Flamingo Ai (ASX:FGO) hasn’t had a good market run over the last 12 months, but investors who’d written it off will be ruing their mistake today.

It opened up 120 per cent at 1.1c, after doing a deal with HSBC.

The Hong Kong bank was trialing a virtual assistant designed by Flamingo and has signed the Aussie AI stock up to build them the real thing.

The price surge smashes the rise seen after it signed its first commercial deal, which happened in December last year with US insurer Nationwide Mutual when the stock rose 57 per cent. However, the share price did hit 2.2c on that day.

In April, Nationwide Mutual said it would look at other Flamingo products and services over the following six months.

Flamingo didn’t say how much the latest contract is worth, only that it’s a monthly subscription. It later said a services agreement for other products and services was for three years.

The company made $215,000 in the March quarter and had $5m left in cash. But it made just $351,319 in the prior six months to December 31, suggesting that revenue is starting to ramp up.

Flamingo Ai CEO Dr Catriona Wallace, said the contract wouldn’t have a material impact on cash burn.

Cash burn in the last quarter was $1.8m, led by staff costs and followed by R&D spending and admin.