[PhilNote: nice URL]
Startup Z.ai, formerly known as Zhipu, announced Monday that its new GLM-4.5 AI model would cost less than DeepSeek to use.
Like DeepSeek, the new model is also open source and can be downloaded for free.
At about half the size of DeepSeek’s model, GLM-4.5 only needs eight Nvidia H20 chips to operate, Z.ai CEO Zhang Peng told CNBC on Monday.
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Z.ai launched in 2019 and is reportedly planning an initial public offering in Greater China.
The startup has raised more than $1.5 billion from investors including Alibaba, Tencent and Qiming Venture Partners, according to PitchBook. Aramco-backed Prosperity7 Ventures as well as municipal funds from the cities of Hangzhou and Chengdu are also among Z.ai’s backers, the database showed.
In the last few weeks, several other Chinese companies have announced new, open-source AI models. During the World AI Conference in Shanghai, Tencent released the HunyuanWorld-1.0 model for generating three-dimensional scenes for game development. Last week, Alibaba announced its Qwen3-Coder model for writing computer code.
See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/28/chinas-latest-ai-model-claims-to-be-even-cheaper-to-use-than-deepseek.html