01 AI Seeks Pre-IPO Funding for 2027 Hong Kong Listing as Sovereign AI Order Book Tops $220 Million
Kai-Fu Lee's startup 01 AI is seeking pre-IPO funding ahead of a target 2027 Hong Kong stock exchange listing. The company has shifted its business model from training frontier foundation models to deploying sovereign AI systems for government agencies and large enterprises.
Order bookings for these enterprise deployments grew to approximately $220M in 2026, up from roughly $74M in 2025. The firm previously raised about $1 billion in 2023 to build large language models but is no longer training them. 01 AI has not yet closed the new funding round or filed its prospectus to list.
From the sources (4 posts)
@poezhao0605I wrote about this pivot in late June. 01 AI stopped chasing OpenAI. Kai-Fu Lee's reference point is now Palantir: sell sovereign AI systems to governments and large enterprises. Its order book ran from roughly $74M in 2025 to $220M in 2026
@poezhao0605Kai-Fu Lee's 01 AI is targeting a 2027 Hong Kong IPO. The company raised ~$1B in 2023 to build frontier AI models. It no longer trains them.
@businessExclusive: an startup founded by Google's former head of China, is pressing ahead with fundraising plans ahead of a 2027 IPO
@runtimewireKai-Fu Lee's is seeking pre-IPO funding ahead of a targeted 2027 Hong Kong IPO, pivoting from foundation-model lab to enterprise AI deployments. has not closed the round or filed to list yet.