US Investors Are Flocking To Make Money Funding Chinese AI

There may be 'tensions' between the US and China, but when it comes to making money, especially in AI, the market is global.

Data indicate that US investors are rushing to deploy capital into Chinese AI because it's clearly competitive and may become dominant, because there are only two real sources of AI development - with the US probably overvalued - and because it makes sense to diversify both risk and opportunity. JL

Rory Jones and Tracy Qu report in the Wall Street Journal:

US investors are plowing money into Chinese companies involved in AI, driving up share prices of Chinese tech companies developing AI models. Venture-capital firms based in China are raising U.S. dollar-denominated funds to deploy in AI investments. Capital flows into funds that track the broader tech sector in China were outpacing the U.S. this year, with U.S. investors making up 15% of the money moving into China tech ETFs. Investors are increasingly drawn to the opportunity in China, after Chinese AI models—led by DeepSeek—have shown they can compete with U.S. peers. U.S. investors face no limitations in buying public shares of Chinese companies in AI.  Morgan Stanley said 90% of investors in meetings wanted to increase exposure to China—the highest interest in four years—because of Chinese companies in AI and biotech.

U.S. investors are plowing money into Chinese companies involved in artificial intelligence, despite growing competition between Washington and Beijing over the technology.

Investors are driving up the share prices of Chinese tech companies developing AI models and adding cash to exchange-traded funds tracking the broader tech sector in China. Venture-capital firms based in China are raising U.S. dollar-denominated funds to deploy in AI investments, and U.S. endowments that shunned China for years are weighing a return, according to fund managers.

The momentum comes as U.S. lawmakers, citing national security, are calling for tighter curbs on American capital flowing to China. Congress’s annual defense-spending authorization bill, passed by the House on Wednesday and set for final approval before Christmas, includes a section handing President Trump the power to strengthen Biden-era rules limiting U.S. investment in Chinese high-tech industries such as AI.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said Sunday that “investments propping up Communist China’s aggression must come to an end.”

U.S.-China geopolitics have dulled investor appetite for private Chinese companies. But public-market investors are increasingly drawn to the opportunity in China, after Chinese AI models—led by DeepSeek—have shown this year they can compete with U.S. peers. U.S. investors face no limitations in buying public shares of Chinese companies involved in AI.

“China is such a huge market,” said Jialong Shi, head of China internet equity research at Japanese bank Nomura. “We are going to see increasing fund inflow from the U.S. investors.”

 

Shares of internet giant Alibaba, listed in Hong Kong and New York, are up more than 80% this year to a four-year high. Alibaba has said it plans to invest $53 billion over three years to build out AI infrastructure and pursue artificial-general intelligence, or human-level intelligence.

The U.S. still has an edge in pursuing that ultimate goal, producing the most powerful AI models, and China can’t match it in advanced chips. But Chinese companies have already begun to apply AI widely.

Funds managed by U.S. players Vanguard Group, BlackRock and Fidelity have this year increased their stakes in Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares, according to data provider LSEG. Shares in Chinese tech companies Tencent and Baidu, which are both deploying large-language models at the core of generative AI, have also risen nearly 50%.

 

London-based investment firm Ruffer sees more upside in listed Chinese tech giants because their price-to-earnings ratios—a common measure of how pricey a stock is—are lower than U.S. peers such as Google parent Alphabet. 

Ruffer’s £19 billion portfolio, which is equivalent to around $25 billion and includes money from U.S. investors, is up nearly 11% this year. That growth has been driven in part by Alibaba, which makes up 1.5% of the total portfolio, said Gemma Cairns-Smith, an investment specialist at the firm.

“China is a big player in AI,” said Cairns-Smith. “It does trade at a big discount to its U.S. counterparts,” she said, and “investors risk missing out.” Billionaire hedge-fund manager David Tepper has been publicly bullish on Chinese companies this year. Alibaba in November was the biggest constituent of his firm Appaloosa’s disclosed listed investments, making up 16% of roughly $7 billion in public equities investments, according to a securities filing. 

BlackRock in July said capital flows into exchange-traded funds that track the broader tech sector in China were outpacing the U.S. this year, with U.S. investors that month making up 15% of the money moving into China tech ETFs. 

Since July, two major funds tracking Chinese stocks have grown further. The size of New York-based KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF has increased by $1.4 billion to nearly $9 billion and U.S.-listed Invesco China Technology ETF has more than doubled to nearly $3 billion, according to LSEG.

 

Laura Wang, a Hong Kong-based equity strategist at Morgan Stanley, visited the U.S. in the fall to market opportunities in China and said 90% of investors in meetings wanted to increase exposure to China—the highest interest in four years—because of the growing attraction of Chinese companies in AI-powered robots and biotech.

“There’s a tremendous amount of interest and intellectual curiosity which wasn’t there even a year ago,” said Fred Hu, the chief executive of Primavera Capital, an investment firm with offices in Silicon Valley and China.

Global investors had largely fled China in recent years over concerns about draconian Covid-19 rules, a regulatory crackdown on tech companies and a property bust that damped economic growth. U.S. venture capital became caught up in tense U.S.-China geopolitics, and funding for Chinese private companies collapsed. Some venture firms that had teams in both the U.S. and China, such as Sequoia Capital, were forced to split their operations and rebrand. 

Still, China-based funds have this year raised U.S.-dollar funds, hoping to capitalize on renewed enthusiasm for China’s AI story. 

Monolith Management, a venture firm founded by a former Sequoia Capital China investor, recently raised nearly $300 million to invest in early-stage startups, and Qiming Venture Partners, a longstanding China-focused venture-capital firm, is raising a dollar-denominated fund. 

Broad funding for China-focused venture funds is a fraction at $830 million of the $16 billion raised at a recent peak in 2022, and few U.S. investors are taking direct stakes in China’s private tech companies, according to data firm PitchBook. 

Venture capitalists said most of the money for U.S. dollar-denominated funds this year was coming from Europe, the Middle East and the rest of Asia. 

“It’s quite clear that when it comes to AI, China and the U.S. are basically the only places investors can really look at,” said Yihao Li, founding partner of Creekstone Ventures, a Shanghai-based venture-capital firm that is currently raising a fund. For investors in private Chinese companies, however, “the major challenge remains the geopolitical issue,” he said. 

The Biden administration in January prohibited investments into private Chinese companies in certain high-tech fields, including quantum computing and AI models above technical thresholds. A push to widen the limits is moving ahead in Congress, even after Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed on a trade truce in October.

The National Defense Authorization Act, approved by the House on Wednesday, will enable Trump to add hypersonic-weapon technology to the prohibited list and to require more disclosure of how U.S. investors are aiding Chinese AI.