Z.ai

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Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd. (北京智谱华章科技有限公司), branded as Z.ai (formerly known as Zhipu AI until July 2025), is a Chinese artificial intelligence company specializing in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI technologies. Founded in 2019 as a spinoff from Tsinghua University, the company is one of China's "AI Tigers" and is considered the third-largest LLM market player in China's AI industry according to the International Data Corporation.[4]

Z.ai
智谱
Type Private company
Industry Artificial intelligence
Founded June 11, 2019
Founders Tang Jie
Li Juanzi
Headquarters Haidian District, Beijing, China
Key people Tang Jie (Co-founder)
Li Juanzi (Co-founder)
Liu Debing (Chairman)
Zhang Peng (CEO)


Products GLM (General Language Model)
ChatGLM
CodeGeeX
AutoGLM
Ying (text-to-video)
CogVLM
CogView
CogVideoX
MaaS Platform
GLM-Z1
Revenue US$42 million (2024)[1]
US$168 million (2025, expected)[1]


Valuation US$2.8 billion (December 2024)[2]
Employees ~2,000 (2025)[3]
Website / zhipuai.cn z.ai / zhipuai.cn

History

Founding and Early Development (2019-2022)

Z.ai was founded on June 11, 2019, by Tsinghua University professors Tang Jie and Li Juanzi at the Tsinghua University Science Park in Beijing's Zhongguancun district.[5] The company originated from Tsinghua's Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG), where it was initially incubated.[5]

The founders faced early challenges securing initial investment. The administrative commission of Zhongguancun Science Park provided the team with three months of rent-free office space to help kickstart development.[6] Initially focused on building knowledge graphs, the company pivoted in 2020 to invest in developing large-model AI technologies, recognizing their potential before many competitors.[6]

In late 2020, Zhipu developed the GLM pre-training architecture. By 2021, they completed training of the GLM-10B model with tens of billions of parameters. In 2022, the company developed and open-sourced the GLM-130B, a massive bilingual pre-training model supporting Chinese and English.[1]

Expansion and ChatGLM Launch (2023-2024)

In 2023, Zhipu launched ChatGLM, a dialogue model with hundreds of billions of parameters, and upgraded it twice during the year. The open-source version, ChatGLM-6B, allowed developers to fine-tune and deploy the model locally.[1] The ChatGLM series has achieved over 30 million global downloads on platforms including Hugging Face.[7]

In March 2024, CEO Zhang Peng announced that Zhipu was developing Sora-like technology as a pathway to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).[8] In July 2024, the company debuted "Ying," a text-to-video model capable of generating six-second video clips.[4]

In October 2024, Zhipu released AutoGLM, an AI agent application that uses voice commands to complete tasks within smartphones, marking a significant advancement in "Phone Use" AI applications.[9]

Entity List and Regulatory Challenges (2025)

On January 16, 2025, the United States Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security added Zhipu AI (Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd.) and several affiliates to the U.S. Entity List, imposing additional export licensing requirements due to national security concerns.[10] The company rejected these allegations as baseless.[11]

Rebranding and Recent Developments (2025)

In July 2025, Zhipu rebranded from "Zhipu AI" to "Z.ai" alongside the release of GLM-4.5 and GLM-4.5 Air, their next-generation language models.[12] The company announced its GLM-4.5 model would cost 11 cents per million input tokens and 28 cents per million output tokens, pricing it below competitors like DeepSeek.[12]

In September 2025, Z.ai offered migration plans for users of Anthropic's Claude AI to switch to GLM-4.5, capitalizing on global AI shifts.[13] CEO Zhang Peng stated publicly that full artificial superintelligence is unlikely by 2030, though systems may surpass humans in some aspects.[14]

Corporate Structure and Leadership

Founders and Key Personnel

  • Tang Jie - Co-founder and controlling shareholder. Tang is a professor at Tsinghua University's Department of Computer Science and Technology, Director of the Foundation Model Research Center at Tsinghua's AI Institute, and an IEEE, ACM, and AAAI Fellow. He directly owns 7.4081% of the company and controls approximately 17.3966% of voting rights through shareholding platforms.[11]
  • Li Juanzi - Co-founder and professor at Tsinghua University. She directs the university's Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG), which has incubated multiple AI startups including DeepLang and Moonshot AI.[5]
  • Liu Debing - Chairman and co-controlling shareholder with Tang Jie. He holds 0.2554% directly and controls significant voting rights.[11]
  • Zhang Peng - Chief Executive Officer. Previously served as deputy director of the Science and Technology Big Data Research Center at Tsinghua University's Institute of Data Science. Holds a doctorate in computer science from Tsinghua University.[15]
  • Zhang Fan - Former Chief Operating Officer, departed in 2025.[16]

