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South China Morning Post
15-04-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China AI unicorn Zhipu eyes IPO filing this year after DeepSeek's success
Zhipu AI, a Beijing-based artificial intelligence (AI) unicorn born out of China's prestigious Tsinghua University, has filed pre-initial public offering (IPO) documents with China's securities regulator as it eyes a public listing as soon as 2026 amid an increasingly competitive domestic landscape. Advertisement The 6-year-old company submitted the tutoring documents to the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau on Monday, a key compliance step before formally applying to the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The start-up plans to finalise its IPO application preparation by October, with China International Capital Corporation (CICC) serving as the tutoring institution. This would set it up for a possible IPO next year, but the company did not specify which exchange it is targeting. Meituan , Zhipu – whose controlling shareholders are founder Tang Jie, a renowned Tsinghua computer scientist, and chairman Liu Debing – has attracted more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) in funding. Investors include state-backed entities such as Beijing's Zhongguancun Science City, Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund and local government funds from the cities of Chengdu, Hangzhou and Zhuhai. Venture capital firms HongShan Capital Group, GL Ventures, Qiming Venture Partners, Lightspeed China Partners and Capital Today are also backers, as are a number of Chinese tech giants, including Xiaomi Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding , owner of the South China Morning Post, according to corporate database Tianyancha and company announcements. Zhipu has quickly risen to become a darling of China's AI industry and is considered one of its 'four tigers' , alongside start-ups Baichuan, Moonshot AI and MiniMax. It has recently made some strategic investments as it looks to expand. 05:00 Does the arrival of China's low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia's chip dominance? Does the arrival of China's low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia's chip dominance? Last year, Zhipu launched a 1.5 billion yuan venture fund called 'Z', targeting early-stage AI start-ups. The fund has backed dozens of companies, including AI infrastructure firm Infinigence AI, Siliconflow, Modelbest and multimodal AI developer Vidu.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
China's Zhipu AI takes initial steps to an IPO
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, 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. Sign in to access your portfolio
Reuters
15-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
China's Zhipu AI takes initial steps to an IPO
BEIJING, April 15 (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, Baichuan, and StepFun, while also competing with tech giants such as ByteDance and Alibaba ( opens new tab 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.
