Zhipu AI (Z.ai)
Zhang Peng
Data verified as of Jul 17, 2026
Summary
Zhipu AI — branded Z.ai internationally — is a Beijing-based frontier AI lab spun out of Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Group in 2019, best known for its open-weight GLM foundation-model family and for becoming the world's first publicly listed LLM company with its January 2026 Hong Kong IPO (HKEX: 2513). Led by CEO Zhang Peng, it ships MIT-licensed frontier models — the current flagship GLM-5.2 (June 2026) is a 744B-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 1M-token context that leads open-source models on several agentic and coding benchmarks — alongside the Z.ai/ChatGLM assistant, API platforms, the AutoGLM agent line and the ZCode coding harness aimed at Anthropic's Claude Code. Added to the US Entity List in January 2025, Zhipu leans into a sovereign-AI strategy, selling government-grade LLM infrastructure across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Its stock rose roughly 1,700% in the six months after listing, pushing its market cap past HK$1 trillion (~US$128B), and in July 2026 it raised a further ~$4B placement to fund compute, with an up-to-RMB-15B Shanghai STAR Market listing also planned.
Main Products
Zhipu's MIT-licensed frontier line, designed for 'Agentic, Reasoning, Coding' workloads. GLM-5.2 (June 13, 2026) is a 744B-parameter mixture-of-experts model (40B active) with 1M-token context that scores 62.1 on SWE-bench Pro and 81.0 on Terminal-Bench 2.1, leading open-source models on several agentic benchmarks.
GLM-5.2 weights are live on Hugging Face under MIT license and instantly available on the GLM Coding Plan; GLM-5.5 is rumored for around August 2026.
Zhipu's consumer chatbot, served as ChatGLM in China and chat.z.ai internationally, running the GLM-5 family with vision, image/video generation (Ying) and agent features.
Roughly 3M free overseas users after the GLM-4.6 release (a tenfold jump in 2025), alongside a large domestic ChatGLM base.
Zhipu's agentic product line: AutoGLM operates phones and the web on a user's behalf (AutoGLM-Thinking reasons and acts concurrently), while ZCode — launched July 2, 2026 — is a coding-agent harness for GLM-5.2 aimed squarely at Anthropic's Claude Code, seeded with free-token promotions.
ZCode launched July 2, 2026 with 5M free tokens for new users; GLM Coding Plan demand after GLM-4.7 was rationed to 20% of volume in January 2026.
What's Next
Operations & Revenue
Zhipu is the world's first publicly listed LLM company and one of the best-performing 2026 listings anywhere — up ~1,700% to a market cap above US$125B. It ships MIT-licensed frontier models at a rapid cadence (GLM-5, 5.1 and 5.2 within five months), sells sovereign-AI infrastructure to governments across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and is deploying a fresh ~$4B placement into compute while planning an up-to-RMB-15B Shanghai STAR Market listing.
Revenue Streams
API platform & GLM Coding Plan
Per-token access to the GLM family via open.bigmodel.cn (China) and the Z.ai open platform (international), plus subscription coding plans (~$10–80/month) whose demand after GLM-4.7 was so hot that sales were briefly rationed.
Key Metrics
Timeline
On January 8, 2026 Zhipu lists on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as Knowledge Atlas Technology (2513.HK), raising ~$558M at a HK$51.8B (~$6.7B) valuation — the first of China's AI tigers, and the first pure LLM company anywhere, to go public. MiniMax follows shortly after.
Zhipu releases GLM-5 (February 11), GLM-5.1 (April) and GLM-5.2 (June 13, 2026) — the latter a 744B-total / 40B-active MoE with 1M-token context under an MIT license, scoring 62.1 on SWE-bench Pro and topping open-source rankings on agentic benchmarks, in what observers call a second 'DeepSeek moment' for coding.
On July 8, 2026 — after a ~1,700% post-IPO rally driven by GLM-5.2 — Zhipu prices a ~US$4B follow-on H-share placement at HK$1,588 per share; the stock rises 22% on pricing and its market capitalization crosses HK$1 trillion (~US$128B). Proceeds fund compute infrastructure and model development.
On July 28, 2025 Zhipu releases GLM-4.5 — a 355B-parameter MIT-licensed mixture-of-experts model built for 'Agentic, Reasoning, Coding' workloads that ranks #1 among open models at launch — and rebrands internationally as Z.ai. GLM-4.6 and 4.7 follow, with overseas users growing tenfold.
Funding
Cumulative disclosed raise · dated rounds