Zhipu AI
Zhipu AI is a Beijing-based artificial intelligence company, formally incorporated in 2019 as a Tsinghua University spin-off. It develops the GLM (General Language Model) series of large language models. A notable technical contribution is GLM-130B, a 130-billion-parameter bilingual model trained on 400 billion tokens, detailed in an October 2022 paper; the paper reports the model outperformed GPT-3 175B on the MMLU benchmark in a 5-shot setting. The company has released open-source variants such as ChatGLM-6B, which accumulated over 50,000 GitHub stars by early 2026. In May 2025, Zhipu AI closed a RMB 2.5 billion (approximately $350 million) funding round led by the Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund, with participation from Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, and Ant Group. Zhipu AI matters now because it is one of the few Chinese foundation-model developers that consistently open-sources its model weights and architectures, providing a counterweight to proprietary alternatives while operating under U.S. semiconductor export controls that constrain its compute resources.
Signal Radar
Five-axis snapshot of this entity's footprint
Mentions × Lab Attention
Weekly mentions (solid) and average article relevance (dotted)
Timeline
20- FundingJul 9, 2026
Raised over $1 billion from Alibaba, Tencent, and state funds
View source- amount:
- $1,000,000,000+
- Research MilestoneJul 9, 2026
Began developing custom inference ASICs to cut GPU dependency
View source - Product LaunchJul 2, 2026
Launched ZCode, a terminal-native coding agent optimized for GLM-5.2
View source - Research MilestoneJun 22, 2026
Zhipu ranked world's third-best AI lab by Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index
View source - Product LaunchMay 19, 2026
Announced upcoming release of GLM-5.1 series with 1M context window and 128K output tokens
View source - Product LaunchApr 9, 2026
Announced the release of the GLM-5.1 large language model, claiming significant performance gains over GLM-5.0.
View source- version:
- GLM-5.1
- previous version:
- GLM-5.0
- Research MilestoneApr 7, 2026
Zhipu AI's GLM-5.1 model is reported to achieve autonomous self-improvement capability, evaluating and refining its own outputs without human metrics.
View source - Product LaunchMar 27, 2026
Released GLM-5.1 series of large language models, including flagship GLM-5.1-9B/1M with 1M token context.
View source - Product LaunchMar 21, 2026
Announced GLM-5.1 model series with 1M token context window and 128K output tokens
View source- context window:
- 1 million tokens
- output tokens:
- 128K
- Product LaunchFeb 25, 2026
Publicly called for global partnerships with computing resource providers, signaling severe infrastructure constraints.
View source - FundingJan 12, 2026
Zhipu market cap reaches HK$1 trillion (US$128 billion), surging 1,700% from IPO price
View source- amount:
- HK$1 trillion
- round:
- IPO
- FundingDec 31, 2025
Reported 2025 revenue of 724.33 million yuan (US$104.8 million), a 131.9% year-on-year increase.
View source- amount:
- $104.8M
- metric:
- annual_revenue
- Product LaunchOct 1, 2025
Released GLM-5.0 model in Q4 2025 with strong performance on coding and math benchmarks.
View source- version:
- GLM-5.0
- architecture:
- mixture-of-experts (MoE)
- IpoDec 1, 2023
Listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, raising approximately HK$3.5 billion.
View source- amount:
- HK$3.5B
Relationships
14Competes With
Developed
Partnered
Acquired
Spun Off
Frequently appears with
3Entities that show up in the same articles — shared coverage, not a stated relationship.
Recent Articles
3Zhipu AI Builds 1GW China-Only Data Center, Acquires Compiler Startup
+Zhipu AI builds 1GW all-domestic chip data center, acquires compiler startup, explores custom AI chip development to decouple from Nvidia.
100 relevanceDeepSeek, Zhipu AI Build Custom Inference Chips to Cut GPU Dependency
~DeepSeek and Zhipu AI are developing custom inference chips to cut GPU costs. China's domestic chip budget share hit 46% in July 2026.
100 relevanceZhipu AI Launches Claude Code Clone 'ZCode' with GLM-5.2
+Zhipu AI launched ZCode, a Claude Code clone for GLM-5.2, with three pricing tiers and remote execution via WeChat.
83 relevance
Predictions
No predictions linked to this entity.
AI Discoveries
3- observationactive4d ago
Lifecycle: Zhipu AI
Zhipu AI is in 'declining' phase (0 mentions/3d, 1/14d, 19 total)
90% confidence - hypothesisactiveJul 18, 2026
H: Within 60 days, Nvidia will announce a formal partnership or investment in a Chinese AI company (lik
Within 60 days, Nvidia will announce a formal partnership or investment in a Chinese AI company (likely Moonshot AI or Zhipu AI) to counter the Alibaba-SAIL ecosystem threat.
65% confidence - observationactiveJul 11, 2026
[Compressed] Institutional knowledge: Zhipu AI
TRAJECTORY: Our understanding of Zhipu AI evolved from a peripheral Chinese AI lab to a credible competitive threat, driven by the sudden emergence of GLM-5.2 as a cost-performance leader and novel co-occurrences linking it to Western models (Claude Fable 5), signaling potential ecosystem crossover.
80% confidence
Sentiment History
| Week | Avg Sentiment | Mentions |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-W24 | 0.60 | 1 |
| 2026-W25 | 0.65 | 2 |
| 2026-W26 | 0.60 | 3 |
| 2026-W27 | 0.50 | 2 |
| 2026-W28 | 0.20 | 1 |
| 2026-W30 | 0.60 | 1 |