GigaDevice Semiconductor Prices Hong Kong IPO at Top End, Raises $600 Million

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China’s GigaDevice Semiconductor said on Friday it has set the offer price for its Hong Kong listing at HK$162 per H share, the top end of its marketed range, raising HK$4.68 billion ($600.4 million), according to an exchange filing.

The Shanghai-listed chipmaker had earlier marketed the shares within a price range of HK$132 to HK$162 per H share and disclosed last week that it would offer about 28.9 million H shares in the deal. The final pricing reflects strong investor demand for Chinese semiconductor and artificial intelligence-related stocks.

GigaDevice’s Hong Kong debut comes amid a surge in fundraising by Chinese tech companies in the city, as Beijing encourages domestic champions in AI and semiconductors to tap capital markets. Hong Kong has re-emerged as the world’s leading IPO venue, driven by regulatory adjustments and pent-up demand from issuers after years of tighter oversight on the mainland.

According to LSEG data, companies raised around $37.2 billion from 115 new listings in Hong Kong last year, the highest level since 2021. Investor appetite has been underlined by the strong performance of recent debuts, including MiniMax Group, whose shares doubled in value on their first day of trading on Friday.

Another semiconductor firm, OmniVision Integrated Circuits, is also set to begin trading in Hong Kong next week following a secondary offering.

GigaDevice said it expects its H shares to start trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 13.

EU Considers Applying Tougher Content Rules to WhatsApp Under Digital Services Act

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The European Union is considering making WhatsApp more accountable for tackling illegal and harmful content after the messaging platform crossed a key user threshold under the bloc’s digital regulations, a European Commission spokesperson said on Friday.

WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, reported about 51.7 million average monthly active users for its WhatsApp Channels service in the European Union during the first six months of 2025. This exceeds the 45 million user threshold set by the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), potentially bringing the service under stricter regulatory oversight.

The DSA imposes tougher obligations on so-called “very large online platforms,” requiring them to take stronger action against illegal and harmful content. Platforms already designated under this category include Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Temu and LinkedIn.

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said the Commission’s focus is on distinguishing between private messaging, which falls outside the scope of the DSA, and public-facing features such as WhatsApp Channels, which function more like social media platforms.

“The objective for the Commission is to check what is actually private messaging, which doesn’t fall under the scope of the DSA, and what are open channels that act more as a social media platform, which do fall under the scope of the DSA,” Regnier told a daily press briefing. He added that the Commission is actively examining the issue and did not rule out formally designating WhatsApp Channels under the DSA.

WhatsApp was not immediately available for comment.
If designated as a very large online platform, WhatsApp could face fines of up to 6% of its global annual revenue for breaches of the DSA.

Musk’s xAI to Invest Over $20 Billion in Mississippi Data Center

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xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk, will invest more than $20 billion to build a large-scale data center in Southaven, Mississippi, state Governor Tate Reeves said on Thursday.

The investment comes as booming demand for generative AI drives tech companies to sharply expand computing infrastructure. Data centers have become a focal point for spending by AI startups and hyperscalers seeking to train increasingly powerful models.

According to the governor’s statement, xAI expects to begin operations at the Southaven data center in February 2026. Musk had previously announced on December 30 that xAI had acquired a data center named “MACROHARDRR,” saying the facility would lift the company’s total computing capacity to 2 gigawatts, though he did not disclose the investment size or location at the time.

The Southaven site is located near a power plant recently acquired by xAI and close to its existing data center footprint in Memphis, Tennessee, the statement said. Memphis is home to xAI’s flagship supercomputer cluster, Colossus, which the company has described as the largest in the world.

The expansion highlights xAI’s aggressive push to compete more directly with leading AI developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, whose ChatGPT and Claude models dominate much of the current generative AI market.

xAI’s spending underscores the heavy cash demands of the AI race. Bloomberg reported earlier on Thursday that the company burned $7.8 billion in cash during the first nine months of the year, reflecting the high cost of advanced data center hardware and large-scale model training.