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Zhipu (Z.ai)

Dossier checked 28 Sep 2026

What it sells now

Newest frontier release

GLM-5.3-Flash

26 Aug 2026 · the lab’s announcement

First natively multimodal GLM-5 model (320B, 18B active) at about a tenth of GLM-5.2’s price; Z.ai’s second tier beside GLM-5.3, open weights under MIT

Flagship list price, per million tokens

$1.40 in $4.40 out

GLM-5.3, international platform, released 18 Aug 2026 · pricing page

GLM-5.3-Flash (26 Aug) is newer and the cheaper second tier, at $0.15 in and $0.50 out; GLM-5.3 is priced here as the flagship.

Weights

Open flagship

Open on the flagship line, no longer plain MIT. GLM-5.3’s weights are on Hugging Face under a custom licence: MIT-style, but a model-as-a-service operator with over US$10B of yearly revenue needs Z.AI’s security review first. GLM-5.2 stays MIT. Source

Where you can buy the flagship

Its other models, not the flagship

Source

7 releases in the year to 30 Oct 2026, 4 the year before · 17 in all since 2023

Our read, not a fact

Split

The question we ask of every lab: is most of its value in the model, which gets cheaper fastest, or in something other work is built on? Our answer: split between the two.

Zhipu’s durable position is the open GLM ecosystem plus the enterprise and state relationships of the first publicly listed Chinese AI lab. Public-market funding buys the runway; the open weights buy the adoption that compounds into it.

What would change our readOpen GLM loses developer mindshare to Qwen or DeepSeek, or the IPO capital fails to convert into a durable enterprise base.

01 · What it runs on, and the money

Trains and serves on press report

Huawei Ascend, with a limit on what is confirmed. GLM-Image (Jan 2026) was trained wholly on Huawei Ascend servers, per Zhipu; the same claim for the GLM-5 language models is a Reuters report the company has not confirmed. Bloomberg reported in July 2026 that part of a roughly 1 GW datacentre built only on Chinese chips has been switched on. Source

What it depends on A US Entity List designation bars Zhipu from acquiring US-origin or US-technology-derived accelerators without a licence, leaving Huawei Ascend the only accelerator family it has publicly confirmed training on. Source

Biggest risk Its training roadmap depends on Huawei Ascend supply and Chinese domestic chipmaking, because the Entity List designation closes the licensed route to US accelerators. Source

Raised
About US$9.6B since listing: an IPO netting HK$4.9B (Jan 2026), a placing netting HK$31.4B (Jul 2026), and a HK$15.7B placing plus RMB 20.14B of convertible bonds (Sep 2026) Source
Valuation press report
Market value about HK$300B (about US$37B) at the 28 Sep 2026 close, down from above HK$1 trillion in June Source
Revenue
RMB 953.9M for the six months to 30 Jun 2026, up about 400%; RMB 724.33M for 2025 Source
Structure
Z.AI Co., Ltd. (Knowledge Atlas Technology in English until July 2026), listed in Hong Kong as 2513 since 8 Jan 2026. A 2019 Tsinghua spin-out; a second listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market is reported approved but not yet accepted. Source

NotesPrices rose twice in early 2026 and have been flat since. Hugging Face file metadata counts 753B parameters for GLM-5.2 and GLM-5.3; some hosts quote 744B. The widely quoted 100,000-chip Ascend cluster traces to no credible source.

02 · Releases

data through 30 Oct 2026

  1. Zhipu 15 GLM-5.3-Flash26 Aug 2026

Each dot is a frontier release at its date. Click one to find it in the full log. Every lab on one chart

