On September 20, multiple outlets reported that Zhipu has closed approximately $5 billion in financing and launched its new lightweight model GLM-5.3-FlashX, a funding scale described as a record for China's AI industry. Research notes argue AI applications are accelerating from technology validation toward scenario penetration and commercial closed loops.
GLM-5.3-FlashX peaks at 200 tokens per second—about 5x faster than GLM-5.3-Flash—while keeping pricing in the same tier. It carries 320B total parameters with only 18B activated, uses a sparse-plus-linear-attention hybrid architecture, and runs entirely on a domestic AI accelerator cluster of over 100,000 cards.
The financing underscores investor conviction that China's foundation-model players are moving from model-building into defensible, large-scale deployment. Zhipu also disclosed that Claude at Anthropic now leads 26% of internal R&D and writes 80% of the company's code—a sign that "AI building AI" is becoming daily routine.
Source: China Finance Online / National Business Daily
