Hong Kong-listed company 18C Corporation is making waves in the Physical AI sector by holding a hearing on May 1st.

Recently, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that Beijing 51WORLD Digital Twin Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "51WORLD") has passed the listing hearing and will impact the first stock of Physical AI with Chapter 18C rules, with CICC and Huatai International as joint sponsors. Founded in February 2015, 51WORLD is a technology company dedicated to cloning the Earth's 5.1 billion square kilometers. The company has made significant investments in the three core areas of 3D graphics, simulation and artificial intelligence, and has developed three core businesses: 51Aes (Digital Twin Platform), 51Sim (Synthetic Data and Simulation Platform), and 51Earth (Digital Earth Platform). The company's products and solutions have been widely used by over a thousand large and medium-sized enterprises globally, with business operations in 19 countries and regions around the world. Currently, Physical AI is becoming a new direction in the global technology industry, representing the next wave of AI, with a trillion-dollar market space behind it. From a technical perspective, Physical AI needs to combine physical laws with artificial intelligence technology to optimize the content generated by AI by integrating real physical rules to make it more in line with the logic and laws of the real world. Since its inception, 51WORLD has been moving closer to Physical AI starting from digital twins. After years of technological accumulation and strategic layout, the company has established complete technical capabilities in the three key components of Physical AI (data fuel, spatial model, training platform), and has built a full-chain Physical AI closed-loop ecosystem of "synthetic data - spatial intelligent model - simulation training platform", forming unique technological and ecological barriers that are difficult to replicate, making it one of the few companies in the world that truly possess the three elements of Physical AI. In terms of performance, in the past six months of 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, 51WORLD's operating income was RMB 170 million, 256 million, 287 million, and 54 million respectively, with a year-on-year revenue growth of 62% in the first half of 2025; the corresponding net losses were RMB 190 million, 87 million, 79 million, and 94 million respectively, with corresponding adjusted net losses of RMB 132 million, 68 million, 43 million, and 67 million respectively. In terms of technology research and development, as a national "Little Giant" enterprise with specialized and new expertise, 51WORLD has obtained over 265 software copyrights and valid authorized patents. With a complete industrial chain layout and leading product technology, 51WORLD continues to promote industry standards improvement and industrial structure optimization. It has participated in the formulation of 41 international, national, regional, and group standards for digital twins and related applications. In terms of financing history, 51WORLD has gone through 8 rounds of financing, and as of December 31, 2024, the company ranked first in financing in the Chinese digital twin solution market, with a valuation of RMB 4.4 billion in the last round. It has a strong lineup of investors, including well-known funds like Lightspeed, Cloud Nine, Star VC, and Xeno Investment, as well as industry investors like SenseTime Technology and Moore Thread. In addition, 51WORLD has also attracted well-known individual investors such as Ge Weidong and Liang Botao. Industry insiders believe that after passing the Hong Kong Stock Exchange hearing, if 51WORLD can successfully go public, it will not only fill the void in the Hong Kong stock market in the field of Physical AI but also has the potential to become a rare and promising target for investors with its unique technological and ecological barriers.