Chinese large model player Zhipu AI raises $420m

Zhipu AI, a leading Chinese large model player, announced on Tuesday that it has secured 3 billion yuan ($420 million) in its latest fundraising, marking a significant vote of confidence from investors in Chinese large models amid intensifying global AI race.

The new funding moved Zhipu AI's valuation to over 20 billion yuan, positioning it among the most highly-valued AI startups in China.

According to the company, the latest fundraising has attracted several strategic and State-backed investors, while existing shareholders, including Legend Capital, increased their stakes.

The funds will be used to accelerate the development of its GLM large model series, enhancing capabilities from basic question-answering to complex reasoning and multimodal tasks, the company said.

The Beijing-based company also disclosed that its revenue has more than doubled this year so far compared to 2023, fueled by rising demand for its Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform bigmodel.cn.

Despite a mid-year price war that saw intense competition in China's AI sector, Zhipu's API revenue soared over 30-fold year-over-year, while daily token consumption jumped 150-fold. Its MaaS platform has already attracted 700,000 enterprise and developer users, it added.