The wave of wealth creation through AI continues.

On June 22, "the first stock of physical AI," HQVT officially landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. On its first day of trading, HQVT's stock price surged by 270.83%, and its market capitalization climbed to HKD 20.6 billion.

According to reports, during the subscription phase, HQVT's public offering in Hong Kong received an oversubscription of 7,181.21 times, with over 250,000 investors participating, and the total subscription funds exceeded HKD 440 billion, ranking among the top five in Hong Kong stock history for oversubscription records.

The hot subscription market in the capital market essentially reflects the market's high recognition of quality core AI assets.

However, it should not be overlooked that as the initial market enthusiasm gradually fades, investor sentiment will eventually return to rationality, and companies must ultimately rely on solid performance to digest high valuations.

After going public, HQVT did not maintain the strong momentum of its first day.

As of the latest closing, the company's stock price has fallen more than 40% from the opening price on its first day, with a total market value evaporating by over HKD 7.5 billion.

Looking at the current IPO performance of AI companies, although many AI firms have achieved high valuation premiums during the IPO phase, the Hong Kong stock market, as a mature capital market, has strict requirements for companies' performance realization capabilities. If related companies cannot quickly deliver results and realize valuations, they will ultimately be voted out by the market. The net profit scale of HQVT at HKD 29.354 million clearly cannot support the current market capitalization level.

"The first stock of multispectral AI"

The growth path of HQVT began with two seasoned practitioners deeply engaged in the security industry.

In 1999, one of the company's founders, Zhou Bo, graduated from Xi'an University of Mining and Technology with a major in automatic control. At that time, the domestic security industry was just starting, and Zhou Bo joined Chengdu Keli Electronics Research Institute as a video research and development engineer, thus beginning his connection with the video surveillance industry.

In 2001, global demand for security surged explosively. In the same year, Chengdu Keli Electronics founder Zhang Shaofeng went to Shenzhen to establish Tumin Industry, and Zhou Bo and his partner Chen Yonggang subsequently joined, with Zhou Bo serving as product manager and Chen Yonggang as R&D department manager. It is worth mentioning that Tumin Industry was established two months earlier than the security giant Hikvision, but the subsequent development paths of the two companies were completely different: while Hikvision continued to expand and complete its full product line layout, Tumin Industry gradually became marginalized due to issues such as talent loss.

Zhou Bo and Chen Yonggang did not stay there for long. In 2005, the two co-founded Shenzhen Huanghe Digital Technology Co., Ltd., focusing on networked video surveillance business, and participated in several national key projects. Later, Huanghe Digital was acquired by the Canadian listed company Jiachuang Systems. In April 2013, the two embarked on their third entrepreneurial venture, establishing Shenzhen HQVT Technology Co., Ltd., which is the predecessor of HQVT. At the time of the company's founding, 37-year-old Zhou Bo had already been deeply involved in the visual processing industry for 14 years, accumulating rich industry experience Even with mature industry experience, the security sector had already become a red ocean market at that time, with Hikvision and Dahua forming a solid duopoly, making it difficult for new entrants to break through. To establish a foothold in the market and seek breakthroughs, Zhou Bo chose a differentiated development route, entering the high-quality niche track of multispectral AI. Public information shows that traditional security equipment relies on visible light cameras for imaging, which can easily lead to unclear images and recognition failures in complex extreme environments such as nighttime, fog, and strong light; whereas multispectral AI technology can integrate infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light spectrum information across multiple bands, combined with AI algorithms, enabling smart devices to possess environmental perception capabilities far beyond human eyes. In simple terms, it is like equipping smart devices with "super eyes," significantly enhancing recognition and monitoring effects in complex scenarios.

However, choosing the right track does not mean the road ahead is smooth. From 2013 to 2019, HQVT focused on technological research and development, refining core products, and initially only received investments from two institutions, Bivard and Longke. The turning point in industry layout occurred in 2020, when the company completed 40 million yuan in Series A financing that year. Since then, HQVT has maintained an intensive financing rhythm of one round per year, completing five rounds of financing in total, with investors including Zhejiang Merchants Venture Capital, High-tech Investment Group, Xiaohe Venture Capital, Fuquan Investment, and Yingke Zhide among several well-known institutions. In December 2024, the company completed 10 million yuan in Series C+ financing; in July 2025, it completed another 50 million yuan in Series D financing, with a post-investment valuation reaching 3.55 billion yuan, more than ten times the valuation at the time of the Series A financing in 2020.

Behind the continuous capital increase is HQVT's explosive performance growth.

According to the company's prospectus data, HQVT's revenue was approximately 225 million yuan in 2022. In 2023, affected by business structure adjustments and other factors, the company's revenue fell to 117 million yuan, with a net loss of 18.413 million yuan for the year. In 2024, the company's performance welcomed a turning point, with revenue soaring to 523 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 346.4%, successfully turning losses into profits, with a net profit of 40.412 million yuan for the year. In 2025, the company's revenue further climbed to 669 million yuan. In just three years, HQVT's revenue grew from 117 million yuan to 669 million yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 138.9%.

