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Beijing accelerates the development of its national champions, Among them, ZHIPU AIfounded in 2019 by researchers from Tsinghua University, who intends to establish himself as a global actor in the generative AI. Strong in support of Tencent, Meituan and Xiaomithe startup has the ambition to compete with American giants.
But this ascent comes up against Sanctions imposed by Washington. In January 2024, The United States Trade Department has placed Zhipu Ai on a blacklistprohibiting him from access to American strategic components. A decision that weakens its capacity for innovation and slows its development internationally. However, far from weakened, the company has just raised 64 million euros In a few weeks, to accelerate its capacities and consolidate its positioning and which completed a lifting in early 2024 128 million euros. An amount without common measure with Open AI but which protects the company from capital pressure which is not in Chinese DNA.
Because in the technological war between Beijing and WashingtonZhipu Ai has a unprecedented institutional support. AI is indeed at the heart of the Chinese industrial strategy, and the state mobilizes not only Considerable capital to propel its champions and above all set up compulsory purchasing mechanisms to support its champions, A mechanism that could well inspire European policies in these times when strengthening national sovereignty is a capital issue.
Faced with Openai and Anthropic, can Zhipu AI impose itself as a credible alternative?
If Zhipu has been gaining momentum, Its delay in the face of American giants remains significant. According to the benchmark Superclue in November 2024his model GLM-4-Plus classify fourthfar behind GPT-4O (OPENAI), Claude 3.5 SONNET (Anthropic) and O1-PREVIEW (OPENAI).
The difference in performance is clear: American models dominate in advanced reasoning tasks, decision -making and contextual adaptability. A weakness which is largely explained by the American restrictions on Advanced semiconductors. Private chips NVIDIA A100 and H100essential for the training of latest generation AIs, Zhipu AI must compose with less efficient Chinese alternatives.
However his model open source allows it to attract a community of developers and the game is played over time.
In terms of product, like Openai, in parallel withaccelerate the development of its GLM (General Language Model) models),, Zhipu Ai diversifies his offer To strengthen its adoption. To his chatbot chatglmalready used by millions of users, are added Autoglman autonomous assistant capable of controlling smartphones and navigators, as well as GLM-4-revolutionan advanced vocal model. The startup also invests in multimodal AI with Yinga video generator inspired by Sora of Openai.
In terms of offer, the startup leads An offensive pricing policy. In June 2024, she proceeded its second price drop in a monthreducing by half the cost of access to GLM-4. Objective : Stimulate adoption and secure market share in the face of local competitorsnotably Deepseek and Monshot Ai. A choice that raises a crucial question: How far can it go without compromising its profitability and its investment capacity?
If the United States and Europe are not its field of action, the rest of the world is enough for it.
If sound Inclusion on the American black list compromises its perspectives outside China. ZHIPU AI wants to become the first real rival of Openai outside the United States and Europe. A strategy that must remind us that the West represents 1.1 billion people, out of the 8.9 billion that populate the world …
