Zhipu AI: the Asian AI giant the West is ignoring (or trying to sideline).
In the age of artificial intelligence (AI), while the West gets distracted by AI-generated videos of Donald Trump and Elon Musk kissing and posts about DeepSeek being the most downloaded app, a less visible but even more powerful giant is emerging in Asia: Zhipu AI. This Chinese company, with a market value above 2.7 billion dollars (and rising), is positioning itself as a leader in generative AI, offering innovative solutions that rival those of its Western counterparts. But these people do intend to take the famous AI agents to another level: the physical one.
Founded in Beijing, home of those iconic 2008 Olympic Games (and not only because of Mario & Sonic), among other things, Zhipu AI has developed ChatGLM, a large-scale language model that competes directly with the most advanced Western solutions.
I don’t want to get too tangled up in the history of Zhipu AI, so here are some additional resources.
The question is…
How is it that a company with that much reach on the other side of the globe has had barely a token presence in a few forums or news items in Europe?
While DeepSeek has had a big impact in the West, it is odd that it got past certain filters (as Zhipu AI did not, banned by the US government before Trump took office). It is also curious that, in this case, China’s traditional secrecy on these matters did not get in the way of DeepSeek’s marketing campaigns or of the app’s adoption by foreign users.
Now, some details here are puzzling, especially how in Europe and America we are clueless about most of the projects and events happening in China.
One proof of that is their ecosystem of apps, social networks and search engines: they have practically everything we have, but in a Chinese version and with their own biases or censorship.
Let’s look at the following example of how we live in what we could call parallel realities:
Zhipu AI’s LinkedIn profile
DeepSeek AI’s LinkedIn profile
The difference between the two companies’ LinkedIn profiles is brutal. How can Zhipu AI have only 919 followers at the time of the screenshot?
And anyway, DeepSeek’s follower count also seems quite small to me, given that its impact has crossed borders (and my patience, with all the redundant posts about it).
LinkedIn stopped operating in China in 2021.
That’s right. In its place, MaiMai, an equivalent social network, is today the country’s main professional network. 110 million users in 2023. But that also seems low for such a large population. All of this makes me think again that secrecy is part of Chinese society, not just toward the outside. Or at least that’s the feeling I get, except when Aliexpress or Miravia hit my phone with a barrage of push notifications to buy from them and sell them my very soul for spinning a rigged wheel to win a little discount.
Ah, and speaking of Jack Ma’s empire: Alibaba also has AI models. And they recently launched a new one. We’ll talk about them soon. In the meantime, for your entertainment:
-> chat.qwenlm.ai
Visiting the Zhipu AI website.
This is the first thing we see when we open the site, after a long loading time and a mediocre render.
Zhipu AI home
“Agent”. That’s the only thing I can understand. Luckily icons tend to be a universal language, so I noticed a little globe icon at the top right that I guessed would switch the language.
However, neither the blog posts nor the news can be translated, except by using Google’s page translator. Even so, reading is very hard. Yes, you could also feed it to some AI and have it translate or summarize, but that’s up to each of you 😉.
What does catch my attention is that they haven’t published absolutely anything since the year began, when they had been quite active on their own site. Completely the opposite of Open AI’s communication style, which now goes for video presentations that try to be more endearing, like when my primary school classmates and I presented the photosynthesis cycle. Exactly the same. Although the Open AI folks are better organized, admittedly. And have done their homework.
Back to the main topic…
Why does Zhipu AI catch my attention so much? The key points:
- Zhipu AI stands out in the global AI landscape not only for its advances in language models like ChatGLM, but for its comprehensive vision of developing a more general and versatile AI. The company focuses on building AI agents, systems that go beyond language interaction to operate autonomously in the physical world and carry out complex tasks. This bet on intelligent agents opens a range of possibilities in fields as diverse as advanced robotics, cutting-edge industrial automation and autonomous driving.
- Zhipu AI’s vision takes shape through its BigModel.AI platform, an ecosystem that brings together a wide range of AI tools and services, from state-of-the-art language models to computer vision and image generation solutions. This platform shows the company’s commitment to developing a holistic AI and not just building conversational models.
- Zhipu AI is not walking this path alone. The company forms strategic collaborations with prestigious universities and leading companies in various sectors. These alliances give it access to specialized knowledge, cutting-edge resources and highly qualified people, speeding up its progress toward a more general and transformative AI.
All in all, the Zhipu AI phenomenon suggests the following reflection:
Faced with the ban from major world powers like the US, have they decided to work quietly out of the rest of the world’s sight so that, when the time comes, they can surprise us as they did with DeepSeek? But none of us will be able to use their technology. Or at least not until the West “backs down” and sees that if you can’t beat the enemy, you have no choice but to join them. Or at the very least, try not to anger them.
It is also overwhelming to think that we have a shrunken view of reality and current events, limited by the reach of our media and biased by believing we know everything that happens in the world, when it is more than likely that across the pond, or simply by looking away from Europe, we would find that other world powers or emerging powers are far from sitting with their arms crossed.
That said…
Do we really live as a cosmopolitan society in a world as globalized as they paint it?
Meme about the current state of AI
References:
“The history of Zhipu AI” (my own work):
https://www.perplexity.ai/page/historia-de-zhipu-ai-MWnHj5x_RTG568bQ8EIFSA
“The rise of DeepSeek” (my own work):
https://www.perplexity.ai/page/el-ascenso-de-deepseek-Hz7V_ZeHQNqmOLOo_G2piw
“The Zhipu AI ban” (my own work):
https://www.perplexity.ai/page/veto-a-zhipu-ai-dBdh6ETFROSw9xlOcSFwLg
“MaiMai: the Chinese-born LinkedIn” (my own work):
https://www.perplexity.ai/page/maimai-el-linkedin-de-origen-c-_2mC3VK1RQObkqWxM2Tx7w
“The parable of the Elephant”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
Keep reading
OpenCode 2 broke 3 of my 5 plugins; one fix took 3 days
OpenCode 2.0 refuses V1 plugins: 3 of 5 of mine failed on upgrade day. What changed in the API, which fix landed in 3 days, and what is still broken.
You might not care about this: my 2025 ending credits.
A human-written look back at 2025: technical marketers, “Neanderthalism” in the year of AI, n8n-style automation and the times AI left me speechless.