ADA Space Seeks HK$1B in Hong Kong’s First AI Satellite IPO
3 min readADA Space, a Chengdu company that builds satellites with AI computing on board, is taking orders this week for a Hong Kong listing of up to HK$1 billion, or about US$127 million. The ADA Space IPO is expected to price in mid November and would make the company the first orbital AI computing stock on the Hong Kong exchange, according to Caproasia.
From Chengdu to orbit
Founded in 2018 by Lu Chuan, a former researcher at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, ADA Space designs and builds satellites, runs them in orbit and sells space-based data services. Its flagship project is the Star Compute Plan, a planned constellation of 2,800 AI satellites, 2,400 for inference and 400 for training, meant to process data in orbit instead of beaming everything down to the ground.
The first 12 satellites launched in May 2025 as part of the Three-Body Computing Constellation led by Zhejiang Lab, with roughly 5 POPS of combined compute. Eight more Star Compute satellites went up on October 14 of this year on a Zhuque-2 rocket. ChinaTechNews counts 35 satellites across 15 missions so far.
The ADA Space IPO terms
Per Finimize, the company is offering 30.1 million H shares at up to HK$33.20 each, with 3 million reserved for Hong Kong retail investors and the rest placed internationally. Cornerstone investors JinkoSolar Investment and Kamshin have committed HK$60 million. Guotai Junan International is sole sponsor, and the company cleared its HKEX listing hearing on the third attempt in late October. Proceeds go mainly to a planned Shenzhen manufacturing center and research.
The numbers behind the pitch, as reported by BigGo Finance: revenue rose from 508 million yuan in 2023 to 703 million yuan in 2025, while net losses widened from 139 million to 256 million yuan. First-half 2026 revenue was 226 million yuan with a 151 million yuan loss, though operating cash flow turned positive. As of October 20 the order book held 114 AI satellites worth 3.475 billion yuan. An April pre-IPO round valued the company at 11.55 billion yuan.
Why it matters
Computing in space has gone from science fiction to a race. Google ran a Gemma model on an orbiting TPU this autumn under Project Suncatcher, and SpaceX has talked up orbital data centers for 2027. ADA Space says it ran Alibaba’s Qwen3 in orbit in November 2025, and it now wants public market money to scale manufacturing from 24 satellites a year to 60 by 2028.
The risks are plain in the filing: losses are growing, margins swing, and the business leans on government-linked customers. Hong Kong investors will decide next week whether an orbital AI network is a story worth paying for.