(Yicai) Sept. 6 -- Zhipu AI, an emerging leader in China’s generative artificial intelligence space, is worth about CNY20 billion (USD2.8 billion), according to the lead investor in the startup’s latest fundraiser.

Zhipu AI, formally known as Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology, raised an undisclosed amount reported to be in the billions of Chinese yuan, equivalent to hundreds of millions of US dollars.

State-backed Beijing Zhongguancun Science City said its investment in the AI unicorn recognizes and affirms Zhipu AI’s technological innovation, market development, and future growth potential.

The proceeds of the raise will go to support technological innovation and ecosystem buildout, Zhongguancun Science City said in a WeChat post yesterday.

Zhipu AI, Baichuan Intelligence, and Moonshot AI are the only three Chinese large language model startups valued at CNY20 billion, industry analysts pointed out. Though Zhipu AI is the only one that has ventured into the text-to-video generation field, they added.

Zhipu AI, founded in 2019, had completed 10 financing rounds before the latest one. Its backers include the Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund, the Social Security Fund's Zhongguancun Independent Innovation Fund, Hillhouse Investment, Qiming Venture Partners, Legend Capital, Meituan, Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings, and Xiaomi.

In the first half of this year, the Beijing-based startup bagged USD400 million from Prosperity7, a fund managed by Aramco Ventures, the venture capital arm of oil giant Saudi Aramco.

Zhipu AI has also invested in at least 13 tech startups, according to corporate information platform Tianyancha. These investments span foundational AI models and applications, computing power, biotechnology, and big data processing. The firm has also set up an ecosystem fund, the Z Fund.

Zhipu AI's product lineup includes the AI efficiency tool Zhipu Qingyan, the high-efficiency code model CodeGeeX, the multimodal understanding model CogVLM, and the text-to-image generator CogView. It also recently launched Ying, a video generator, and unveiled its first AI video call feature. 

In addition, Zhipu AI's large AI model open platform bigmodel.cn caters to developers and enterprise clients, serving more than 500,000 customers.

Editor: Martin Kadiev