According to Bloomberg, Xiaohongshu plans to secretly submit an application for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong before the end of this month. According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, Xiaohongshu is working with consultants to advance relevant preparations.
Xiaohongshu was founded in Shanghai in 2013 by Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang. Its investors include Tencent, Alibaba, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital and Jinshajiang Venture Capital. Xiaohongshu will be valued at approximately $17 billion in a 2024 funding round. As the business grew, Xiaohongshu's valuation soared to $31 billion in secondary market transactions in September 2025, and it forecast full-year 2025 profits to shareholders of about $3 billion.
Although the Hong Kong market has shown strong receptivity to the listing of technology companies this year, ushering in the listing boom of emerging AI service and hardware developers such as MiniMax and Biren Technology, the rise of emerging AI services also poses a potential threat to Xiaohongshu, which may cannibalize the traffic and business models of traditional social platforms. In the field of short video and social e-commerce, Xiaohongshu faces fierce competition from ByteDance’s Douyin. When TikTok faced a brief ban in the United States last year, Xiaohongshu’s overseas version, RedNote, quickly gained popularity among overseas users as an alternative.