While DeepSeek, the frontrunner of the 'Hangzhou Six Dragons,' garners substantial attention, Zhipu, a prominent member of the 'Big Six Tigers,' has also taken the lead in initiating an IPO!

01, Valued at Over $3 Billion! What is the AI Unicorn Zhipu?

On April 14, the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission revealed that Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhipu) completed IPO counseling registration with the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau, with CICC serving as the counseling institution. This signifies that Zhipu has taken the initiative as the first company among the 'Big Six Tigers' to embark on the listing process.

Note: The Big Six Tigers specifically refer to six AI unicorn companies in the industry: Zhipu AI, Baichuan Intelligence, Dark Side of the Moon, MiniMax, Stepwise Stars, and Zero One Everything.

Signs of Zhipu's IPO intentions have been evident for some time. At the end of last month, Zhipu CEO Zhang Peng publicly stated to the media, 'Completing shareholding reforms is aimed at the IPO goal, which is not solely dependent on Zhipu's own plans but also influenced by the external environment. Zhipu will continue to push forward financing efforts, including preparations for the IPO…'

According to public information, as of March 3, 2025, Zhipu has undergone at least 15 rounds of financing, raising over $2.16 billion (with financing in the last six months reaching a scale of $692 million). Its investor lineup is impressive:

It includes well-known and established investment institutions such as Legend Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Sequoia China, and Hillhouse Capital;

Investments from various local state-owned assets, including Hangzhou City Investment Industrial Fund, Shangcheng Capital, Zhuhai Huafa Group, Chengdu High-tech Zone, Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund, and Zhongguancun Science City;

Investments from internet technology giants such as Meituan, Alibaba, Tencent, and the 'Xiaomi Ecosystem' (encompassing Xiaomi Group, Shunwei Capital, and Kingsoft Software);

Even investments from companies under Saudi Aramco…

It is worth mentioning that as early as the C+ round (around July 2024), Zhipu's valuation had reached $3 billion, and its latest valuation estimate is expected to be even higher;

According to Zhipu's prospectus, Tang Jie directly holds 7.4081% of Zhipu's equity, while Liu Debing directly holds 0.2554% and controls a total of 17.3966% of the company's voting rights through shareholding platforms. Tang Jie and Liu Debing collectively hold 12.1600% of Zhipu's voting rights through concerted actions. Together, the two control 36.9647% of the company's voting rights and are the actual controllers of Zhipu.

With a founding team comprising top scholars from Tsinghua University and endorsements from various state-owned assets and renowned investment institutions, Zhipu's popularity may pale in comparison to DeepSeek, which is deeply exploring AI, and even its online presence is overshadowed by Kimi, the AIGC App from Dark Side of the Moon, which is also part of the 'Big Six Tigers.' However, why has it been favored by numerous well-known institutions, local state-owned assets, and internet technology giants?

02, DeepSeek May Not Be Able to Stop Zhipu's 'Poetry and Distant Shores'

'Let him be strong; the breeze will still brush the mountain peaks. Let him be obstinate; the bright moon will still shine over the great river' – If we must anthropomorphize Zhipu's inner feelings when facing the 'hotshot' DeepSeek in the AI world, there is perhaps no phrase more apt than this line from Jin Yong's martial arts novel 'The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber' describing the Nine Yang Divine Skill!

While DeepSeek is indeed formidable and has even shaken the AI hegemony of Silicon Valley to a certain extent, Zhipu also possesses its own 'truly formidable capabilities.'

Tang Jie, one of the actual controllers of Zhipu, is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University and a renowned scholar recognized in the AI industry. He has published over 200 high-quality papers in the fields of data mining and machine learning and led his team to successfully build WuDdao2.0, China's first and the world's largest pre-trained model with 1.75 trillion parameters, making him an undeniable 'soul figure' of Zhipu!

Zhang Peng, a member of Zhipu's core team and the company's CEO, is also a computer doctorate from Tsinghua University. He has participated in the research and development of key projects such as Zhipu's GLM series of large models, AMiner, and XLORE, making him a truly technologically adept CEO;

Next, let's delve into Zhipu's trump card – the GLM series of models!

