(Yicai) April 15 -- Chinese large language model developer Zhipu AI has registered for pre-initial public offering tutoring, a key compliance step before formally applying to go public, with China's securities regulator.

Zhipu AI, which may become the first of China's "six artificial intelligence mini tigers" to go public, submitted its tutoring documents to the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau, Yicai found on the China Securities Regulatory Commission's online service platform today. China International Capital will serve as the tutoring institution.

Zhipu AI has no controlling shareholder, according to its tutoring documents. However, founder Tang Jie and Chairman Liu Debing and entities acting in concert hold almost 37 percent of the voting rights, making them the actual controllers.

Tang, who is also chief scientist of Zhipu AI, serves as the director of the Foundation Model Research Center at Tsinghua University's Institute of AI. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Association for the Advancement of AI. Yang Zhilin, founder of Moonshot AI, which is another member of the "six AI mini tigers," was his student.

Liu was previously deputy director at the Big Data Research Center of Tsinghua University's Institute for Data Science.

Beijing-based Zhipu AI transitioned to a joint-stock company last month to prepare for broadening financing channels through public share offerings and attracting additional investors, Yicai found.

On Jan. 15, the US Bureau of Industry and Security's commerce department added Zhipu AI and its subsidiaries to its restricted trade list. The company strongly opposed the move, noting that the US government’s accusations lacked a factual basis, but said it would not substantially impact its business.

Since its establishment in 2019, Zhipu AI has completed 15 financing rounds, with investors including tech giants Ant Group, Alibaba Group Holding, and Tencent Holdings and leading venture capital firms such as HongShan Capita Group.

Besides Zhipu AI and Moonshot AI, the "six AI mini tigers" include 01.AI, MiniMax, Baichuan Intelligence, and Stepfun.

Editor: Martin Kadiev