Morgan Stanley Forecasts $1.25–1.75B AI Inflow to Hang Seng Tech Index as Zhipu AI and MiniMax Join on June 8

Morgan Stanley analysts published a May 3 report predicting that over $1 billion in passive equity inflows will enter Hong Kong's Hang Seng Tech Index when two Chinese AI companies — Zhipu AI (智谱AI, Knowledge Atlas Technology) and MiniMax — are formally added to the index on June 8, 2026. Both companies went public in Hong Kong in January 2026 and have surged significantly since their IPOs, driven by investor enthusiasm for China's AI sector. Morgan Stanley raised its price targets on both stocks, calling AI and large language model (LLM) names a 'transformative driver' of Hong Kong equity markets. The addition of Zhipu AI and MiniMax to the HSTECH index will trigger forced buying from passive funds tracking the benchmark — estimated at $1.25 to $1.75 billion in total passive inflows. This follows the broader trend: Hong Kong's Hang Seng Tech IPO market hit a five-year high with $110 billion in market cap across 40 new listings in Q1 2026. MiniMax, as of April 19, had already achieved the #4 global AI model market share by API usage on OpenRouter (behind Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI) at a $40B+ valuation and approximately $1 per million output tokens — 15x cheaper than Anthropic. Zhipu AI is valued at approximately $14 billion and develops the GLM series of LLMs used extensively in enterprise applications. The Morgan Stanley forecast reinforces the financial market verdict that China's domestic AI ecosystem — built largely under conditions of US export control pressure — is now creating significant capital formation in Hong Kong public markets, providing Chinese AI labs access to deep global capital pools without needing US market listing.