Z.ai
Z.ai aims to develop safe and beneficial Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to help solve humanity's most complex challenges. The company's vision is 'enabling machines to think like humans' and making AI everyone's most capable assistant. Founded with the mission to pursue AGI as a democratizing force that is open, transparent, and accessible for everyone to benefit from.
At a Glance
- Central state-owned enterprises
- Financial institutions and banks
- Government agencies (China and international)
- Technology companies
- +9 more
AI Tools by Z.ai
(1)
Z.ai Chat
Free AI Chat Assistant
Discussions
No discussions yet
Be the first to start a discussion about Z.ai
Latest News
Z.ai releases GLM-5, next-generation 744B-scale foundation model
JPMorgan Chase issues 'buy' call for Z.ai stocks following successful IPO
Z.ai becomes world's first listed large language model company on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (SEHK: 2513), raising $558-560 million at $6.7-7.5 billion valuation
Z.ai and nine subsidiaries added to U.S. Commerce Department Entity List for advancing China's military modernization through AI research
Products & Services
China's first proprietary pre-trained large model framework integrating both unidirectional and bidirectional attention mechanisms
China's first open-source 100 billion-parameter model
Flagship foundation model with 355 billion parameters. China's first open-source Mixture of Experts (MoE) model featuring strong agentic, reasoning and coding capabilities
Latest flagship model open-sourced with 200K context length. Ranks first among open-source and domestic models in CodeArena
Market Position
Z.ai is positioned as China's AGI pioneer and a Chinese OpenAI challenger. Ranked first among China's independent developers and second among all developers of general-purpose large models in terms of revenue in 2024, with 6.6% market share by revenue. Described as a leading player in China's AI push and a frontrunner in the AI sector. OpenAI identified Z.ai as a 'fast-rising rival'. The company differentiates through its vertically integrated stack and proprietary GLM architecture developed entirely in-house, rather than relying on derivative architectures and imported frameworks. Known for low-cost inference (API costs $0.39 per million tokens vs industry average $12.50, making it 32 times cheaper). Models are 86% cheaper than US competitors. GLM-4.7 ranks first among domestic models and tied for sixth globally with Claude 4.5 Sonnet. Competitive advantages include compatibility with 40+ chip platforms (reducing hardware dependence), strong government and SOE relationships for data sovereignty requirements, and open-source strategy for global developer adoption (45+ million downloads). One of China's 'Four AI Tigers' alongside Moonshot AI, Baichuan, and MiniMax.
Leadership
Founders
Tang Jie
Professor at Tsinghua University's Department of Computer Science and Technology, member of the Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG). Created AMiner in March 2006. Co-founder of Z.ai in 2019. Published over ten papers in leading conferences such as ICML and ISWC. Core contributor to the development of GLM model series and AMiner.
Li Juanzi
Professor at Tsinghua University's Department of Computer Science and Technology, specialized in knowledge engineering and semantic web research. Co-founder of Z.ai in 2019. Member of the Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG). Holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University. Serves as Non-Executive Director.
Liu Debing
Associate Professor at Tsinghua University's Department of Computer Science and Technology, led research in knowledge graph technology and natural language processing. Holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University. Former engineer at Technicolor (China) Technology and worked at Tsinghua University for nearly two decades. Mentored by Gao Wen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Led or participated in more than thirty major scientific research projects. Published over 20 papers at major international conferences and holds more than 50 invention patents globally. Co-founder and Chairman of the Board. Net worth: $2.1 billion as of January 2026.
Zhang Peng
Researcher at Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Laboratory focusing on knowledge graphs and intelligent systems. Holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University. Worked at Tsinghua University for over a decade until 2020. Specializes in knowledge graphs and large-scale pre-trained models. Core contributor to the development of GLM model series and AMiner. Published over ten papers in leading conferences such as ICML and ISWC. Co-founder and CEO of Z.ai since 2019.
Executive Team
Dr. Zhang Peng
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Executive Director
Specializes in knowledge graphs and large-scale pre-trained models. Core contributor to GLM series and AMiner. Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University.
Dr. Liu Debing
Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder, Executive Director
Expert in large language models, machine learning and data mining. Led 30+ major scientific research projects. 50+ invention patents globally. Worth $2.1 billion.
Board of Directors
Founding Story
Z.ai (formerly Zhipu AI) was founded in 2019 at Tsinghua University Science Park in Beijing, known as the 'Center of the Universe' for tech startups. The company was inspired by the dual-system theory of human brain cognition at the end of 2018, designing a machine 'cognitive' system that incorporates both fast thinking and slow thinking. Founded by Tang Jie and Li Juanzi, both professors at Tsinghua University's Department of Computer Science and Technology and members of the Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG), the company was initially an academic startup focused on building knowledge graphs. The Zhongguancun Science Park provided the team with rent-free office space for three months during early days. The company was officially established as a commercialization of technological achievements from Tsinghua University labs, spun out as an independent company with a technologically idealistic ethos focused on reaching AGI.
Business Model
Revenue Model
Z.ai operates a Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform delivering foundation models, multimodal systems, autonomous agents, and coding assistants. Revenue streams include: (1) On-Premise Deployment (84.8% of H1 2025 revenue) - licensed software and technical services for state-owned enterprises, banks, and government agencies requiring data sovereignty; (2) Cloud-Based Deployment (15.2% of H1 2025 revenue) - subscription and usage-based API access; (3) Subscription services for coding tools (GLM Coding Plan); (4) Enterprise private deployment contracts; (5) Government contracts for city projects and smart government services. The company focuses on high-margin enterprise and government customers in China (90% of revenue) with growing international presence in Malaysia, Singapore, and the US.
Pricing Tiers
GLM-4.7-Flash and GLM-4.6V-Flash models. 20 million free tokens upon registration. Z.ai chatbot and basic features free
744B-scale foundation model with premium capabilities
Flagship model with 200K context length
Text-to-image generation with Chinese character support
Includes 5840 GPU Units and 1 billion training tokens
Complete on-premise solution for data sovereignty
Subscription plan for coding tools (overseas users)
Target Markets
- Central state-owned enterprises
- Financial institutions and banks
- Government agencies (China and international)
- Technology companies
- Individual developers (45+ million globally)
- Enterprise customers (12,000+ as of September 2025)
- Agentic coding and software development
- Web UI generation and frontend replication
- Professional-grade office creation (PPT, posters)
- Deep research with structured organization
- Financial analysis and report processing
- Video understanding and summarization
- Kingsoft Office
- Zhaopin.com
- Mengniu Dairy
- Hangzhou government