Advanced nuclear reactor company X-energy began trading Friday as the AI boom and electrification broadly spark a flurry of interest in the nuclear industry.

The stock opened at $30.11, after upsizing its initial offering, pricing at $23 per share — ahead of the initial range of $16 – $19 per share. The company raised more than $1 billion, making it the largest nuclear public offering on record. Shares last traded 26% higher.

The company’s xe-100 reactor is 80 megawatts, and can be bundled together with additional reactors to scale up to 960 megawatts. The xe-100’s model is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. In addition to generating electricity, its high temperatures mean it can be used in hard-to-decarbonize industrial applications such as chemical production. 

All of the nuclear reactors currently in operation in the U.S. are light water reactors.

The company has yet to begin construction on any of its reactor facilities, but it already has an order pipeline of more than 11 gigawatts thanks to partnerships with companies including Amazon, Dow and Centrica.

Prior to going public, the company raised more than $1.4 billion – most recently a $700 million Series D fund in November – with backers including Amazon, Jane Street, ARK Invest, Citadel’s Ken Griffin and Ares Management funds. The company has also received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

X-energy is the first sizable advanced reactor company to pursue a traditional IPO route, after competitors Oklo and NuScale went public via SPAC transactions. X-energy previously pursued a listing via a SPAC merger, but ultimately abandoned that plan in 2023.

The company’s business model is also different from some of its competitors, since it does not plan to own and operate nuclear plants. Rather, it will license its technology. X-energy will also sell nuclear fuel that’s produced at its fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where construction began in 2025.

In March 2025, X-energy and Dow submitted a construction permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for their proposed project in Seadrift, Texas. The review process is expected to take 18 months, and is part of a two-step process, which also includes applying for an operating license.

X-Energy is also working with Amazon to deploy 5 gigawatts across the U.S. by 2039. The first project will be a 320-megawatt facility with Washington utility Energy Northwest, the companies previously announced. 

Shares in Victory Giant Technology surged as much as 60% on Tuesday, after the Chinese company’s blockbuster initial public offering — the biggest in Hong Kong this year.

The Chinese company, which supplies printed circuit boards to Nvidia, priced its shares at 209.88 Hong Kong dollars in the IPO. Shares were last trading 46% higher at HK$306.8.

Victory Giant had raised about HK$20.1 billion ($2.57 billion) in the city’s biggest listing in about seven months. This makes Victory Giant Hong Kong’s biggest IPO since Zijin Gold International‘s $3.2 billion IPO in September.

Investor interest in large listings in Hong Kong has been growing, especially in tech-related sectors, which have remained resilient despite market volatility tied to the current Middle East conflict.

In the first quarter of 2026, Hong Kong’s IPO market raised HK$109.9 billion across 40 new listings, according to a KPMG report. That was nearly six times the amount raised and three times the number of new listings in the same period last year, KPMG said.

“Nearly 80% of funds raised came from A+H and specialist technology listings; both segments are expected to continue supporting strong IPO performance this year,” it added, referring to companies listed in both mainland China and Hong Kong.

Other major IPOs on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange so far this year include Chinese chip designer Montage Technology, whose shares surged more than 60% on its trading debut in February.

Shares of China-based AI startup MiniMax Group also doubled on its first day of trading in Hong Kong, becoming the second major Chinese developer of large language models to go public.

On Thursday, shares of Hangzhou-based developer Manycore Tech, the first of Hangzhou’s “six little dragons,” tripled in its Hong Kong debut.

Shares of Chinese chip designer Montage Technology surged around 60% in its Hong Kong trading debut on Monday following an initial share sale that raised $902 million.

Montage Technology jumped to HK$171 after pricing its offering at HK$106.89, the upper end of the range, joining a growing list of Chinese artificial intelligence companies tapping capital markets. It’s currently trading 52% higher as of 9:18 p.m. ET Sunday.

The Hong Kong public tranche was subscribed more than 700 times, while the international offering was nearly 38 times covered, signaling strong investor appetite for Chinese semiconductor names despite ongoing geopolitical and tech-sector headwinds.

The share sale follows January debuts by GigaDevice Semiconductor and OmniVision Integrated Circuits.

