Chinese AI: 4 Exciting Stocks to Watch in 2026

While American breakthroughs in artificial intelligence technology continue to dominate news headlines, it is becoming hard to ignore the AI revolution that is taking place in China today. From powerful multi-modal large language models (LLMs) to self-driving cars, China is currently building a vast, integrated AI ecosystem that is poised to challenge US dominance.

In this article, we are going to highlight four Chinese AI stocks that could be worth watching in 2026. These companies have innovative AI technology that is on par with that being developed by US companies, and they are rapidly deploying solutions at scale today.

Alibaba: A Leader in Accessible AI

Originally an e-commerce company, Alibaba has become a cloud computing and AI powerhouse in recent years. Known for its open-source Qwen LLMs, it is positioning itself as a leader in accessible AI.

In mid-February, Alibaba released its latest AI model, Qwen 3.5¹. This is a native vision-language model designed specifically for the agentic AI era. According to the company, the model – which has 397 billion parameters and supports 201 languages – has the potential to empower developers and enterprises to achieve significantly greater productivity as it excels in reasoning, coding, agent capabilities, and multimodal understanding. Note that as of early 2026, over 180,000 derivative models had been built on top of Qwen, and it had surpassed 700 million downloads on Hugging Face, making it one of the most widely adopted AI models in history².

Looking beyond the Qwen series of LLMs, Alibaba is active in AI in a lot of other areas. For example, Alibaba Cloud has shifted its business model to focus on becoming the operating system for other AI companies. Today, it offers the Alibaba Cloud Model Studio – a one-stop shop for AI startups and enterprises. It also provides specialized GPU technology that allows other startups to run their models on its hardware, via its Platform for AI (PAI) infrastructure.

Notably, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027, analysts expect Alibaba’s earnings to rise more than 40%³. Given this expected profit growth, this is definitely a stock to keep an eye on in 2026.

Baidu: LLMs, Robotaxis, and Chips

Another well-established Chinese company that is rapidly evolving into an AI powerhouse is Baidu. Recently, it has transformed itself from a search engine business to an AI-first operator, with major moves in generative AI, robotaxis, and specialized AI hardware.

In late 2025, Baidu released ERNIE 5.0, the latest version of its AI model. A natively omni-modal model with 2.4 trillion parameters, it is capable of jointly modelling text, images, audio, and videos, and excels in factual reasoning and instruction following. Currently, Baidu is embedding ERNIE 5.0 into its entire ecosystem, including its search engine. Here, around 70% of results are now AI-generated rich media rather than simple links⁴.

Zooming in on its robotaxi segment, Apollo Go, this is going from strength to strength. As of late 2025, it had provided 17 million rides globally – more than any other robotaxi company in the world⁵. In November, the company announced that it is partnering with Uber and Lyft for a major robotaxi pilot in London later in 2026⁶. More recently, in February, it announced the launch of its first large-scale overseas deployment in Dubai via partnerships with Uber and the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA)⁷.

As for AI hardware, Baidu unveiled some powerful AI chips late last year – the Kunlun M100 and M300. The former is designed to support large-scale inferencing workloads while the latter has been developed for training and inferencing. Note that in early 2026, the company announced that it had submitted a confidential application to list its chip unit, Kunlunxin, on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX)⁸. This move is intended to unlock the hidden value of Baidu’s chip business and provide Kunlunxin with its own financing channels to accelerate R&D.

In terms of financials, Baidu’s recent Q4 earnings showed strong growth from AI solutions. For the quarter, its Core AI-powered business generated revenue of RMB 11.3 billion, up 48% year over year⁹. So overall, Baidu appears to have a lot going for it. Looking ahead, this company is likely to play a major role in China’s AI boom.

Cambricon Technologies: The Nvidia of China?

Cambricon Technologies represents another key player in the Chinese chip market. A specialist in high-performance AI accelerators, it has been called the “Nvidia of China.”

Cambricon’s flagship products are the Siyuan 590 and the Siyuan 690. These AI chips are designed to compete with high-end GPUs for data center training and inference made by the likes of Nvidia and Huawei. Cambricon does not just produce chips, however; it also offers a proprietary software stack known as NeuWare. This is a direct competitor to Nvidia’s CUDA platform.

