GLM-5 was entirely trained using Chinese-made Huawei Ascend chips.
Investors rallied behind Chinese AI start-up Zhipu after its latest agentic model, claiming to represent a “generational leap in AI capability”, launched yesterday (11 February).
GLM-5 is a fifth-generation large language model (LLM) developed by the 2019-founded Zhipu AI. It offers around 745bn total parameters and 44bn active parameters per inference.
The model is engineered for agentic intelligence, advanced multi-step reasoning and “frontier-level” performance across coding, creative writing and complex problem-solving, its maker said.
The open-weight model is comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5, according to Artificial Analysis ranks, and has been trained entirely using Chinese-made Huawei Ascend chips.
According to Zhipu, “full independence” from US-manufactured hardware positions GLM-5 as a “milestone in China’s drive toward self-reliant AI infrastructure”. Zhipu shares rose by as much as 34pc following GLM-5’s launch.
Zhipu’s GLM-5 surpasses a new offering – Kimi K2.5 – from its rival, the Alibaba-backed Moonshot AI, in various benchmark ratings.
Capitalising on GLM-5’s launch, Zhipu raised the pricing of its GLM Coding Plan by 30pc. The coding plan is comparable to Anthropic’s Claude Code, which is unavailable in China.
Meanwhile, another Chinese AI competitor – MiniMax – saw its share price rise by 13pc following the launch of its updated M2.5 model earlier this week.
Last December, Zhipu announced the launch of a $560m share sale. Days later, in January, MiniMax went public and raised around $619m.
Meanwhile, in December, Moonshot AI reportedly raised $500m from investors including Alibaba and IDG, seeking a valuation of as much as $4.3bn.
These new launches come ahead of DeepSeek’s new V4 model, expected to come out later this month. According to reports, the new DeepSeek model could outperform rivals ChatGPT and Claude, particularly on tasks that involve long coding prompts.
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