Chinese AI Startup Zhipu AI Initiates IPO Process, Showcasing Technological Advancements

China's Zhipu AI takes initial steps to an IPO

BEIJING, April 15 (Reuters) - Chinese artificial intelligence startup Zhipu AI has initiated preliminary steps toward an initial public offering, aiming to become the first of China's emerging AI companies to go public. Founded in 2019 as a Tsinghua University spinoff, Zhipu AI has emerged among China's front-runners in the artificial intelligence race, alongside AI-focused startups Moonshot AI, Minimax, 01.AI, Baichuan, and StepFun, while also competing with tech giants such as ByteDance and Alibaba(9988.HK), opens new tab in the sector. The company attracted attention earlier this year after securing three rounds of state-backed funding within weeks. Its latest financing included a 300 million yuan ($41.5 million) investment from the Chengdu municipal government. Zhipu AI, developer of the GLM series of language models, claims its flagship GLM4 model surpasses OpenAI's GPT-4 on several performance benchmarks. The company announced Tuesday it would open-source its GLM series models, namely the 32B and 9B versions. Its GLM-Z1-32B-0414 model matches the performance of rival product DeepSeek-R1 at one-thirtieth of the operational cost, according to a company statement. Zhipu AI is controlled by Tang Jie and Liu Debing, with Tang directly holding a 7.4% equity stake in the company, according to the regulatory filing. China International Capital Corporation will act as the IPO sponsor, according to a filing posted on the China Securities Regulatory Commission website. As sponsor, CICC will conduct preliminary due diligence on Zhipu's operations and financials. The sponsorship arrangement is a mandatory prerequisite in China's IPO process, typically lasting several months during which sponsors assess the company's eligibility for public listing. Reporting by Liam Mo and Brenda Goh; Editing by Stephen Coates Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Alibaba-Backed AI Startup Zhipu Plans IPO This Year | AIM Media House

In March, Zhipu AI introduced AutoLM Rumination, an AI agent built for deep research, detailed report generation, and task planning. Zhipu, a Chinese AI startup backed by Alibaba and Tencent, is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) this year. The company has enlisted China International Capital Corp (CICC) to lead the listing and may file for approval by October. Founded six years ago, Zhipu is one of China's contenders in the race to compete with the likes of OpenAI. It has rapidly launched low-cost AI tools alongside rivals like Moonshot and Minimax. Zhipu reportedly raised 1 billion yuan (about $137 million) from state-backed investors, highlighting growing support from the Chinese government. Industry leaders, including Kai-Fu Lee, believe only a few Chinese AI models will survive the competition, with Zhipu aiming to be one of them. In March, Zhipu AI introduced AutoLM Rumination, an AI agent built for deep research, detailed report generation, and task planning. The tool is free to use and powered by Zhipu's proprietary models, which the company claims perform on par with DeepSeek R1. Zhipu also claims the model is eight times faster and requires just one-thirtieth of the computational resources compared to similar systems. Just weeks earlier, another Chinese firm released Manus AI, a general-purpose AI agent that drew attention after outperforming OpenAI's research tool on the GAIA benchmark, a test focused on solving real-world problems. AIM has previously written extensively about the AI ecosystem in China. Companies like Alibaba and Tencent are unveiling new AI models at an extraordinary pace. Recently, Alibaba introduced QwQ 32B, an AI model with 32 billion parameters. However, it is reported to achieve performance comparable to DeepSeek-R1, which has 671 billion parameters (with 37 billion activated parameters).

China's Zhipu AI takes initial steps to an IPO

Zhipu AI, developer of the GLM series of language models, claims its flagship GLM4 model surpasses OpenAI's GPT-4 on several performance benchmarks. The company announced Tuesday it would open-source its GLM series models, namely the 32B and 9B versions.Chinese artificial intelligence startup Zhipu AI has initiated preliminary steps toward an initial public offering, aiming to become the first of China's emerging AI companies to go public. Founded in 2019 as a Tsinghua University spinoff, Zhipu AI has emerged among China's front-runners in the artificial intelligence race, alongside AI-focused startups Moonshot AI, Minimax, 01.AI, Baichuan, and StepFun, while also competing with tech giants such as ByteDance and Alibaba in the sector. The company attracted attention earlier this year after securing three rounds of state-backed funding within weeks. Its latest financing included a 300 million yuan ($41.5 million) investment from the Chengdu municipal government. Zhipu AI, developer of the GLM series of language models, claims its flagship GLM4 model surpasses OpenAI's GPT-4 on several performance benchmarks. The company announced Tuesday it would open-source its GLM series models, namely the 32B and 9B versions. Its GLM-Z1-32B-0414 model matches the performance of rival product DeepSeek-R1 at one-thirtieth of the operational cost, according to a company statement. Zhipu AI is controlled by Tang Jie and Liu Debing, with Tang directly holding a 7.4% equity stake in the company, according to the regulatory filing. China International Capital Corporation will act as the IPO sponsor, according to a filing posted on the China Securities Regulatory Commission website. As sponsor, CICC will conduct preliminary due diligence on Zhipu's operations and financials. The sponsorship arrangement is a mandatory prerequisite in China's IPO process, typically lasting several months during which sponsors assess the company's eligibility for public listing.