Montage Technology is also listed on the mainland, with a market cap of around $27 billion, according to LSEG data.

Shares of Czech-based defense firm Czechoslovak Group (CSG) soared over 30% on its stock market debut on Friday, underscoring sustained investor interest in defense companies amid Europe’s growing push for military sovereignty.

CSG, one of the world’s fastest-growing defense firms, made its debut on the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Shares traded 29% higher at 32.25 euros ($37.85) at 1:54 p.m. London time (8:54 a.m. ET), having jumped as much as 32% earlier in the session. The upswing implies a market capitalization of roughly 32.5 billion euros.

The Prague-based company, which makes armed vehicles, ammunition, and advanced defense systems, raised a total of 3.8 billion euros in its initial public offering.

Euronext said the listing marked the world’s largest defense IPO ever recorded, both in terms of amount raised and market capitalization.

“Today marks a historic milestone for CSG as we join the Euronext Amsterdam market and we welcome the confidence shown in us by investors,” Michal Strnad, chairman of CSG, said in a statement.

“Becoming a publicly listed company demonstrates our commitment to high standards of transparency, disclosure and corporate governance and strengthens our ability to invest in innovation, expand our global reach and deliver on our mission to be a critical long-term supplier of advanced defence and industrial solutions to NATO states and Government partners worldwide,” he added.

The listing comes after weeks of mounting geopolitical tensions, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to use military force to seize Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally.

In a surprise development on Wednesday, however, Trump said he had agreed to a framework of a future deal with respect to the self-governing Danish territory.

In Europe, meanwhile, investors have continued to pile into defense stocks, fueled by a mix of European Union, national and private capital funding.

Strategists have cited Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the end of the U.S. defense umbrella in Europe as underpinning a so-called “mega-trend in the making.”

— CNBC’s Hugh Leask contributed to this report.

Shares of China-based AI startup MiniMax Group doubled on its first day of trading in Hong Kong on Friday, becoming the second major Chinese developer of large language models to go public. 

The company raised 4.8 billion Hong Kong dollars ($620 million) in its IPO, outperforming its local rival Zhipu AI, which had listed in Hong Kong just one day earlier and rose a modest 13% on its debut.

MiniMax shares closed at HK$345, up 109% from its offer price of HK$165.

Both MiniMax and Zhipu are part of China’s so-called “AI tigers”— startups building large language models to rival American AI giants like OpenAI, which they’ve now beaten to going public.  

Founded in 2022 and backed by investors such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings, MiniMax specializes in AI applications, including chatbots, image generation and video synthesis. 

Its founders, Yan Junjie, the company’s chief executive officer, and Yun Yeyi, its chief operating officer, previously worked at SenseTime, a long-time player in China’s AI space.

MiniMax’s market debut comes as Chinese AI-related firms ramp up fundraising efforts to compete with U.S. rivals and navigate Washington’s export curbs on advanced chips used for AI training to China. 

According to the company’s prospectus, it served over 200 million cumulative users across more than 200 countries and regions as of September last year.

It also reported revenue of $53.4 million in the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2025, up about 174% from a year earlier, though the company still posted a net loss of $512 million over the same period.

MiniMax said most of its revenue comes from subscriptions and in-app purchases for its AI products. It added that it remains in a “nascent stage in terms of monetization and commercialization,” after years focused on developing its foundational models.

Minimax said it plans to use IPO proceeds for continued research and development.

Shares of ICICI Prudential, one of India’s largest asset management companies, rose 20% in their trading debut Friday, following a 106 billion rupees ($1.17 billion) initial public offering.

The IPO by the firm, jointly owned by India’s ICICI Bank and UK’s Prudential, was priced at 2,165 rupees per share at the upper end of the price band. Shares, which were listed on the National Stock Exchange as well as the BSE, were last trading at 2,593 rupees.

The issue was subscribed more than 39 times during the bidding process, driven primarily by a strong demand from institutional investors. Retail portion of the IPO was subscribed just 2.5 times.

Singapore’s GIC and Temasek and India’s public sector insurance company Life Insurance Corporation were among the major institutional investors that participated in the IPO.

ICICI Prudential AMC is India’s largest asset management company in India in terms of assets managed under active mutual fund schemes with an mutual fund quarterly average assets of 101.47 billion rupees. The company had 15.5 million retail investors as of end of September.

