Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
Zhipu AI (Z.ai)
The Beijing model lab spun out of Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG) in 2019, whose GLM ("General Language Model") family made it one of China's earliest builders of large language models and, from January 2026, the first independent large-model developer anywhere to list its shares (Hong Kong, stock code 2513). For most of its life Zhipu was the Chinese lab most tied to the state: its largest customers were government bodies and state-owned enterprises buying on-premise deployments, it raised money from city and provincial investment funds as well as Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and Saudi Aramco's venture arm, and the US added it to the Commerce Department's Entity List in January 2025 for supporting China's military modernisation, a charge it called baseless. OpenAI singled it out in June 2025 as being "on the front line" of China's push to export its AI to other governments. Zhipu then turned to developers worldwide with MIT-licensed open weights (GLM-4.5, July 2025; GLM-5, February 2026), a cheap coding subscription and an international brand, Z.ai. Its revenue grew from RMB 57.4m in 2022 to RMB 724m in 2025 (~$101m at ~RMB 7.2/USD) and RMB 954m in the first half of 2026 alone, while losses stayed in the billions of yuan. After the IPO at HK$116.20 its shares rose more than twelvefold by early June 2026 and peaked near HK$2,980 (reported) before falling below HK$1,000 in July and to ~HK$793 by mid-September; it raised ~$4bn in July and ~$5bn in September 2026 (reported).
At a glance
- Founded
- June 2019 (Caixin), Beijing, as a commercial spin-out of Tsinghua's KEG lab; founders include Tang Jie and Li Juanzi (Tsinghua professors) (company; reported)
- Headquarters
- Beijing (Haidian, near Tsinghua); international offices or centres in the Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia and the UK (reported, 2025)
- Ownership / structure
- Public (HKEX: 2513) since 8 January 2026; legal name Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC Ltd. (北京智谱华章科技股份有限公司), English name changed to Z.AI Co., Ltd. (HKEX announcement, 14 July 2026, reported). Pre-IPO, a controlling group of founders, employee platforms and a Tsinghua-linked holder had ~33% (~30% post-IPO); Legend Capital funds ~6.7%, Meituan ~4.3%, Qiming ~2.5%, Tencent ~1.7%, and several state- or university-linked funds (Tsinghua Holdings-linked, Zhongguancun, Zhuhai Huafa, Hangzhou Chengtou, Beijing Haidian and Daxing funds) each ~1–4% (prospectus, as summarised; verify)
- Leadership (2026)
- Liu Debing (chairman, reported); Zhang Peng (CEO); Tang Jie (founder and chief scientist; Tsinghua professor); Li Juanzi (co-founder)
- Products
- GLM language models (GLM-130B 2022; ChatGLM 2023; GLM-4 2024; GLM-4.5 July 2025; GLM-4.6 September 2025; GLM-4.7 December 2025; GLM-5 February 2026; GLM-5.1–5.3 2026); CogView/CogVideoX image and video models, Ying video app (July 2024); GLM-4-Voice; AutoGLM phone agent (October 2024); ChatGLM / Zhipu Qingyan consumer app; bigmodel.cn and Z.ai open platform (MaaS); GLM Coding Plan; ZCode desktop app (July 2026); on-premise enterprise and government deployments; AMiner research database (since 2006)
- Scale
- Revenue RMB 57.4m (2022), 124.5m (2023), 312.4m (2024), 724m (2025), 954m (H1 2026); net loss RMB 143.7m (2022), 788m (2023), 2.96bn (2024), ~4.7bn (2025), 2.07bn (H1 2026) (prospectus and interim/annual results as reported); >8,000 institutional customers (June 2025, company); 657 R&D staff (June 2025, prospectus); ARR ~$1.6bn by end-August 2026 (company claim, reported)
- Market value
- ~$500m (July 2023) → ~$1bn (September 2023) → ~$3bn (May 2024) (reported private valuations); IPO at HK$116.20, implied ~HK$51.2bn (~$6.6bn at HK$7.8/USD) (January 2026); ~HK$629.5bn (~$80bn) on 2 June 2026 (Yicai); ~$62bn in August 2026 (reported)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Tsinghua KEG spin-out (2019); GLM-130B and ChatGLM open weights (2022–23); Big Tech and Saudi funding (2023–24); US Entity List designation (2025); state capital and the sovereign-AI push (2025); GLM-4.5 open weights and the Coding Plan (2025); Hong Kong IPO (2026); GLM-5, the compute crunch and the API pivot (2026)
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2019
Tsinghua KEG Spin Out
Founding (university spin-out)
2022
GLM 130B and ChatGLM Open Weights
Model release (research-access weights, then open weights)
2023
Big Tech and Saudi Funding
Funding rounds
2025
GLM 4 5 Open Weights and the Coding Plan
Model release (MIT-licensed open weights), pricing move (cheap API and coding subscription) and rebrand
2025
State Capital and Sovereign AI Push
Funding rounds (state-backed) and international expansion
2025
US Entity List Designation
Regulatory action (US export-control designation) and the company's response
2026
GLM 5 Compute Crunch and the API Pivot
Model release, capacity rationing and pricing, and post-IPO capital raising
2026
Hong Kong IPO
IPO