BEIJING (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 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)