TheTechno Optimist.

Z.ai (Zhipu AI)—Z.ai (Zhipu AI) lists on Hong Kong Stock Exchange at $7.4B valuation, raising $558MGLM-5.2Z.ai (Zhipu AI)—GLM-5.2 extends to 1M context and surpasses GPT-5.5 on engineering benchmarks at 1/6 the costGLM-5Z.ai (Zhipu AI)—GLM-5, a 744B open-weight model, released as the #1 ranked open-weight model on Artificial Analysis

Z.ai (Zhipu AI)

GLM-5, GLM-5.2, open-weight models, coding agents

CN$56B market cap~800 staffest. 2019z.ai (opens z.ai)Checked 10 Oct

The brief

Analyst view
  • GLM-5 (744B) released Feb 2026 topped open rankings; GLM-5.2 (753B) extends to 1M context, surpasses GPT-5.5 at 1/6 cost.
  • Hong Kong IPO Jan 2026: $558M raised, $7.4B valuation; market cap reached $62B by August 2026.
  • Nearly 7M API users globally. Research team published 50+ papers on models, sparse MoE, and multimodal systems.

Technical approach

As reported
Open-weight

MIT-licensed models on Hugging Face

Z.ai publishes weights for anyone to run, customize, and deploy without per-token fees. Addresses data privacy and enterprise lock-in.

Sparse MoE

Dynamic routing of 744B/753B parameters

Only 40B parameters activate per token. Cuts inference compute while maintaining frontier capability at low pricing.

Long context

1M-token window with 2.9× efficiency

GLM-5.2's IndexShare sparse attention enables multi-document reasoning and long-horizon tasks without quadratic scaling.

Primer