The wave of AI-driven wealth creation continues unabated.

On June 22, Haiqing Zhiyuan, hailed as the 'Trailblazer in Physical AI,' made its official debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On its first trading day, the company's share price skyrocketed by 270.83%, propelling its market capitalization to a staggering HK$20.6 billion.

Reports indicate that during the subscription phase, Haiqing Zhiyuan's Hong Kong public offering was oversubscribed by a staggering 7,181.21 times, with over 250,000 investors participating and total subscription funds surpassing HK$440 billion. This ranks among the top five oversubscription records in the history of Hong Kong's stock market.

The intense subscription activity in the capital market is a testament to the market's high regard for premium AI assets.

However, it's crucial to acknowledge that as the initial market euphoria wanes post-listing, investor sentiment will inevitably return to rationality. Ultimately, companies must demonstrate solid performance to justify their lofty valuations.

Post-listing, Haiqing Zhiyuan failed to maintain the stellar performance of its debut day.

As of the latest closing, the company's share price has plummeted by over 40% from its opening price on the listing day, with its total market capitalization shrinking by over HK$7.5 billion.

Examining the current listing trends in the AI sector, although many AI companies have secured high valuation premiums during the IPO phase, the Hong Kong stock market, as a mature capital market, imposes stringent requirements on companies' ability to deliver performance. If relevant companies fail to swiftly achieve performance milestones and justify their valuations, they will ultimately face rejection from the market. Haiqing Zhiyuan's net profit of HK$29.354 million clearly struggles to support its current market capitalization level.

'Trailblazer in Multispectral AI'

The journey of Haiqing Zhiyuan began with two seasoned professionals deeply entrenched in the security industry.

In 1999, one of the company's founders, Zhou Bo, graduated in Automatic Control from Xi'an Mining Institute. At that time, the domestic security industry was in its infancy, and Zhou joined Chengdu Keli Electronic Research Institute as a video R&D engineer, marking the beginning of his career in the video surveillance industry.

In 2001, global demand for security solutions experienced explosive growth. That same year, Zhang Shaofeng, the founder of Chengdu Keli Electronic, ventured to Shenzhen to establish Tumin Industrial. Zhou Bo and his partner Chen Yonggang soon joined, with Zhou assuming the role of product manager and Chen as the R&D manager. Notably, Tumin Industrial was established two months earlier than security giant Hikvision, but the subsequent development paths of the two companies diverged significantly. While Hikvision continued to expand and completed a comprehensive product line layout, Tumin Industrial gradually became marginalized due to issues such as talent attrition.

Zhou Bo and Chen Yonggang didn't stay long. In 2005, they co-founded Shenzhen Huanghe Digital Technology Co., Ltd., focusing on networked video surveillance business. They also participated in several national key projects and were later acquired by Cantronic Systems, a Canadian listed company. In April 2013, they embarked on their third entrepreneurial journey, establishing Shenzhen Haiqing Vision Technology Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen, which is the predecessor of Haiqing Zhiyuan. At the inception of the company, Zhou Bo, at 37, had already accumulated 14 years of deep experience in the visual processing industry.

Despite their mature industry experience, the security sector had already become a fiercely competitive red ocean market, with Hikvision and Dahua Technology forming a solid duopoly, making it difficult for new entrants to break through. To establish a foothold and seek breakthroughs, Zhou chose a differentiated development path by venturing into the high-quality niche market of multispectral AI. Public information reveals that traditional security equipment relies on visible light cameras for imaging, which often suffers from unclear images and recognition failures in complex and extreme environments such as nighttime, fog, and strong light. In contrast, multispectral AI technology can fuse multi-band spectral information from infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light, combined with AI algorithms, enabling intelligent devices to possess environmental perception capabilities far exceeding human eyes. Simply put, it equips intelligent devices with a pair of 'super eyes,' significantly enhancing recognition and monitoring effects in complex scenarios.

However, choosing the right sector doesn't guarantee a smooth journey ahead. From 2013 to 2019, Haiqing Zhiyuan focused on technological R&D and refining its core products, initially receiving investments from only two institutions, Bivode and Langke Investment. The turning point in industry布局 (layout) came in 2020 when the company completed its Series A financing of RMB 40 million. Since then, Haiqing Zhiyuan has maintained an intensive annual financing rhythm, completing five rounds of financing, with investors including well-known institutions such as Zheshang Venture Capital, High-tech Investment Group, Xiaohe Venture Capital, Fuquan Investment, and Yingke Zhide. In December 2024, the company completed its Series C+ financing of RMB 10 million; in July 2025, it completed its Series D financing of RMB 50 million, reaching a post-investment valuation of RMB 3.55 billion, a more than tenfold increase from its Series A valuation in 2020.

Behind the continuous capital infusion lies Haiqing Zhiyuan's leapfrog growth in performance.

According to the company's prospectus, Haiqing Zhiyuan's revenue was approximately RMB 225 million in 2022. In 2023, affected by business structure adjustments, revenue fell to RMB 117 million, with a net loss of RMB 18.413 million for the year. In 2024, the company's performance turned a corner, with revenue surging to RMB 523 million, a year-on-year increase of 346.4%, achieving a turnaround from loss to profit, with a net profit of RMB 40.412 million for the year. In 2025, revenue further climbed to RMB 669 million. In just three years, Haiqing Zhiyuan's revenue grew from RMB 117 million to RMB 669 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 138.9%.