Ownership Structure

The company has no single controlling shareholder. The effective controllers are co-founder Tang Jie and chairman Liu Debing, who together with CEO Zhang Peng and other aligned stakeholders collectively control 36.9647% of voting rights.[11]

Products and Technologies

GLM Series

The General Language Model (GLM) series is Z.ai's flagship line of pre-trained dialogue models, initially developed in collaboration with Tsinghua KEG in 2023.[4]

GLM Model Evolution
Model Release Date Parameters Key Features
GLM-130B 2022 130B Bilingual (Chinese/English) pre-training model[1]
ChatGLM-6B 2023 6B Open-source, locally deployable[7]
GLM-4 January 2024 Undisclosed Longer contexts, multi-modal capabilities, "All Tools" capability[1]
GLM-4.5 July 2025 355B total, 32B active Mixture-of-Experts architecture, dual-mode system, 128K context[17]
GLM-4.5V July 2025 Not specified Vision and multimodal support[17]
GLM-4.6 September 2025 Undisclosed 200K context window, enhanced coding and reasoning, powers chat.z.ai[18]
GLM-Z1 2025 Not specified Reasoning-focused model[19]

AutoGLM

AutoGLM is an AI agent application launched in October 2024 that can simulate human operations on mobile phones and computers to perform various tasks.[20] Key features include:

  • Voice command control for complex multi-step tasks
  • Support for over 54-step operations across applications[21]
  • Integration with major Chinese apps including WeChat, Taobao, Meituan, and Xiaohongshu[22]
  • Cloud-based execution for privacy protection[23]
  • Partnership with Alibaba Cloud for smartphone AI agent deployment[24]

AutoGLM 2.0 was launched in August 2025, positioning it as the world's first mobile agent capable of handling tasks across different apps.[25]

Other Products

  • CodeGeeX - Code generation tool supporting multiple programming languages[7]
  • Ying (Template:Lang-zh) - Text-to-video model launched July 2024, generates 6-second video clips[4]
  • CogVLM and CogView - Visual language models for image understanding and text-to-image generation[7]
  • CogVideoX - Text-to-video generation model[26]
  • Zhipu Qingyan (智谱清言) - All-modal AI assistant app with over 25 million users, generating annual recurring revenue exceeding 10 million yuan[1]
  • GLM-4-Voice - Speech model for voice interactions[27]
  • GLM-4-Flash - Free API model for real-time web retrieval and long-context tasks[28]

Funding and Valuation

Funding History

Z.ai has raised approximately $1.5 billion across 12 funding rounds since its founding:[29]

Major Funding Rounds
Date Round Amount Lead Investors Valuation
September 2022 Series B Undisclosed Qiming Venture Partners Undisclosed
October 2023 Series B+ ~$350 million Alibaba Group, Tencent Undisclosed
May 2024 Series C $400 million Prosperity7 Ventures (Saudi Aramco) ~$3 billion[30]
December 2024 Series D $412 million Various $2.8 billion[2]
March 2025 Series D+ $257 million Hangzhou Municipal Construction Investment, Huafa Group ~$3 billion[31]
July 2025 Strategic $140 million Pudong Venture Capital, Zhangjiang Group >$2.79 billion[3]

Key Investors

Major institutional investors include:[29]

Initial Public Offering

In March 2025, Z.ai filed for IPO counseling with China International Capital Corporation (CICC) as its sponsor, becoming the first of China's "AI Six" unicorns to pursue a public listing.[11] The company restructured from a foreign-invested limited liability company to a foreign-invested joint-stock company to facilitate the IPO process.[11]

Business Model and Market Position

Revenue Streams

  • Enterprise Services: MaaS (Model-as-a-Service) platform providing API access to GLM models
  • Consumer Applications: Zhipu Qingyan app with premium subscription services generating over 10 million yuan annually[2]
  • Partnerships: Collaborations with hardware manufacturers including Honor, Intel, and Huawei[5]

The company has adapted its models for domestic hardware, including Huawei Technologies' semiconductors, to broaden China's AI ecosystem amid U.S. export restrictions.[32]

Market Performance

In 2024, Z.ai's commercial revenue reached US$42 million, with expectations to quadruple to US$168 million in 2025.[1] The company's MaaS platform experienced a 30-fold year-on-year increase in revenue after significantly lowering API prices.[2]

Competition

Z.ai competes primarily with other Chinese AI companies including:

The company is considered one of China's "AI Tigers" alongside Moonshot AI, Baichuan, and MiniMax.[6]

