(Yicai Global) March 21 -- Kunlun Tech, a Chinese internet services firm, has invested USD44 million in hardware devices to develop a ChatGPT-like product, the firm said today, boosting its stock price to a record high.

Shares of the firm [SHE: 300418] closed up 8.27 percent at CNY30.1 (USD4.38) today, having risen over 108 percent this year.

The Beijing-based firm said earlier this month that it would release a ChatGPT-like product this year, which caught the attention of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The bourse asked the firm to provide details about its plan.

Kunlun Tech replied to the bourse on March 16, saying its artificial intelligence and AI-generated content businesses haven’t generated any revenue yet and are unlikely to have a big impact on its financial situation this year.

But the firm also said it would partner with Singularity AI to develop a ChatGPT-like product to be released later this year. The intellectual property will belong to Singularity AI and Kunlun Tech will be entitled to 50 percent of the net profit generated from commercialization of the product. Kunlun Tech admitted there are uncertainties over the commercialization process.

Beijing-headquartered Singularity AI focuses on developing large-scale pre-trained language models and application programming interfaces.

Kunlun Tech owns an overseas mobile game distribution and entertainment platform called StarX. The firm logged CNY4.7 billion (USD684.1 million) in revenue last year, down 2.33 percent from 2021, and CNY1.2 billion in net profit attributable to the parent firm, down 24.68 percent.

Editor: Tom Litting