(Yicai) March 3 -- Chinese large language model developer Zhipu AI has secured more than CNY1 billion (USD137.2 million) in its latest financing round, the second in three months.

The investors of this fundraiser were Hangzhou Chengtou Industrial Fund and Shangcheng Capital, the Hangzhou-based company announced today, adding that it will soon release a new LLM product and open-source it.

Zhipu did not disclose its post-investment valuation. But after securing CNY3 billion last December, the firm was valued at CNY20 billion (USD2.7 billion).

Public expectations for super applications of LLMs are overly optimistic, Zhipu's Chief Executive Officer Zhang Peng told Yicai three months ago. But DeepSeek's rapid rise promoted Zhipu to accelerate strategic adjustments.

DeepSeek's exponential growth has altered the global artificial intelligence landscape, as more and more LLM developers are now adjusting their strategies to accelerate sharing and collaborations, according to industry insiders.

DeepSeek has demonstrated that massive computing power investments are not the only path forward and that breakthroughs can be achieved through algorithm optimization and open-source approaches.

In fact, DeepSeek's success has led investors to question sky-high valuations based on traditional AI competition rules, prompting six leading Chinese AI innovators to swiftly recalibrate their strategies.

Among them, Moonshot AI is expanding open-source research disclosures, MiniMax is testing multiple consumer-facing products, and Stepfun plans to open-source its text-to-video AI model.

Editor: Futura Costaglione