Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) are among the Wall Street banks riding a $17.2 billion Chinese tech fundraising boom as President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping prepare to meet Thursday with AI expected on the agenda.
The financial ties remain strong even as the two countries compete for AI dominance. Calls to slow the race have gained support from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders has urged Trump to seek a similar agreement with China. However, Trump calls AI fears a hoax, while his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, argues that America “can’t pause” AI advancement.
“Big Short” investor Steve Eisman also disagreed with Amodei’s warning.
Polymarket traders currently give the U.S. and China a 10% chance of agreeing to “pace the AI frontier” by Dec. 31, with about $36,000 traded.
The market resolves ‘Yes’ only if both governments commit to measures that actually slow AI development, such as safety conditions on model training, compute caps or limits on AI systems building more powerful successors.
Banks Get Their Beak Wet
Wall Street is becoming a financial intermediary for both sides of the U.S.-China AI competition.
U.S. banks have helped arrange 19 Chinese high-tech share sales worth $17.2 billion this year, nearly 30% of the sector’s total issuance, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing LSEG data.
The deals stretch across AI, chips and data-center infrastructure. Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) helped arrange optical-components maker Zhongji Innolight’s $6.8 billion Hong Kong listing.
Goldman and Morgan Stanley have also worked on offerings from AI developer MiniMax and chipmakers Montage Technology and Iluvatar CoreX. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) helped bring Victory Giant Technology’s roughly $2.6 billion share sale to market.
Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong investors now hold more than $750 billion in U.S. equities, up 23% over the past year, Reuters reported.
Chinese and Hong Kong investors also participated in roughly $8.9 billion of U.S. AI funding rounds through mid-September, compared with just $436 million in 2023, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
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