Zhipu bets China can build its own OpenAI: first LLM IPO, shares up 13x

Zhipu is a Beijing AI lab (rebranded Z.ai) that builds the GLM family of large language models — open-sourced base models, MaaS API subscriptions, private deployments for enterprises and government, and the AutoGLM phone-controlling agent.

China can build its own OpenAI: GLM architecture open-sourced for developer mindshare, MaaS APIs for revenue, AutoGLM as the wedge, public capital funding the gap.

¥40M angel round in 2019 (Tsinghua asset management, Zhongke Chuangxing); ¥8.3B across 8 rounds before IPO; IPO net proceeds HK$4.896B (Jan 2026); HK$31.4B placement (Jul 2026).

Zhipu was founded in 2019 as a commercial spinout of Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG), the lab behind the AMiner research platform. Led by Tang Jie, Zhang Peng and Liu Debing, it set out to build AGI on an original path — the GLM autoregressive blank-infilling architecture — rather than copy GPT, and released China's first 10B-parameter model, first open-source 100B+ model (GLM-130B) and first dialogue model (ChatGLM).

Funding followed fast: eight rounds raised ¥8.3B from Hillhouse, Qiming, Legend Capital, Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent and Xiaomi. MaaS API sales began in 2021, two years before most rivals. GLM-4.5 (July 2025) ranked #1 among open-source models and #3 globally; its paid coding plan signed 150,000 developers from 184 countries within two months, and GLM-4.5/4.6 entered OpenRouter's top 10. AutoGLM 2.0 (August 2025) extended phone control to AI glasses, watches and appliances. Revenue grew from ¥57.4M (2022) to ¥312.4M (2024, 130% CAGR) and ¥724M in 2025, while R&D hit ¥3.18B and the net loss widened to ¥4.72B.

Zhipu listed on HKEX on 2026-01-08 as the world's first AGI foundation-model company (02513.HK), raising about HK$5B at a HK$52.8B market cap. Shares peaked at HK$2,980 intraday in June 2026 after GLM-5.2 was called a developer-only 'DeepSeek moment' by Reuters, then closed at HK$1,640 on 2026-07-10 — roughly 13x the IPO price, market cap near HK$731B — just before a 19.78M-share placement raised HK$31.4B. A STAR Market A-share plan to raise ¥15B was approved by the board.

An original architecture plus relentless open-sourcing built global developer mindshare: 150k+ GitHub stars on GLM-4-9B and #1 on HuggingFace within 48 hours of GLM-4.5.

MaaS-first monetization since 2021 let Zhipu sell the same models to 12,000 enterprise customers and 2.7M developers while rivals were still choosing architectures.

Agents as the wedge — AutoGLM, the first phone-operating agent — differentiated the product story from pure chat models.

Public markets funded the frontier gap: IPO plus a HK$31.4B placement and a planned ¥15B A-share raise covered R&D spending far above revenue.

The unresolved tension: 74% of 2025 revenue came from one-off local deployments, not the recurring API business a global model company needs.

Open weights plus capital can buy a frontier seat, but each model generation must stay ahead to keep funding flowing; until API revenue recurs, the market prices a bet, not a business.

As of the latest verified reports (2026-07-13), Zhipu trades on HKEX (02513.HK) around HK$1,640, market cap near HK$731B, after a 13% fall on 10 July amid a global tech selloff following its cornerstone lock-up expiry. Its HK$31.4B placement is set to close by 2027 and a ¥15B STAR Market plan has board approval. GLM-5.2 led open-weights rankings, and Tang Jie's 'Touch High' letter vows two years of base-model pushes over near-term monetization. No events after mid-July 2026 are covered in the sources opened.