Zhipu accelerates pivot to domestic chips amid AI boom in China
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People stand in front of a claw machine filled with lobster-shaped plush toys during a setup session for AutoClaw, a local version of the AI agent OpenClaw developed by Zhipu, at an office building in Beijing, China March 13, 2026. REUTERS/Laurie Chen
By Liam Mo and Laurie Chen
BEIJING, March 31 (Reuters) - Zhipu AI CEO Zhang Peng said on Tuesday the company was accelerating its use of domestic Chinese chips to meet a significant rise in computing demand since February.
One of the leading players in China's crowded artificial intelligence sector, Zhipu AI, reported revenue growth of 132% for 2025 in its first results update since raising HK$4.35 billion ($554.9 million) in a January listing.
The spinoff from Tsinghua University has drawn attention in Silicon Valley with its latest GLM-5 model, said to match U.S. rivals on several performance metrics.
"The deep optimisation has enabled the GLM series models to achieve inference efficiency on domestic chips that rivals that of the world's leading foreign chips," Zhang said in an earnings call with reporters after releasing annual financial results.
Zhang said the company has raised its API call pricing by 83% in the first quarter due to surging market demand, with the volume of such requests surging 400%.
Revenue from its core business of on-premise deployment, in which Zhipu sells models for installation on clients' local servers, more than doubled to 533.9 million yuan ($77.3 million) in 2025.
Cloud-based revenue from API services sold to enterprises and individuals climbed 292% to 190.4 million yuan.
Zhipu posted a net loss of 4.72 billion yuan for 2025, compared with a loss of 2.96 billion in 2024. Its net adjusted loss for the year was 3.18 billion yuan.
The company has said it expects to reach profitability through revenue growth and improved operating efficiency, without giving a timeframe.
The results come amid growing competition in China's AI sector, as companies race to release updated models and step up marketing.
Zhipu, also known as Knowledge Atlas Technology, competes with startups such as MiniMax, Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, as well as internet giants ByteDance and Alibaba.
Rival MiniMax posted a net loss of $1.87 billion for 2025.
Zhipu has been expanding abroad, particularly in Southeast Asia, but China remains its primary market.
($1=6.9074 Chinese yuan renminbi)
($1=7.8393 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by Liam Mo, Che Pan and Laurie Chen; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Keith Weir)
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