Given China’s quest for semiconductor self-sufficiency, Cambricon’s performance has been very strong recently. In January, it advised that revenue for 2025 would be between RMB 6.0 billion and 7.0 billion (approx. USD $0.9 billion to $1.05 billion), representing an increase of 411% to 496% compared to 2024¹⁰. It also said that net profit would be between RMB 1.85 billion and 2.15 billion versus a loss of RMB 452 million in the previous year. In its update, the company said that it has had success in leveraging the competitiveness of its AI chip products to expand into new market applications.

It’s worth pointing out that Cambricon Technologies is planning to ramp up its chip production significantly in 2026. According to Bloomberg, the company aims to deliver around 500,000 AI accelerators in 2026 – including as many as 300,000 units of its Siyuan 590 and Siyuan 690 processors¹¹ – more than tripling its output from 2025.

ECARX: A Play on Next-Generation Vehicles

While names like XPeng and Baidu tend to steal the spotlight when it comes to Chinese autonomous driving technology, there’s another company that could be worth keeping an eye on and that’s ECARX. Listed on the Nasdaq, it’s a global automotive technology provider that offers turnkey solutions for next-generation vehicles including system-on-a-chip (SoC) hardware and AI-powered digital cockpits.

ECARX was co-founded in 2017 by Ziyu Shen and Eric Li, the billionaire chairman of Geely Holding Group. Thanks to Li, the group has been able to build strong partnerships with a range of well-known automotive manufacturers. Today, it works with nearly 30 different vehicle brands, including the likes of Volvo, Polestar, Volkswagen, and Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën. Meanwhile, to date, its technology has been used in approximately 11 million vehicles worldwide¹².

In mid-February, ECARX released its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2025, and they were strong¹³. Total revenue for the quarter was USD $304.7 million, up 13% year over year, while net profit was USD $2.8 million, compared with a loss of USD $6.0 million a year earlier. Looking ahead, the company said that it is on track to sustain this momentum as its computing platforms are increasingly being recognized for their ability to drive strong sales for automotive manufacturers. Crucially, the group just raised $200 million in capital – it plans to use this to support the build-out of its R&D program and supply chain infrastructure, fuel its global expansion, and propel its business towards high-value software and AI services.

Understanding the Risks of Chinese AI Stocks

While China’s artificial intelligence industry looks poised for strong growth in the years ahead, investors should note that Chinese AI stocks have unique risks. From potential delisting risks to uncertainty around Variable Interest Entity (VIE) structures, there are a lot of issues to be aware of. Given these risks, it makes sense to take a diversified approach to the asset class. By spreading capital out over a number of different companies, an investor can mitigate stock-specific risk and increase their probability of capitalizing on the growth of the Chinese AI ecosystem.

Footnotes:

¹Qwen, Qwen3.5: Towards Native Multimodal Agents, as of February 15, 2026

²English News, Alibaba's Qwen leads global open-source AI community with 700 million downloads, as of January 13, 2026

³LSEG, as of February 26, 2026

⁴Baidu Inc official X account, as of November 13, 2025

⁵CNBC, China’s Baidu says weekly robotaxi rides hit 250,000 - same as Alphabet’s Waymo this spring, as of November 2, 2025

⁶BBC, Uber and Lyft announce plans to trial Chinese robotaxis in UK in 2026, as of December 22, 2025

⁷Uber Investor, Baidu and Uber Partner to Bring Apollo Go Autonomous Ride-hailing to Dubai in Collaboration with Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority, as of February 10, 2026

⁸Baidu, Baidu Announces Proposed Spin-off and Separate Listing of Kunlunxin, as of January 1, 2026

⁹Baidu, Baidu Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Results, as of February 26, 2026

¹⁰tom’s Hardware, Cambricon targets 500,000 AI chips in 2026 as China accelerates domestic hardware push - low yields and limited HBM supply could threaten chip ambitions, as of December 12, 2025

¹¹Cambricon Technologies Corp., Ltd. 2025 Annual Performance Forecast, as of January 31, 2026

¹²ECARX, The shift towards next-gen vehicle technologies creates a large and growing market opportunity, as of February 26, 2026

¹³ECARX, ECARX Announces Fourth Quarter 2025 Unaudited Financial Results, as of February 12, 2026