After Jack Ma’s holographic appearance at an AI conference, shares of this Chinese company soared
- WiMi Hologram Cloud shares nearly quadruple on Nasdaq day after Alibaba founder Jack Ma appears holographically at World Artificial Intelligence Conference
- Start-up says it did not issue press release that appears to have contributed to investor excitement
The day after Ma’s speech at the conference, shares for a relatively obscure Chinese company nearly quadrupled in price on the Nasdaq. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
WiMi Hologram Cloud, which began trading in New York on April 1, closed at US$14.63 per American Depositary Share on July 10, compared to US$3.84 the day before. Prices peaked at US$24.74 on July 13 before coming down to US$17.99 on Thursday – still far higher than before the conference.
WiMi, a small company with just over a hundred employees, said it had no explanation for the sudden spike.
“We don't know the reason,” chief financial officer Yang Yanghua told the Post in an interview at the company’s Beijing office.
“Tech stocks in the capital markets of China and the United States have been appreciating recently, and we were just one of them,” he said, adding that the company did not proactively seek to associate itself with the WAIC, and some of the conference’s suppliers just happened to be using its technologies.
A press release attributed to WiMi and published online in the early hours of July 10, about the potential of holographic technologies in the age of 5G, appears to have contributed to the investor excitement.
