Beijing AI storage maker seeks HKIPO

Beijing’s data lake specialist XSKY has filed for a Hong Kong listing, signaling another shift in the capital-raising path for China’s AI infrastructure players as the country scales its cloud and AI ambitions.

Founded in 2015 by Xu Xin and Wang Haomai, XSKY positions itself as an independent distributed AI storage provider that handles data lake storage along with training and inference workflows. The company counts more than 1,500 enterprise clients and has seen revenue surpass RMB 532 million from 2023 through September 2025. Its financials show a narrowing loss—RMB 181 million in 2023 to RMB 84 million in 2024—with a small profit of RMB 8.11 million in the first nine months of 2025. Such a trajectory matters in a market where cash burn for AI infrastructure players can be steep, but growing demand for scalable data storage and model training makes profitability possible at scale.

XSKY’s fundraising story helps explain the IPO calculus. The company has advanced through a Series F+ round, and its post-money valuation stood at RMB 4.58 billion after that round in December 2022. Major shareholders include Boyu Capital, which held a 9.62% stake pre-IPO and remains the largest external investor, alongside Qiming Venture Partners, Tencent, and Junlian Capital. Co-founders Xu Xin and Wang Haomai together control roughly a quarter of the voting rights (about 25.72%), underscoring a founder-led approach in a capital-intensive business that still relies on large strategic backers for scale.

The business model reflects a broader trend among China’s cloud-era players: building independent, distributed AI storage capabilities that can feed both enterprise data lakes and model training pipelines. XSKY’s emphasis on training and inference solutions positions it at the intersection of data custodianship and AI compute—areas that Chinese regulators and provincial authorities have been eager to push as domestic alternatives to overseas suppliers.

From a supply-chain perspective, the HK listing route is telling. It suggests XSKY intends to leverage international capital markets to accelerate product development, expand go-to-market reach, and deepen partnerships with cloud-scale users, potentially including Tencent’s ecosystem. The presence of Tencent among its major backers signals a potential alignment with Chinese cloud and AI service proliferation, even as the company remains independently owned. Such dynamics matter for buyers and competitors: capital depth from state-ties or state-leaning investors can accelerate capability scaling, while a clear, market-led IPO process provides a transparent venue to gauge demand for domestic AI storage solutions.

For global manufacturers and AI users weighing China exposure, XSKY’s IPO filing highlights a few realities. First, the Chinese data infrastructure market continues to attract private and semi-state investors, fueling aggressive expansion in AI storage and data-processing capacities. Second, the backing by big names like Tencent can translate into faster integration with cloud platforms and AI tooling, potentially altering procurement dynamics for enterprises seeking scalable, in-country data solutions. Third, the path to profitability—evidenced by the narrowing losses and positive nine-month 2025 result—will hinge on the ability to convert growing client lists into steady, high-margin revenues, something that requires efficient data-management pipelines and sustained demand for both storage and inference workloads.

What to watch next? The IPO paperwork will reveal how XSKY intends to deploy new funds, including whether growth focuses on expanding capacity, accelerating product features for training workloads, or sharpening their go-to-market in key industries. Observers will also scrutinize the deal’s valuation and investor alignment—whether the public market will reward a founder-led, capital-intensive storage platform and how much strategic value Tencent and others plug into the company’s trajectory.

In short, XSKY’s HK listing filing is more than a fundraising event; it’s a window into how China’s AI infrastructure ecosystem is maturing, with private capital, strategic backers, and a Beijing-based technology stack marching toward global capital markets.

Sources

Beijing-Based AI Storage Firm XSKY, Funded to Series F+, Files for Hong Kong IPO