Citigroup Global Markets India, BofA Securities India, Morgan Stanley, Axis Capital, Avendus Capital and ICICI Securities were among the joint bookrunners.

Though this IPO saw relatively tepid individual investor interest, global consultancy firm Bain & Company estimates retail investor-driven assets of Indian mutual fund industry to grow to about $3.3 trillio by 2035 from 45 trillion rupees in fiscal year 2025.

This comes as salaried millennials in metro cities and Gen Zs increasingly invest savings in mutual funds, even avoiding direct equities, the report said.

As more retail investors participate in capital markets, the opportunities for asset managers to handle those funds are ballooning.

Investment through systematic investment plans, which refer to investing bite-sized sums at regular intervals, tripled to 2.89 trillion rupees in fiscal year 2025 from 2021, data from Association of Mutual Funds in India shows.

India has seen companies raise $11.4 billion via 252 IPOs during the first three quarters of this year, according to an EY report in October. With many big-ticket listings — LG Electronics, Tata Capital and Lenskart as well as ICICI Prudential AMC — coming in the final quarter, the final amount of funds raised is expected to be higher than last year’s $19.9 billion.

“Due to financialization of savings Indians are increasing their exposure to mutual funds and equities. AMCs like ICICI Prudential are a carrier…

Shares of Chinese chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits soared more than 700% in their market debut in Shanghai on Wednesday, after the company raised nearly $600 million in its initial public offering.

Shares, which were priced at 104.66 yuan in the IPO, surged to over 835 on debut, marking a 697% jump.

Similar to Moore Threads, which saw a robust debut at the start of the month, MetaX develops graphics processing units for artificial intelligence applications, tapping into a fast-growing sector driven by rising adoption of AI services.

MetaX is part of a growing cohort of local chipmakers building AI processors, reflecting Beijing’s push to reduce dependence on U.S. chips following Washington’s tech curbs on export of high-end technology to China.

Washington has imposed export curbs on U.S. chip behemoth Nvidia, barring sales of its most advanced AI chips to China.

Newer Chinese players such as Enflame Technology and Biren Technology have also entered the AI space, aiming to capture a share of the billions in graphics processing unit, or GPU, demand no longer served by Nvidia. Chinese regulators have also been clearing more semiconductor IPOs in their drive for greater AI independence.

Earlier this month, shares of Moore Threads, a Beijing-based GPU manufacturer often referred to as “China’s Nvidia,” soared by more than 400% on its debut in Shanghai following its $1.1 billion listing.

Shares of Moore Threads, a Beijing-based graphics processing unit (GPU) manufacturer often referred to as “China’s Nvidia,” soared by more than 400% on its debut in Shanghai following its $1.1 billion listing.

The stock is currently trading at 584.98 yuan, over five times its IPO price of 114.28 yuan.

Moore Threads’ IPO was led by CITIC Securities, which served as the lead underwriter for the offering. The joint book runners on the deal were BOC International Securities, China Merchants Securities, and GF Securities.

The company, which is not yet profitable, said in its listing that the IPO proceeds are needed to accelerate several core research and development initiatives, including new-generation self-developed AI training and inference GPU chips. A portion of the funds will also be used to supplement working capital.

Moore Thread’s successful IPO comes despite it being placed under U.S. sanctions in 2023, which limited its access to advanced chip manufacturing processes and foundries.

The firm is representative of a growing cast of Chinese companies developing AI processors amid Beijing’s efforts to reduce reliance on American chip designer Nvidia.

Other companies in the space include tech giants like Huawei, as well as more specialized players like Cambricon — a firm whose shares on the Shanghai exchange have surged more than 100% year to date.

Washington has maintained varying export restrictions on Nvidia for years, preventing it from selling its most advanced AI chips to China. More recently, Beijing has also stepped in to block imports of Nvidia’s chips as it tries to encourage domestic alternatives like Moore Threads.

Newer players like Enflame Technology and Biren Technology have also entered the space, aiming to capture a share of the billions in GPU demand no longer served by Nvidia. Chinese regulators have also been clearing more semiconductor IPOs in their drive for greater AI independence.

This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.