Chinese tech firms take the hardest hit as the global AI trade cools

What happened

Chinese tech firms take the hardest hit as the global AI trade cools, according to Crypto Briefing. The cooling global AI trade highlights the vulnerability of China's tech sector, emphasizing the need for diversification and global integration. 16, 2026 The global AI trade is losing steam, and nobody is feeling it quite like China.

The Star 50 index, Shanghai’s flagship gauge for tech and innovation stocks, has dropped nearly 40% in 2026. That makes it the worst-performing major tech index anywhere in the world, according to Bloomberg data.

Chinese companies selling into overseas markets are doing just fine. The ones relying on the home market are getting hammered.

A tale of two China tech trades Start with the losers. MetaX, one of China’s homegrown chip designers, has lost around 50% of its value this year.

Moore Threads, another domestic chipmaker positioned as a local alternative to foreign AI hardware, has seen a ~25% drop in shares in 2026. SenseTime, a long-standing name in Chinese computer vision and AI models, is down 40% this year. Advertisement Kuaishou, the short-video platform that has been pushing into AI tools, has fallen 51%.