After more than a decade of deep cultivation, HQVT has firmly established its leading position in the segmented industry. According to a Frost & Sullivan industry report, based on 2025 revenue data, HQVT ranks first among multispectral AI companies in China, with a domestic market share of 3.3%; among them, the multispectral AI large model service business ranks first in the country, with a market share of 23% Under High Valuation, How to Digest the Bubble?

On June 22, Haiqing Zhiyuan, which has been deeply engaged in the multispectral AI sector for thirteen years, successfully landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, earning the industry label of "the first stock of physical AI," attracting significant attention from the capital market.

In fact, the high popularity of Haiqing Zhiyuan is primarily due to the scarcity of the multispectral AI sector—this niche field is still in its early stages of development globally, with vast growth potential.

Traditional visual AI technology focuses on visible light image recognition, mainly achieving the identification and detection of conventional targets such as people, vehicles, and objects; while the multispectral AI that Haiqing Zhiyuan is developing focuses on various safety hazards and risk signals in the physical world, such as fire situations, circuits, and thermal anomalies. The core business capabilities can be summarized as "managing fire, managing electricity, managing hazards." The company's technology system can integrate multidimensional 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 is transformer overheating, aging underground cables, or gas leaks in chemical plants that are not visible to the naked eye, traditional cameras cannot capture these hidden risks, but multispectral intelligent devices can identify and provide precise warnings in advance, significantly enhancing the safety and timeliness of industrial security and intelligent monitoring.

The strong scene perception capability relies on the "light perception and computing" full-chain self-developed system built by Haiqing Zhiyuan. Unlike most companies in the industry that rely on external open-source frameworks and cloud computing support for their R&D models, Haiqing Zhiyuan achieves full-process autonomy and control, from the hardware structure design of optical lenses, optical films, and beam splitters, to the core algorithms for image acquisition and spectral analysis, and to the industry-customized AI large models, all of which are independently developed and implemented. It is reported that the company's self-developed multispectral sensing and computing integration technology, lightweight edge AI computing platform, combined with 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. Even in harsh conditions with offline or weak network signals, it can still accurately identify various hidden safety risks.

Despite holding core technological barriers and being in a sector with broad growth prospects, the company still needs to face harsh market tests after entering the capital market. Considering the company's current revenue and profit levels, the issue of valuation bubble has become unavoidable.

According to the latest financial report data, in 2025, Haiqing Zhiyuan is expected to achieve revenue of 669 million yuan and a net profit of 29.354 million yuan, but the net cash flow from operating activities for the entire year is expected to be a net outflow of 130 million yuan. The company reports a near 30 million yuan profit on paper, yet the operating cash flow continues to flow out. The prospectus explains that the core reason is the addition of 173 million yuan in receivables and 55.5 million yuan in inventory during the period, with the company's prepayments to suppliers increasing by about 147 million yuan, significantly occupying operating funds.

At the same time, the market has raised multiple doubts about the value of the company's core large model service business.

Financial report data shows that in 2025, Haiqing Zhiyuan's large model service revenue is expected to be 355 million yuan, accounting for 53.1% of total revenue, making it the company's largest source of income. However, upon breaking down the business structure, it is not difficult to find that among the nine large model projects with hardware support implemented by the company in 2025, 258 million yuan of revenue comes from customized solutions for hardware and software integration Related hardware components are 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 that include hardware devices.

Cost data further corroborates the changes in business structure: the proportion of direct materials and consumables in the company's sales costs has continuously risen from 69.9% in 2023 to 91.9% in 2025. As a result, the gross margin of the large model service business has significantly dropped by 19.1 percentage points from 49.5% in 2024 to 30.4% in 2025.

Conclusion

From a veteran deeply engaged in the security industry to the "first stock of physical AI" topping the Hong Kong stock market, founder Zhou Bo has spent 23 years in the industry, and HQVT has gone through 12 years of in-depth development.

This technology company rooted in the Bao'an District of Shenzhen has successfully become a leader in its niche industry, thanks to its differentiated multi-spectral AI technology route, fully self-developed technological barriers, and a business model that upgrades from hardware sales to AI model services.

However, in the face of increasingly fierce industry competition, technological advantages and industry status are not sufficient to support the company's long-term high-quality development. How to convert technological barriers into stable and sustainable profit growth, reverse the decline in operating cash flow, continuously improve the gross margin of large model service business, and strengthen the technological attributes and profitability of core business is the core issue for HQVT's future development.

Going public is not the end of HQVT's development, but a new starting point. If the company cannot quickly convert its technological advantages and track advantages into tangible performance increments and profitable cash flow, the current high valuation bubble will eventually burst, and the company will continue to face value reassessment and performance tests in the capital market