China's Zhipu AI Challenges US AI Dominance with $4.07 Billion in Funding

As the United States leads in artificial intelligence (AI), China's startup Zhipu AI is expanding at an astonishing pace, viewed as a more serious competitor than DeepSeek. OpenAI has warned that the US may lose its AI leadership if immediate action is not taken.
Zhipu AI has established partnerships with several Gulf countries, Singapore, and Malaysia, focusing on the development of autonomous AI. They are collaborating with Huawei to provide solutions, including large language models (LLM) and dedicated hardware to various governments. Their AutoGLM Rumination AI agent tool has achieved performance levels close to those of international mainstream models in browser automation and reasoning tasks.
Notably, the company has received over $1.4 billion (approximately TWD 40.7 billion) in funding from the Chinese government and secured $400 million (approximately TWD 11.6 billion) from Saudi Arabia's Prosperity7 Ventures, attracting attention from numerous investors. Despite being placed on the Department of Commerce's export control list in January, which prohibits them from accessing US technology and components, Zhipu AI continues to maintain close cooperation with the Chinese government and state-owned enterprises. This indicates China's willingness to invest heavily to capture the global AI market, which could significantly impact the US's dominance in the AI supply chain and technology.