International Expansion

Z.ai has established regional headquarters, subsidiaries, and research centers in multiple countries including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Singapore, and Malaysia.[1] The company has signed frontier AI safety commitments alongside global leaders including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta.[1]

In 2025, the company formed a coalition with representatives from 10 Belt & Road and ASEAN countries to help member states develop sovereign AI infrastructure.[33]

Partnerships

Z.ai has formed strategic partnerships across various industries:

  • BioGeometry (February 2024) - Building large multimodal models for life sciences and medical research[34]
  • BYOND ASIA - Developing hyper-realistic digital humans for the entertainment industry[35]
  • Alibaba Cloud - Deployment of AutoGLM AI agents for smartphone users[24]
  • Huawei Technologies - Adaptation of models for domestic semiconductors[32]

Research and Development

Academic Contributions

Z.ai's founding team and researchers have made significant contributions to AI research, with publications including:

  • "ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools" (2024)[7]
  • "CodeGeeX: A Pre-Trained Model for Code Generation" (KDD 2023)[36]
  • Multiple papers on large language models, knowledge graphs, and AI agents

Technical Innovations

  • Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) Architecture: GLM-4.5 uses 355 billion total parameters with only 32 billion active per inference[17]
  • Dual-mode System: "Thinking mode" for complex reasoning and "non-thinking mode" for instant responses[37]
  • Agentic AI Capabilities: Integration of reasoning, coding, and tool use in single models[37]
  • Long-context Processing: Support for up to 200,000 tokens in GLM-4.6[18]