After more than a decade of deep cultivation, Haiqing Zhiyuan has secured its leading position in the niche industry. According to Frost & Sullivan's industry report, based on 2025 revenue data, Haiqing Zhiyuan ranks first among Chinese multispectral AI companies, with a domestic market share of 3.3%; its multispectral AI large model service business ranks first nationwide, with a market share of 23%.

How to Digest the High Valuation Bubble?

On June 22, Haiqing Zhiyuan, after 13 years of deep cultivation in the multispectral AI sector, successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, earning the industry label of 'Trailblazer in Physical AI' and attracting significant attention from the capital market.

In fact, the tremendous interest Haiqing Zhiyuan has garnered primarily stems from the scarcity of the multispectral AI sector—a niche field still in its early stages of development globally, with vast growth potential.

Traditional visual AI technology focuses on visible light image recognition, primarily achieving the identification and detection of conventional targets such as people, vehicles, and objects. In contrast, Haiqing Zhiyuan's multispectral AI focuses on various safety hazards and risk signals in the physical world, such as fire, electrical circuits, and thermal abnormalities, with core business capabilities summarized as 'managing fire, managing electricity, and managing hazards.' The company's technology system can fuse multi-dimensional signals such as visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, sound waves, millimeter waves, and terahertz waves, combined with self-developed AI algorithms, to create a multispectral 'super perception system' for intelligent monitoring devices. Whether it's overheating transformers, aging underground cables, or gas leaks in chemical plants that are invisible to the naked eye, traditional cameras cannot capture these hidden risks, but multispectral intelligent devices can identify and precisely warn of them in advance, significantly enhancing the safety and timeliness of industrial security and intelligent monitoring.

This powerful scene perception capability relies on Haiqing Zhiyuan's 'optical sensing, image processing, and computing' full-link independent R&D system. Unlike most industry players who rely on external open-source frameworks and cloud computing power for R&D, Haiqing Zhiyuan achieves full-process autonomy and controllability, from the hardware structural design of optical lenses, filter films, and beam splitters to the core algorithms for image acquisition and spectral analysis, as well as industry-customized AI large models, all independently developed and implemented. It is reported that the company's self-developed multispectral sensing and computing integrated technology, lightweight edge-side AI computing platform, and the self-developed 'Zhiyuan Origin' multispectral AI large model can achieve synchronous acquisition of ultraviolet, visible light, and infrared multi-band signals, with device-side inference speeds reaching 50 milliseconds, enabling precise identification of various hidden safety risks even under harsh working conditions such as offline or weak network signals.

Despite holding core technological barriers and operating in a sector with vast growth prospects, Haiqing Zhiyuan still faces stringent market tests after entering the capital market. Given the company's current revenue and profit levels, the issue of valuation bubble cannot be avoided.

According to the latest financial report data, in 2025, Haiqing Zhiyuan achieved revenue of RMB 669 million and a net profit of RMB 29.354 million, but its net cash outflow from operating activities for the year was RMB 130 million. While the company achieved a book profit of nearly RMB 30 million, its operating cash flow continued to flow out. The prospectus explains that the core reason is the increase in accounts receivable of RMB 173 million and inventory of RMB 55.5 million during the period, with the company's prepayments to suppliers increasing by approximately RMB 147 million, significantly occupying operating funds.

At the same time, the core large model service business's value has also been questioned by the market from multiple angles.

Financial report data shows that in 2025, Haiqing Zhiyuan's large model service revenue was RMB 355 million, accounting for 53.1% of total revenue, making it the company's largest revenue source. However, a breakdown of the business structure reveals that among the nine large model projects with hardware support implemented in 2025, RMB 258 million in revenue came from integrated custom solutions combining software and hardware, with all related hardware components procured from third parties at market prices. This means that over 70% of the company's large model service revenue essentially comes from integrated sales projects equipped with hardware devices.

Cost-side data further confirms the changes in the business structure: the proportion of direct raw materials and consumables in the company's sales costs continued to rise from 69.9% in 2023 to 91.9% in 2025. As a result, the gross profit margin of the large model service business plummeted by 19.1 percentage points from 49.5% in 2024 to 30.4% in 2025.

Conclusion

From an industry veteran deeply rooted in security to the 'Trailblazer in Physical AI' listed on the Hong Kong stock market, founder Zhou Bo has undergone 23 years of industry deep cultivation, and Haiqing Zhiyuan has embarked on a 12-year journey of deep development.

This technology company based in Bao'an District, Shenzhen, has successfully become a leader in the niche industry by leveraging its differentiated multispectral AI technology route, full-link independent R&D technological barriers, and a business model upgrading from hardware sales to AI model services.

However, in the increasingly fierce industry competition, technological advantages and industry status are insufficient to support the company's long-term high-quality development. How to translate technological barriers into stable and sustainable profit growth, reverse the trend of operating cash flow, continuously improve the gross profit margin of the large model service business, and strengthen the technological attributes and profitability of core businesses are the core challenges for Haiqing Zhiyuan's future development.

Listing is not the endpoint of Haiqing Zhiyuan's development but a new starting point. If the company fails to quickly translate its technological and sector advantages into tangible performance growth and profitable cash flow in the future, the current high valuation bubble will eventually burst, and the company will continue to face value reassessment and performance tests from the capital market.