The landmarks

  1. Jun 2026 GLM-5.2 753B-parameter MoE under an MIT licence, 1M context OpenMIT1M ctx
  2. Feb 2026 GLM-5 744B MoE, first post-IPO flagship Open744B MoEPost-IPO
  3. 28 Jul 2025 GLM-4.5 Open agentic flagship, released with GLM-4.5-Air on the API and as open weights OpenAgentic
  4. 16 Jan 2024 GLM-4 Flagship generation Flagship
  5. Mar 2023 ChatGLM-6B First open GLM chat model OpenFirst GLM
The full release logall 17, newest first
  1. 2026
  2. 26 Aug 2026 GLM-5.3-Flash Frontier First natively multimodal GLM-5 model (320B, 18B active) at about a tenth of GLM-5.2’s price; Z.ai’s second tier beside GLM-5.3, open weights under MIT Source
  3. 18 Aug 2026 GLM-5.3 Frontier Successor to GLM-5.2: to GLM Coding Plan subscribers on 14 Aug, on the API from 18 Aug Source
  4. Jun 2026 GLM-5.2 Frontier 753B-parameter MoE under an MIT licence, 1M context
  5. 7 Apr 2026 GLM-5.1 Frontier Next-generation flagship for agentic engineering, open weights under MIT and on the API Source
  6. 15 Mar 2026 GLM-5-Turbo Frontier Agent-tuned base model priced above GLM-5, on the general API Source
  7. Feb 2026 GLM-5 Frontier 744B MoE, first post-IPO flagship
  8. 2025
  9. 22 Dec 2025 GLM-4.7 Frontier Year-end flagship Source
  10. 30 Sep 2025 GLM-4.6 Frontier Coding and agent upgrade
  11. Aug 2025 GLM-4.5V Vision-language model
  12. 28 Jul 2025 GLM-4.5 Frontier Open agentic flagship, released with GLM-4.5-Air on the API and as open weights Source
  13. 14 Apr 2025 GLM-4-Air-250414 Frontier New Air-tier base and reasoning models (GLM-Z1-Air) on the API, with 32B open weights Source
  14. 2024
  15. Aug 2024 GLM-4-Plus Frontier Upgraded flagship
  16. Jun 2024 GLM-4-Air Frontier The tier below GLM-4, close to its quality at lower cost, on the API
  17. 16 Jan 2024 GLM-4 Frontier Flagship generation Source
  18. 2023
  19. Oct 2023 ChatGLM3 Frontier Third generation: a larger ChatGLM3 on the public chatglm.cn, and ChatGLM3-6B as open weights
  20. Aug 2023 ChatGLM (chatglm.cn) Frontier The larger ChatGLM flagship opened to the public on chatglm.cn after a closed beta since March
  21. Mar 2023 ChatGLM-6B First open GLM chat model

03 · When to reach for them

practical read

Open agentic coding
Reach for GLM-5.3 for open-weight agentic coding with a 1M-token context (Aug 2026).
MIT licence
Use GLM-5.2 where a plain MIT licence matters; GLM-5.3 moved to its own licence (Jun 2026).
Price
Pick GLM-5.3 when price matters: $1.40 in and $4.40 out per million tokens (Aug 2026).

04 · Weights, across all ten

the flagship

Open flagship
DeepSeek Mistral AI Alibaba (Qwen) Moonshot AI Zhipu (Z.ai)
Closed flagship, some open
OpenAI Google Meta xAI
Closed
Anthropic

05 · Essays that read Zhipu (Z.ai)

from the archive

The Model Is Not the Moat If frontier capability keeps centralising, the durable edge shifts outward into trust, workflow fit, and the surrounding package. The Forest Floor Is The Product Most people are optimising for canopy. The work that survives the next five AI releases is built from the forest floor up. The Investor's Substrate Test Score the substrate beneath any single position in seven minutes. A 5-axis profile and a 0-10 score for any holding. Free.

06 · About Zhipu (Z.ai)

at a glance

Founded
2019
HQ
Beijing, China
Leadership
Zhang Peng (CEO)
Origin
Tsinghua spin-off
Listed
HK IPO, Jan 2026
Also builds
GLM Coding Plan, ChatGLM

Zhipu AI, listed in Hong Kong as Z.AI Co., Ltd. and branded Z.ai outside China, was founded in 2019 as a Tsinghua University spin-off and is headquartered in Beijing. It builds the GLM family and became the first publicly listed Chinese AI lab in January 2026. Its flagship GLM models ship as open weights: GLM-5.2 under MIT, GLM-5.3 under its own licence.