) a placement to institutional and professional investors. As of the announcement date, Kunlun Chip is a non-wholly owned subsidiary of the company. Upon completion, it is expected to remain a subsidiary.
Image source: screenshot of Baidu Group filing
The shareholding structure shows Baidu holds 59.45%, with other investors including industrial capital such as the General Technology High-end Equipment Fund and BYD. After the latest financing round in July 2025, the unit was valued at 21 billion yuan, a significant increase from 13 billion yuan in its first round in 2021. Kunlun Chip has already completed corporate registration changes, lifting registered capital from 21.28 million yuan to 400 million yuan, laying groundwork for the listing.
As the core technology backbone of Baidu's AI strategy, Kunlun Chip originated from Baidu's Intelligent Chip & Architecture Department and began operating independently in 2021. It focuses on AI compute chips and software-hardware systems, with products spanning data centers, cloud computing and autonomous driving. Tens of thousands of cards have been deployed, supporting the compute needs of Baidu's ERNIE large model and other core businesses.
Kunlun Chip's newly released M100 and M300 chips, together with its Tianchi Supernode solution, are designed for multimodal model training and inference, placing its capabilities near the forefront among domestic peers. IDC data show that in 2024 Kunlun Chip shipped 69,000 units in China's accelerated computing chip market, ranking second among domestic vendors, behind Huawei's Ascend.
The spin-off aligns with industry trends and the company's development needs. AI-chip listings are gathering pace, and HKEX's Chapter 18C specialist technology regime has made financing more accessible for hard-tech companies. For Kunlun Chip, an independent listing would broaden funding channels to support next-generation chip R&D and global expansion; for Baidu, it helps clarify business lines, make the value of AI hardware assets explicit, and refocus on large models.
At the industry level, Kunlun Chip's listing could reshape the competitive landscape for domestic AI chips. With Nvidia holding about 70% of the market and domestic rivals such as Huawei Ascend and Cambricon competing aggressively, a standalone, capitalized Kunlun Chip will need to push ahead on faster iteration, ecosystem build-out and commercialization.
The listing remains subject to HKEX approval and CSRC filing, with the earliest debut expected in the first half of 2026. The spin-off is a key step in Baidu's capital strategy and underscores a broader move by leading tech firms to separate and capitalize AI hardware businesses — injecting momentum into China's compute industry to seek breakthroughs via the capital markets.
