Washington locked down its most powerful AI on Friday to slow its rivals. By Monday, Wall Street had a very different read, and it was bullish on China.
Shares of Knowledge Atlas jumped about 33% on Monday. The Hong Kong firm is the company behind Chinese AI maker Zhipu, and it rose as much as 48% earlier in the day.
The push came from Friday's U.S. order. It told Anthropic to cut off its strongest models for any foreign national.
That even covered Anthropic's own non-citizen staff. The order cited national security.
Wall Street moved fast on the news. JPMorgan lifted its Zhipu price target to HK$1,400 from HK$950, while Bank of America started it with a buy rating.
Rival MiniMax got swept up too, rising about 7.4%. But JPMorgan cut its MiniMax call to make more room for Zhipu.
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On the same day as the U.S. order, Zhipu fired back. It said it would release its newest model, GLM-5.2, as open-source this week with no limits on use.
Open-source just means the code is free for anyone to take and build on. Early feedback says GLM-5.2 holds its own against Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 on coding tasks, per Macquarie.
That sums up the whole China AI playbook. Give it away, then win the price-sensitive buyers the U.S. is pushing out.
One bank called the Chinese models cheap and capable. It helps that Zhipu still raised its cloud prices back in April.
There is a people angle here as well. One analyst said close to 40% of U.S.-based AI engineers were born in China.
The new rule blocks many of them from the very systems they helped build. The fear is "brain flight," with top minds drifting toward Chinese labs like DeepSeek and Moonshot.
Some warn the rule could push talent the wrong way. That would be a costly own goal for the U.S.
The bet is showing up in the stock too. Knowledge Atlas is now worth about HK$489 billion, close to four times the size of MiniMax.
The bet here is simple. If the U.S. keeps its best AI locked down, the cheaper, open Chinese models get more room to win global buyers.
Both Zhipu and MiniMax went public in January, and both are now lining up new share listings in Shanghai. Restrict the supply in one country, and demand goes looking for it in another.
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