Recently, Zhipu Company successfully completed a new round of financing, raising 3 billion RMB, attracting participation from several strategic investors and state-owned institutions, with existing shareholders like Junlian Capital also increasing their investment. The funds will primarily be used for the research and development upgrade of Zhipu's base large model, further enhancing its capabilities in complex reasoning, multi-modal task solutions, and promoting innovation and development within the industry ecosystem.
This marks Zhipu's second round of financing this year. Previously, in September, Zhipu received funding support led by Zhongguancun Science City, becoming the first large model startup to achieve a valuation exceeding 20 billion RMB. Zhipu's leading position in the domestic AI industry has been further solidified, and it has gained significant influence globally.
Despite facing challenges such as intense market competition and slowed technological progress, Zhipu has stood out in the industry by continuously launching new models. In June of this year, Zhipu open-sourced the GLM-4-9B and GLM-4V-9B visual models, and in August, the GLM-4-Plus base large model made significant breakthroughs in language understanding and long text processing, reaching an internationally leading level.
In addition to language processing, Zhipu has also made breakthroughs in multi-modal products such as video generation, video calls, and emotional voice. Its intelligent product AutoGLM is particularly notable, capable of autonomously completing complex operations and collaborating across applications. With continuous technological improvements, Zhipu is gradually establishing a competitive advantage in edge technology, especially with large models performing exceptionally well on Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.
In terms of commercialization, Zhipu has achieved counter-cyclical growth this year, with API revenue in the B-end market increasing more than 30 times year-on-year, daily Token consumption rising 150 times, and paid Tokens growing over 40 times. Zhipu's open platform Bigmodel.cn has attracted 700,000 enterprises and developers, with the number of paying customers increasing 20 times, accelerating the commercialization process. Additionally, Zhipu's consumer product "Zhipu Qingyan" has attracted over 25 million users, with paid features expected to generate tens of millions in revenue this year.
Looking ahead, Zhipu will continue to promote the cross-platform application of large model technology and establish an AI agent ecological fund to accumulate advantages for future market demands and technological developments. Industry experts predict that by 2025, AI agents will usher in an era of "collective collaboration," in which Zhipu is expected to play a significant role.
