Funding timelineZhipu AI is the Beijing lab behind the GLM foundation-model family, spun out of Tsinghua and the world's first publicly listed large-model company.
Every disclosed equity round for Zhipu AI, newest to oldest, with lead and participating investors where reported. Data is stored oldest-first; the timeline is displayed latest-first.
Reported via Reuters (term sheet): ~US$5B (~HK$39.1B) two-part raise — ~US$2B placement of 21.97M new shares at HK$714 (a ~10% discount to the Sep 11 close of HK$793) plus ~US$3B (RMB 20.14B) zero-coupon convertible bonds denominated in RMB but settled in USD, maturing September 2027, initial conversion price HK$892.50 (25% premium to the placement price), mandatory redemption option from 2027-02-18. Proceeds earmarked for R&D to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI.
Reported post-IPO capital raise at a ~US$64B valuation (Frontier Rounds leaderboard basis; Reported tier). Zhipu separately proposed an A-share STAR Market listing to raise RMB 15B for GLM R&D and platform buildout.
Zhipu listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (2513.HK) at HK$116.20/share as the world's first publicly listed large-model company, raising ~HK$4.35B (≈US$560M) at a ~HK$51B (≈US$6.5B) issue market cap; opened above issue price to ~HK$55B. Greenshoe fully exercised 2026-02-04 adding ~HK$633M.
Final private round before the HKEX IPO, dominated by local government funds contributing RMB 2B+ (≈US$278M) at an RMB 24.38B (≈US$3.4B) valuation; brought cumulative pre-IPO funding past RMB 8.3B across 8 rounds and 50+ shareholders.
Legend Capital and Qiming led the B1 tranche with ~RMB 210M (≈US$29M) at an RMB 2.11B (≈US$293M) post-money valuation.
RMB 152M (≈US$21M) at an RMB 850M (≈US$118M) valuation; a 智源研究院 angel tranche via 北京创新智源 preceded the priced A round in the same month.
Earliest known funding: RMB 40M (≈US$5.6M) from 中科创星 and Tsinghua-related vehicles.
Zhipu grew out of the Tsinghua/智源 research ecosystem (GLM lineage), raised early RMB rounds in 2019–2021, and rode the ChatGPT-era boom — more than 90% of its cumulative funding came after December 2022 — to a 2026-01-08 HKEX listing that made it the first large-model company to go public anywhere.
Its 50+ pre-IPO shareholders span the full spectrum of Chinese capital: university tech-transfer vehicles, VCs (Legend Capital — the largest external holder via its social-security fund vehicle — Qiming, Sequoia China, Hillhouse, Shunwei), strategic giants (Meituan, Ant, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Kingsoft, Boss Zhipin), and local government funds from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Zhuhai whose investments carried concrete industrial orders (e.g. Zhuhai's city-level GLM space, Sichuan's provincial foundation model).
Unlike consumer-first rivals (MiniMax, Moonshot), Zhipu monetized through private deployment, MaaS and developer tools for government and enterprise — revenue roughly doubled every year 2022–2024, and by September 2025 it served 12,000+ enterprise customers, 80M+ terminal devices and 45M+ developers.
The 2026 HKEX IPO (US$560M, ~HK$51B cap), the reported July 2026 placement (~US$4B, ~US$64B valuation) and the September 2026 two-part raise (~US$5B: US$2B placement + US$3B zero-coupon convertible bonds) moved Zhipu's financing story from private rounds to public markets, with an A-share STAR listing proposed to raise RMB 15B for GLM research. Its position shifted from 'one of the six tigers' of Chinese model startups to a listed platform with government enterprise channels as its moat.
Zhipu AI's lead investors are profiled in the Investor Atlas when their firms join the directory. Track who backs every frontier AI round on the Funding Leaderboard.
The two-part structure traded immediacy for flexibility: after months of share-price pressure, a straight placement at a 10% discount would have diluted harder. The ~US$3B zero-coupon notes — RMB-denominated, USD-settled, convertible at HK$892.50, a 25% premium — let buyers underwrite the discount now and optionality on recovery later, with a mandatory-redemption floor from February 2027.
When Zhipu landed on HKEX on January 8, 2026, no frontier-lab had gone public anywhere — the IPO priced the category itself, opening at a ~HK$51 billion market cap before the greenshoe added ~HK$633 million in February.
The July placement re-anchored the number: US$4 billion of new shares priced by institutional demand, not an exchange tape — roughly a ten-fold move in USD terms inside half a year, and the reason September's raise could be sized at US$5 billion without a new valuation being published.
Because the money came bundled with demand: Zhuhai's investment carried a city-level GLM space, Sichuan's a provincial foundation-model deployment. For a state fund, a stake in Zhipu is also procurement — which is why local capital from Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Zhuhai recurs across the pre-IPO rounds.
It pays no coupon, is priced in renminbi but settled in dollars, and converts at a 25% premium to the concurrent placement — closer to delayed equity than debt. The mandatory redemption from 2027-02-18 exists so holders aren't left holding the bond if the shares never clear the conversion price.