Corporate Philosophy

CEO Zhang Peng has stated the company's mission is to achieve "super cognitive intelligence beyond human level."[5] An internal saying at the company states: "No matter how much money we raise or how much money we make, it will be a hindrance on our road to AGI."[6] Zhang has also publicly commented on AI timelines, stating in September 2025 that full artificial superintelligence is unlikely by 2030 but that artificial general intelligence could emerge in limited domains by then.[14]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 "Chinese AI Model Zhipu Secures $410 Million Funding, 2024 Revenue to Double". Alibaba Reads. January 23, 2025. https://reads.alibaba.com/chinese-ai-model-zhipu-secures-410-million-funding-2024-revenue-to-double/.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "AI unicorn Zhipu raises $412 million in new funding round". TechNode. December 17, 2024. https://technode.com/2024/12/17/ai-unicorn-zhipu-raises-412-million-in-new-funding-round/.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "China's Zhipu AI Secures $140 Million Investment From Shanghai State Funds Amid IPO Push". Caixin Global. July 3, 2025. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2025-07-03/chinas-zhipu-ai-secures-140-million-investment-from-shanghai-state-funds-amid-ipo-push-102337464.html.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Z.ai - Wikipedia". October 7, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z.ai.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 "Zhipu AI: China's Generative Trailblazer Grappling with Rising Competition". Data Innovation. December 12, 2024. https://datainnovation.org/2024/12/zhipu-ai-chinas-generative-trailblazer-grappling-with-rising-competition/.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 "Zhipu AI: The Rise of an AI Tiger Reaching for AGI". The Turing Post. July 22, 2025. https://www.turingpost.com/p/zhipu.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 "ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools". arXiv. June 18, 2024. https://arxiv.org/html/2406.12793v1.
  8. ↑ "China's Zhipu AI says it is developing Sora-like technology as a path to artificial general intelligence". South China Morning Post. March 16, 2024. https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3255604/chinas-zhipu-ai-says-it-developing-sora-technology-path-artificial-general-intelligence.
  9. ↑ "China's Zhipu AI says its app can operate your smartphone for you". South China Morning Post. May 7, 2025. https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3284343/chinas-zhipu-ai-says-its-app-can-operate-your-smartphone-you.
  10. ↑ "Addition of Entities to and Revision of Entry on the Entity List". U.S. Federal Register. January 16, 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/16/2025-00704/addition-of-entities-to-and-revision-of-entry-on-the-entity-list.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 "Zhipu AI becomes first of China's 'AI Six' to pursue IPO". DIGITIMES. April 18, 2025. https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20250416PD215/ipo-2025-beijing-startup.html.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "China's latest AI model claims to be even cheaper to use than DeepSeek". CNBC. July 28, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/28/chinas-latest-ai-model-claims-to-be-even-cheaper-to-use-than-deepseek.html.
  13. ↑ "Migration from Claude to GLM-4.5". Z.ai. September 2025. https://z.ai/migration/claude.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "China's Zhipu AI says full artificial superintelligence unlikely by 2030". Reuters. September 30, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chinas-zhipu-ai-says-full-artificial-superintelligence-unlikely-by-2030-2025-09-30/.
  15. ↑ "Who's Who: China's AI Industry". The Wire China. March 27, 2025. https://www.thewirechina.com/chinas-ai-industry/.
  16. ↑ "Zhipu AI COO Zhang Fan Departs". TechNode. June 15, 2025. https://technode.com/2025/06/15/zhipu-ai-coo-departure/.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 "GLM-4.5 - Open-Source Agentic AI Model by Zhipu AI". glm45.org. https://glm45.org/.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 "zai-org/GLM-4.6". Hugging Face. https://huggingface.co/zai-org/GLM-4.6.
  19. ↑ "GLM-Z1 - Reasoning Model". Z.ai. 2025. https://docs.z.ai/guides/llm/glm-z1.
  20. ↑ "Zhipu AI Launches AutoGLM Agent: Simulate Human Phone Operations with Simple Commands". AI Base. https://www.aibase.com/news/12754.
  21. ↑ "Zhipu AI Smart Agent AutoGLM Upgrade: Launch of Large-Scale Beta Testing Supporting Over 54-Step Operations". AI Base. https://www.aibase.com/news/13580.
  22. ↑ "Chinese Zhipu Launches AutoGLM: Challenging Apple, Google, and Anthropic in AI Computer/Mobile Automation Revolution". CTOL Digital Solutions. October 28, 2024. https://www.ctol.digital/news/zhipu-launches-autoglm-ai-challenges-apple-google-anthropic/.
  23. ↑ "Amazing! Zhipu Creates World's First General Mobile Phone Agent". 36Kr. https://eu.36kr.com/en/p/3430686848486785.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 "Zhipu AI and Alibaba Cloud Partner on Mobile AI Agents". Alibaba Cloud. March 2025. https://www.alibabacloud.com/blog/zhipu-autoglm-partnership.
  25. ↑ "China's Zhipu Unveils World's First Mobile Agent, Turning Phones Into AI Assistants". Yicai Global. https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chinas-zhipu-unveils-worlds-first-mobile-agent-turning-phones-into-ai-assistants.
  26. ↑ "CogVideo: Text-to-Video Generation". GitHub. 2025. https://github.com/THUDM/CogVideo.
  27. ↑ "GLM-4-Voice". Z.ai. 2025. https://z.ai/products/voice.
  28. ↑ "GLM-4-Flash API". Z.ai. 2025. https://docs.z.ai/api/glm-4-flash.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 "Zhipu.ai - 2025 Funding Rounds & List of Investors". Tracxn. July 4, 2025. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/zhipu.ai/__vs60BhIzHeRwBtLTuoj841aSKyol6J8LYhHaTVGDSrU/funding-and-investors.
  30. ↑ "Alibaba-Backed Zhipu Raises $140 Million as DeepSeek Heats Up AI Investment". Bloomberg. March 3, 2025. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-03/alibaba-backed-zhipu-raises-140-million-as-deepseek-heats-up-ai.
  31. ↑ "Chinese AI firm Zhipu raises $257 mln in state-backed funding spree". Reuters. March 19, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/chinese-ai-firm-zhipu-raises-257-mln-state-backed-funding-spree-2025-03-19/.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 "Zhipu AI adapts models for Huawei chips amid US restrictions". South China Morning Post. April 2025. https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3285123/zhipu-ai-adapts-models-huawei-chips.
  33. ↑ "Zhipu AI Pushes Further into China's AI Agent Race with Free AutoGLM Launch". WinBuzzer. July 28, 2025. https://winbuzzer.com/2025/03/31/zhipu-ai-pushes-further-into-chinas-ai-agent-race-with-free-autoglm-launch-xcxwbn/.
  34. ↑ "BioGeometry and Zhipu AI Establish Strategic Cooperation". BioGeometry. February 7, 2024. https://www.biogeom.com/2024/02/07/biogeometry-and-zhipu-ai-establish-strategic-cooperation-to-building-a-large-multimodal-model-between-human-language-and-biological-language/.
  35. ↑ "Zhipu and BYOND ASIA (Hong Kong) Announce Strategic Partnership". PR Newswire. 2024. https://enmobile.prnasia.com/releases/apac/zhipu-and-byond-asia-hong-kong-announce-strategic-partnership-485370.shtml.
  36. ↑ "CodeGeeX: A Pre-Trained Model for Code Generation". ACM Digital Library. August 4, 2023. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3580305.3599790.
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 "GLM-4.5: Reasoning, Coding, and Agentic Abilities". Z.ai. https://z.ai/blog/glm-4.5.

External links

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