In this episode of ETF Spotlight, I speak with Kevin Carter, Founder and CIO of EMQQ Global, about investing in Chinese AI companies and the China AI Tigers LLM ETF TGRZ.
The market has been surprised by how capital-efficient and powerful China’s open-weight models, including Moonshot AI’s Kimi and DeepSeek, have become. These models could threaten the profitability of US AI companies in the coming years.
Many leading Chinese models are open-weight, meaning users can download and customize them, while models from OpenAI and Anthropic are closed. US companies are increasingly using open-weight models from China because they want powerful AI as well as greater control over their data, the ability to customize models and lower costs.
NVIDIA NVDA CEO Jensen Huang is among the strongest supporters of open-source technology. The AI giant recently launched the Open Secure AI Alliance with other major technology companies, including Microsoft MSFT and SpaceX SPCX, following hacking incidents involving OpenAI’s autonomous AI agents on Hugging Face. After the attack, Hugging Face had to use an open-weight Chinese AI model from Z.ai to protect its systems.
TGRZ’s portfolio is currently highly concentrated in Z.ai, which went public in January 2026. The fund may also include pre-IPO exposure to Moonshot AI and DeepSeek.
EMQQ is also planning to introduce a Mag 3 EM ETF. TSMC TSM, Samsung and SK Hynix SKHY have come to dominate emerging markets investing and have effectively rewritten the asset class.
Tune in to the podcast to learn more.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).