The leading stock has notched four consecutive limit-ups, and the education sector staged a counter-trend surge.

On July 30, the education sector once again surged against the market trend.

Today, Itcast Education opened with a trading limit lock, successfully notching its fourth consecutive daily limit. As of press time, Itcast Education is quoted at 8.01 yuan.

Within four trading days, Itcast Education has accumulated a 46.44% increase.

This is not a solo carnival for a single stock.

The entire education sector has collectively strengthened recently. Since the beginning of this week, the Shenwan Education Index has risen by more than 12% as a whole.

Within the sector, Chuangye Heima, Kede Education, Xue Da Education, Kaiwen Education, Only Education, Offcn Education and other stocks have followed the upward trend one after another.

Against the backdrop of the overall weak market, the counter-trend surge of the education sector is particularly eye-catching.

The collective sharp rise of the education sector and the direct trigger for Itcast Education's four consecutive daily limits this time come from the continuous activity of the AI education concept.

Against the general background where the AI wave forces workplace personnel to upgrade their skills, the demand for AI programming, big data, and intelligent manufacturing training has skyrocketed.

Reports from iResearch show that the total scale of China's GenAI + education products and services is expected to reach 3.442 trillion yuan in 2025, and will drive the scale to 8.91 trillion yuan by 2028 with a 37% compound annual growth rate.

Itcast Education is exactly riding the upsurge of AI education.

Recently, the company officially launched the new discipline of "AI Embodied Intelligent Robot Development", and the first cohort will officially start on October 20 this year. The courses simultaneously cover three mainstream types of equipment: industrial robotic arms, quadruped inspection robots, and humanoid service robots.

On July 28, the company further launched a complete closed-loop embodied intelligent talent training solution, and simultaneously released 6 layers of teaching robot hardware products.

The company disclosed that the short-term training business has already offered the discipline of "AI Embedded + Robot Development", and the enrollment work for the newly launched "AI Embodied Intelligent Robot Development" discipline is steadily advancing.

On the basis of market sentiment and fundamentals, intensive favorable policies are also driving the overall strengthening of the sector.

On June 29, the State Council issued the "15th Five-Year Plan" for Education Development, clarifying that a high-quality education system will be basically completed by 2030, and promoting artificial intelligence education across all education stages.

On July 16, the Ministry of Education released the supplementary majors of the 2026 "Catalogue of Vocational Education Majors", adding a total of 27 undergraduate and junior college vocational education majors, including cutting-edge directions such as humanoid robot engineering technology and embodied intelligent computing technology.

In fact, as early as April 2, five departments including the Ministry of Education jointly issued the "Artificial Intelligence + Education Action Plan", clarifying that the pattern of deep integration of artificial intelligence and education will be basically formed by 2030.

The continuous increase of policy support for AI education and vocational education provides institutional growth expectations for the education sector.

From the perspective of the industry's supply and demand pattern, the talent demand in the AI industry is expanding rapidly.

In the first half of 2026, the number of newly posted jobs in the AI industry increased by 21.08% year-on-year, and the structural mismatch between talent capabilities and job requirements continues to generate training demand.

At the same time, the traditional leading supply is accelerating to clear out, and the industry competition pattern has been significantly optimized. With supply clearance superimposed on demand expansion, the education industry is ushering in a resonance between both supply and demand ends.

More crucially, this round of rise in the education sector is also superimposed on the general background of the overall market sentiment shift.

Recently, high-position tech stocks have continued to adjust, with monthly declines generally exceeding 40%, while the education sector has gone through a long period of valuation digestion in the past, and many stocks are at their historical bottom ranges.

Source: Tonghuashun iFind

The market style is accelerating the shift from high-valuation tech stocks to low-valuation sectors that previously underperformed.

Against the backdrop of large capital outflows from large-cap tech stocks, funds are starting to look for sectors with low valuations and relatively safe positions to hedge risks and seek arbitrage.

Of course, it is necessary to stay sober in the middle of the carnival.

The current TTM price-to-earnings ratio of Itcast Education is still negative, the company is still facing continuous loss pressure, and its price-to-book ratio is 2.5 times.

Superimposed on the fierce internal competition in the current education industry with a large number of peer companies, the pullback pressure is huge.

After consecutive daily limit increases, the market will eventually face a question: to what extent can the imaginative space of AI education be transformed into sustainable performance growth?

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Gelonghui APP" (ID: hkguruclub), author: Gelonghui editor, published by 36Kr with authorization.