Hong Kong summit exposes Wall Street AI confusion

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The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
By Una Galani
HONG KONG, Nov 5 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Artificial intelligence took centre stage in Hong Kong this week. An impressive coterie of top bankers and investors, from Goldman Sachs GS.N CEO David Solomon to Bridgewater Associates Chair Bob Prince, gathered in the financial hub to debate markets, regulation and the war for computing power. Chinese officials touted the country's open-weight AI models and real-world deployment, while downplaying the tech-led stock correction which has pulled major Chinese equity indices into the red for the year. The biggest surprise, though, was how many high-profile speakers admitted that they simply do not know where the technology is heading.
The most powerful advocate for China's long-term advantage in building thinking machines was perhaps Yang Zhilin, the CEO of AI champion Moonshot. At a welcome reception to kick off the Global Financial Leaders' Investment Summit, he told guests how open-weight models such as its Kimi family are not just cheaper than proprietary rivals but are pushing the intelligence frontier and will rapidly gain global market share. Xiong Yan, co-founder of Agibot, a humanoid robot maker, outlined the opportunity to take AI into the physical world through manufacturing, an area where China dominates. Ahead of dinner, attendees enjoyed drinks overlooking the harbour and watched a Lion Dance performance.
Yang's pitch for Chinese AI was a timely reality check for global asset managers as they assess the upcoming initial public offering of Anthropic, which may value the San Francisco-based firm at more than $1.5 trillion. It also offered a counterpoint to the ongoing rout in Chinese bourses. The Shanghai Star50 Index .STAR50 of China's hottest tech stocks has lost more than 40% of its value from its June high, while the blue-chip CSI300 Index .CSI300 has tumbled nearly 20%.
Even so, the mood at the summit remained jovial and upbeat. That was largely because the Asian hub is a hotter destination for global financiers than at any time since 2022 when Eddie Yue, CEO of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, first organised the shindig to revive interest in a city battered by protests and Covid restrictions. The hub owes its renewed allure to the boom in high-growth industries across the border. Innovations in AI, semiconductors and biotech give Western executives an extra incentive to make the trip beyond the HKMA’s considerable pulling power as custodian of Hong Kong's $549 billion Exchange Fund.
Opportunities abound. In a reversal of Hong Kong's traditional role channelling capital into the mainland, Chinese companies seeking to go global are in need of funding. Data from Dealogic shows Hong Kong is enjoying a record spell for stock offerings, with 117 IPOs raising $51 billion so far this year. Nearly 70% of proceeds went to companies which already have a mainland listing. International lenders have earned almost $1.6 billion in investment banking revenue from Chinese clients over the same period, the biggest haul since 2021. And there are still more than 600 companies waiting to go public in Hong Kong.
The quartet of Chinese policymakers participating in the conflab did not directly address official efforts to prop up stocks, preferring to talk about market stability and the transformation of the world's second-largest economy. Xiao Yuanqi, Vice Minister of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, observed that short-term fluctuations and shocks can be digested and ultimately translated into growth. Vice Premier He Lifeng noted the shift in economic momentum toward new drivers. Thanks to its export boom, analysts expect Beijing to reach its 2026 GDP target of 4.5% to 5.0% ‌without resorting to additional stimulus.
For their part, global executives made only vague references to the growing backlash in Europe against Chinese exports which generated a $1.2 trillion trade surplus for the People's Republic last year. Speakers also avoided discussing China's tightening tax net and its potential impact on banks including HSBC HSBA.L and Standard Chartered STAN.L or insurers like AIA 1299.HK and Prudential PRU.L. And, despite the summit overlapping with the US mid-term elections, President Donald Trump and his war against Iran barely featured.
More revealing was what executives were willing to admit they did not know. Asked if there is an AI bubble, Solomon argued that demand for computing power over the next couple of years vastly exceeds supply. Beyond that, though, he acknowledged nobody knows how it will play out. Much of the value may emerge in specific applications of AI and from technological shifts that are at present hard to identify or understand. That uncertainty, he added, is part of what makes the moment exciting.
Citadel Securities CEO Peng Zhao highlighted a fundamental problem: the technology is developing faster than the investment cycle. Markets have immense financing capacity, but only on the basis of credible expectations. With the numbers involved so large, small forecasting errors can translate into huge miscalculations. Investors are suddenly confronting how little they can know with confidence, Peng said, and that uncertainty will inevitably produce mistakes.
TPG TPG.O Founding Partner Jim Coulter said the three most important words are “I don’t know”. Beneath the gold rush and the debate over which AI models will win lies “one of the biggest business questions we have ever been asked to unwind”, he said, adding that everyone can be wrong. In 1999 investors correctly grasped that the internet would be huge, yet still lost money backing the wrong companies, including AOL, Yahoo and Cisco.
The candour in the room was almost refreshing: it is not typical for the global financial elite to confess to being clueless beyond a point. Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan wrapped up by offering a way forward, arguing that realising AI’s promise requires putting it to work in the real world, and that China’s vast industrial base offers fertile ground to do so. It was a reassuring note on which to end a lively summit, even if certainty remains in short supply.
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CONTEXT NEWS
The Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit was held in Hong Kong from November 2 to November 4. The theme was “Rethinking the playbook”.
The annual gathering, which was first held in 2022, is organised by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

(Editing by Peter Thal Larsen; Production by Pranav Kiran)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on GALANI/  una.galani@thomsonreuters.com))