As early as last October, Zhipu launched its independently developed agent AutoGLM, which can simulate human operation of mobile phones by simply receiving text or voice commands. It is reported that Zhipu's agent has already collaborated with Samsung mobile phones (specifically the Galaxy S25 series);

In March 2025, Zhipu officially released the agent AutoGLM Meditation at the Zhongguancun Forum, which garnered significant industry attention due to its deep research capabilities and ability to achieve practical operations. Many experts and scholars have given high praise, believing that Zhipu has substantially propelled AI agents into a stage of thinking and acting simultaneously;

On April 14, the same day Zhipu officially announced its sprint towards an IPO, it also announced the official release of its new generation of GLM-4-32B-0414 series models, with 32 billion parameters and performance comparable to OpenAI's GPT series and DeepSeek's V3/R1 series, while also supporting very user-friendly local deployment features;

This series of models includes four models: GLM-4-32B-Base-0414, GLM-Z1-32B-0414, GLM-Z1-Meditation-32B-0414, and GLM-Z1-9B-0414.

On April 15, Zhipu announced the open sourcing of its latest GLM model system, including 32B and 9B sizes, covering base, inference, and meditation models, all of which comply with the MIT open-source license agreement and are freely available for commercial use. Users can experience it through the new Z.ai platform and Zhipu's MaaS platform.

In my opinion, besides its robust self-research capabilities in the underlying layer and applications of large models, Zhipu has also demonstrated its strength in commercial implementation, leading the other 'five tigers':

Since 2024, Zhipu's commercial revenue has achieved countercyclical growth of over 100% year-on-year. Zhang Fan, COO of Zhipu, once stated that it is expected that Zhipu Qingyan's revenue in 2024 will exceed ten million yuan, especially with the annual revenue of the MaaS platform API increasing by over 30 times and the average daily token consumption increasing by 150 times, attracting 700,000 enterprise and developer users;

According to Securities Times, Zhipu has strong advantages in both the G-end and B-end markets. Among its clientele are a considerable number of government departments and central state-owned enterprises, and it has accumulated sufficient experience in the localized deployment of large models and data security. This is a crucial reason why it has become a 'favorite of state-owned assets';

Combining public reports and revelations from Liu Debing, one of the founders and chairman of Zhipu, Zhipu's business has substantially covered sectors such as government services, finance, manufacturing (including smart cars, smart phones, semiconductor chips, etc., with Honor, Intel, and XPeng Automobile all being company collaborators), healthcare, gaming and entertainment, culture, and tourism. Zhipu and its partners are accelerating the landing and application of new products and have achieved large-scale applications in over 10,000 enterprises and institutions.

According to Zhang Peng, CEO of Zhipu, the company has expanded from mobile phones to PC platforms and is extending to more terminal devices, including smart glasses, in-vehicle systems, tablets, and other types of smart hardware, as well as embodied intelligence manufacturers. It is reported that the Legou Kuafu robot has already been equipped with the Zhipu AI 'brain.'

In other words, Zhipu's business prospects are quite promising. According to media estimates by ccsee.com, by dissecting Zhipu's revenue composition based on data from the C-end and B-end markets, its overall revenue in 2024 is conservatively estimated to exceed 140 million yuan. I believe that this figure is expected to reach a new high in 2025;

Of course, not everything in front of Zhipu is favorable, and objective challenges cannot be ignored.

According to the 'China Large Model Bidding Project Monitoring Report (2024)' from Intelligent Hyperparameters, the top six Chinese general large model vendors that won bids in 2024 were, in order, iFLYTEK, Baidu, Zhipu, Volcano Engine (ByteDance), Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud. Zhipu ranked third, after iFLYTEK and Baidu;

Another report shows that in the AI large model solutions market, Zhipu ranks fourth with a market share of nearly 8.8%, following Baidu (17.0%), SenseTime (14.8%), and iFLYTEK (14.1%); however, in the MaaS (Model as a Service) market, Zhipu does not appear among the top five players;

With platform-level giants like Tencent (Yuanbao), Alibaba, and Baidu having already opened up the 'Ren and Du meridians' of full-stack self-research in AI technology hardware and software, and with the highly popular DeepSeek R1 and the highly visible Doubao and Kimi in the C-end market, the originally dazzling aura around Zhipu (Zhipu Qingyan) has slightly dimmed;

If this IPO is successfully executed, it means that Zhipu is expected to raise more funds through the capital market to support crucial work such as the research and development of core products and market expansion, thereby fortifying its competitive position.

The 'poetry and distant shores' towards AGI require a steady stream of capital to escort it.

For Zhipu, taking the lead in going public among the 'Big Six Tigers' of large models is already a matter of necessity!

Reference Materials:

Zhipu Prospectus, Zhipu Official Website, Securities Times, NBD News, Some Images from the Internet