Trump-Xi Meeting Puts These 5 Chinese AI Stocks in Focus

China’s artificial intelligence stocks are back in focus after President Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday, with AI emerging as one of the central topics of their meeting.

Along with trade, technology, and other geopolitical issues, Trump and Xi discussed artificial intelligence, with Xi calling for continued dialogue, cooperation, and maintaining human control over the technology.

The two countries also agreed to extend their existing trade truce by two months, although no major breakthrough on AI or technology restrictions was announced.

Still, the importance of technology was evident at the White House state dinner. Among those attending were Nvidia NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, Advanced Micro Devices AMD) CEO Lisa Su, Tesla TSLA) and SpaceX SPCX) chief Elon Musk, and Apple (AAPL) executive chairman Tim Cook.

Meanwhile, private AI developer DeepSeek has helped demonstrate China's rapid progress in generative AI despite limits on access to advanced U.S. chips. Furthermore, many Chinese AI stocks trade at sizable valuation discounts to their U.S. counterparts, partly reflecting geopolitical and regulatory risks.

That said, here are five publicly traded Chinese AI companies worth watching as the country's AI buildout accelerates.

1. Alibaba – BABA

Alibaba BABA) arguably offers the broadest publicly traded exposure to China's AI infrastructure expansion through Alibaba Cloud, its Qwen models, and its growing portfolio of proprietary AI chips.

Alibaba recently raised roughly $10 billion, with 60% of the proceeds earmarked for global computing infrastructure and the remaining 40% targeting hyperscale AI data centers, storage, databases, and high-performance networking. The company also plans to expand Alibaba Cloud's operated global data-center capacity to more than 20 gigawatts by 2032.

AI Cloud and Compute Services revenue surged 45% year over year to more than $7 billion in Alibaba's latest quarter.

2. Baidu – BIDU

Baidu BIDU) has rapidly shifted from its traditional search business to an AI-first strategy spanning cloud infrastructure, large language models (LLMs), and autonomous driving.

Most notably, Baidu's AI Cloud Infrastructure revenue jumped 50% YoY to $1.1 billion in Q2, while GPU Cloud revenue soared 283%, reflecting strong demand for computing capacity used in AI training and inference.

That makes Baidu one of the most direct large-cap Chinese plays on growing enterprise demand for AI computing.

3. Kingsoft Cloud – KC

Although much smaller than Alibaba and Baidu, Kingsoft Cloud KC) provides perhaps the purest exposure to China's cloud infrastructure expansion among U.S.-listed Chinese stocks.

Kingsoft's AI cloud gross billings surged 82% YoY in Q2 and accounted for 56% of its public cloud revenue, driven by AI infrastructure services and Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) offerings.

For investors specifically tracking China's need for more computing capacity rather than consumer internet businesses, KC is an intriguing name to watch.

4. Tencent – TCEHY

Tencent TCEHY) is another Chinese technology giant investing aggressively across AI models, agents, and cloud infrastructure.

Tencent's Q2 capital expenditures soared 176% YoY to nearly $8 billion, as the company made substantial AI-related compute prepayments to support its Hy models, AI agents, and growing external cloud demand.

Tencent's massive gaming, social-media, and payments businesses make AI infrastructure a less concentrated part of the overall investment story than at Kingsoft Cloud, although its scale gives it significant resources to fund the buildout.

5.  Hesai – HSAI

Hesai HSAI) provides a different kind of infrastructure exposure through physical AI.

Rather than operating data centers, Hesai develops lidar, spatial-intelligence technology, and robotic actuation systems that allow autonomous vehicles and robots to perceive and interact with their surroundings.

Hesai now describes itself as a physical-AI infrastructure company spanning the full robotics chain of "see, understand and act," giving investors exposure to the expansion of autonomous mobility and embodied AI.

Honorable Mention: Pony AI  & WeRide

Pony AI PONY) and WeRide WRD) are worth monitoring as more direct bets on autonomous driving and robotaxis rather than the underlying cloud buildout.

Pony AI's robotaxi revenue surged 691% year over year in Q2, while its fleet reached nearly 2,000 vehicles.

WeRide's Q2 revenue jumped 82%, while its global Level 4 autonomous fleet had expanded to approximately 3,400 vehicles by the end of July.

Both companies should be significant consumers of AI compute as autonomous-driving systems become increasingly sophisticated.

Bottom Line

The Trump-Xi meeting reinforced just how central artificial intelligence has become to the economic and technological relationship between the United States and China.

Among publicly traded Chinese companies, Alibaba and Baidu provide the broadest combination of AI models, cloud infrastructure, and computing capacity, while Kingsoft Cloud offers more concentrated cloud exposure.

Tencent brings tremendous financial scale, while Hesai, PonyAI, and WeRide extend the opportunity into physical AI, robotics, and autonomous transportation.

As China's AI ecosystem continues to expand despite constraints on access to some advanced U.S. technology, these stocks provide investors with several different ways to monitor the country's accelerating AI buildout.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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