Comparative Tech Firm Premium Scoreboard.
The valuation gap between Western and Chinese frontier-tech firms is not one number — it varies sharply by sector, by listing venue, and by the regulatory shadow each firm sits under. This paper pairs the leading Western and Chinese firm in each of twelve frontier-tech sectors and computes the price-to-sales premium per pair. The headline median sits near parity at −19.5%, but that figure is a near-cancellation of two opposite regimes: foundation models cluster on the Chinese-premium side (median −75.75%, driven by the late-2025 / early-2026 HKEX listing window rerating top Chinese AI labs above their Western counterparts on trailing revenue), while humanoid robotics is unambiguously Western-premium-positive. Payments contributes the cohort's single cleanest regulatory-overhang datum — Stripe trades +117% above Ant Group despite Ant clearing eighteen times the payment volume. This is a descriptive paper, not a predictive one; the value sits in the pair-level structure, the trajectory data from end-2023 to mid-2026, and the per-pair sourcing back to public filings.
What we've actually found.
Stripe trades +117% above Ant Group despite 18× the payment volume.
The single cleanest regulatory-overhang pricing pair in the cohort. Ant's 2020 IPO halt is the load-bearing repricing event; the discount has not closed in the six years since. The widest gap between scale and price anywhere in the scoreboard.
Foundation models flipped Chinese-premium under the HKEX listing window.
Anthropic↔Zhipu sits at −96.5%; Moonshot at −66%; the foundation-model subgroup median is −75.75%. The Hong Kong listing window of late 2025 / early 2026 priced top Chinese AI labs above their Western counterparts on trailing revenue.
TSMC↔SMIC narrowed monotonically under export controls (+145% → +40%).
The cohort's cleanest narrowing trajectory. SMIC's P/S tripled across the same window as export-control overhang priced in domestic substitution. Foundry valuations are anchored by capacity and gross margin, not listing-venue narrative.
The full twelve-pair cohort, the prior-work table, the per-pair capability and revenue lines, the aggregate statistics, the sector subgroup view, the temporal premium trajectories, the methodology, and the editorial guardrails all live inside the v0 founding paper.
Published pieces.
Each card is a standalone read — a substantive finding or a release. Source audits, propagation fixes, and engineering hygiene live in the Changelog below as they accumulate.
When Chinese AI hits public markets, the premium changes in days.
We trace six pairs across four reference points from end-2023 to mid-2026, so the premium becomes a trajectory rather than a snapshot. The big movers reveal what actually drove repricing — HKEX listings, export-control overhang, revenue maturation.
A portfolio manager can now see when a premium is bending, not just where it sits. Anthropic↔Zhipu detonating on the HKEX rerating and TSMC↔SMIC narrowing monotonically under export controls are the cleanest two trajectories in the cohort.
The −19.5% headline hides two opposite tech-pricing regimes.
We disaggregated the cohort into four sector buckets — foundation models, semiconductors, humanoid robotics, payments — and read each subgroup separately. The aggregate −19.5% median turns out to be a near-cancellation of two opposite regimes.
Foundation models cluster on the Chinese-premium side (median −75.75%); humanoid robotics is unambiguously Western-premium-positive; semiconductors are the only true mixed-signal zone. The sector view is what an analyst should anchor on, not the headline median.
Stripe trades 117% above Ant Group despite Ant clearing 18× the payment volume.
We added three pairs that test the boundary of the Western-premium thesis — Cohere↔01.AI in enterprise AI, Mistral↔DeepSeek in open-weight models, and Stripe↔Ant Group in payments. The cohort now covers twelve documented pairs.
Stripe↔Ant at +117% is the cleanest regulatory-overhang pricing in the dossier — Ant trades at a 50%+ discount despite eighteen times Stripe's payment volume. Mistral↔DeepSeek inverts the open-weights side decisively in the Chinese firm's favor.
What investors actually pay for Western tech firms over their Chinese pair.
The founding paper. Nine paired Western and Chinese firms — frontier models, robotics, semiconductors, foundry — each scored on capability, revenue, valuation, and the price-to-sales premium, with every datum tied to a public filing.
There has been no public scoreboard that quantifies the Western premium per pair with named counterparts. This is it. A quarterly cadence tied to filing events, not analyst-report calendars, and held to the same source bar on both sides.
Methodology, propagation, audits.
Smaller fixes — source audits, page/code reconciliation, engineering — that aren't publishable on their own but are recorded here for traceability.
No changelog entries yet — the Markets cohort has been a clean development arc of substantive additions. Audits and propagation fixes will land here as they accumulate.