(Yicai) Dec. 18 -- Zhipu AI, an emerging leader in China’s generative artificial intelligence field, has completed a CNY3 billion (USD411.9 million) fundraiser.

Zhipu AI announced today that several strategic investors, including venture capital firms, state-backed institutions, and existing shareholders, participated in the financing round. The proceeds will be used to develop the company’s ChatGLM GenAI model family.

In June, Zhipu AI secured USD400 million from investors such as Middle Eastern oil giant Saudi Aramco. In September, it completed another fundraiser led by state-backed Beijing Zhongguancun Science City, reaching a valuation of about CNY20 billion (USD2.8 billion).

Zhipu AI was founded in Beijing in 2019 by a team from Tsinghua University with the objective of ‘making machines think like humans.’ 

In 2022, Zhipu AI co-developed GLM-130B with Tsinghua University. In January and August this year, the firm launched next-generation foundation models GLM-4 and GLM-4-Plus. It also released video generation model CogVideoX, GLM-4-VideoCall, and end-to-end voice model GLM-4-Voice. It has over 25 million personal users. 

Zhipu AI has also debuted a Model as a Service platform, which attracted about 700,000 enterprise and developer users.

Editor: Futura Costaglione