Chongqing - Hong Kong-listed Zhipu AI, trading under the name BigModel, surged on June 22, pushing its market value above one trillion HK dollars (about 130 billion U.S. dollars). The rally was fueled by the launch of its latest AI model, its rare status as a publicly traded large-model developer, and growing expectations for commercial growth.

A representative of Zhipu AI presents the latest achievements from BigModel's joint AI PC innovation efforts with Intel on Oct. 25, 2024. (Photo/Zhipu AIl)

Zhipu AI rose more than 42% in intraday trading, reaching a high of 2,980 HK dollars per share and a market value of 1.27 trillion HK dollars. By the close, the stock had pared most of its gains, ending up 15.09% at 2,410 HK dollars per share, with a market capitalization of 1.07 trillion HK dollars.

The company debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Jan. 8 at an offer price of 116.20 HK dollars per share. In less than six months, its market value has surged from 52.8 billion HK dollars at listing to more than 1 trillion HK dollars, representing a cumulative gain of over 1,900%.

GLM-5.2 puts Zhipu AI in the global AI model competition

The latest round of gains followed Zhipu AI's announcement and open-source release of GLM-5.2, its new flagship general language model. GLM, short for General Language Model, refers to an AI system designed to understand and generate text, code, and other outputs across multiple tasks.

Zhipu AI announced GLM-5.2 on June 13 and released it in full on June 17. The model supports a 1 million-token context window, making it more suitable for complex coding, enterprise workflows, and long-term planning tasks.

Furthermore, GLM-5.2 ranked first among globally available models in Code Arena blind tests and topped the open-source model ranking on Artificial Analysis. Its coding capability was highlighted as a major upgrade. On benchmarks including FrontierSWE and Terminal-Bench, which test coding and long-horizon task performance, GLM-5.2 narrowed its gap with Claude Opus 4.8 to between 1% and 4%.

The model's release helped position Zhipu AI as one of the few Chinese model developers being discussed alongside leading international AI companies. Artificial Analysis rankings showed Anthropic, OpenAI, and Zhipu AI forming a leading group among top model developers. That comparison has become part of investor discussions about Zhipu AI's position not only in China's AI market but also in the global competition for frontier model capabilities.

Zhipu AI's advantage also extends to deployment and cost. GLM-5.2 has completed adaptation with domestic computing platforms, including Huawei Ascend, Cambricon, Moore Threads, and Kunlunxin, supporting its use within China's AI infrastructure. Its API output price for long-context tasks is 4.13 U.S. dollars per million tokens, compared with 45 U.S. dollars for GPT-5.5, 25 U.S. dollars for Claude Opus 4.8 and 18 U.S. dollars for Gemini 3.1 Pro.

Can advanced AI models deliver real business returns?

Beyond the model release, policy and liquidity factors also contributed to market sentiment. On June 8, Zhipu AI was included in the Hang Seng Tech Index and Stock Connect. Stock Connect allows qualified Chinese mainland investors to trade selected Hong Kong-listed shares through Chinese mainland exchanges.

The company is also accelerating a planned A-share listing in Shanghai. On June 1, Zhipu AI announced plans to issue A-shares on the STAR Market and raise to 15 billion yuan (about 2.2 billion U.S. dollars).

China Merchants Securities forecast that Zhipu AI's revenue will reach 3.54 billion yuan in 2026, 8.11 billion yuan in 2027, and 15.02 billion yuan in 2028.

Analysts said scarcity is a key factor behind Zhipu AI's valuation. UBS analysts attributed the company's valuation premium to the scarcity of listed global model companies, the absence of a lock-up expiration, and low liquidity. In China's public equity market, there are still a few listed companies whose main business is directly tied to large language model development. That has made Zhipu AI one of the limited channels for investors seeking exposure to China's AI model sector.

HSBC also noted that Zhipu AI's free float remains very limited, but said a sharp increase in tradable shares after the lock-up period expires in July could help stabilize the share price. Zhipu AI is scheduled to unlock 25.68 million shares on July 8, worth about 26.9 billion HK dollars based on current prices. Before that, only about 17.35 million shares were freely tradable, accounting for less than 4% of total share capital.

The company's next test will be whether the model's capabilities can translate into measurable commercial returns. JPMorgan said Zhipu AI has doubled API prices this year while sales volumes have continued to grow. An API, or application programming interface, allows developers and companies to access AI model services through software systems.

The bank said commercialization in the sector is increasingly converging around APIs, coding, AI agents, and enterprise workflows. That means pricing power will depend more on model capabilities than on product coverage or user scale.

Zhipu AI has already reported signs of commercial growth. Its MaaS business, or Model-as-a-Service, reached 1.7 billion yuan in annual recurring revenue in 2025, up 60 times year-on-year. Its 2025 revenue reached 724 million yuan, up 131.9%, while cloud deployment revenue rose 292.6% to 190 million yuan. Zhipu AI CEO Zhang Peng previously said that nine of China's top 10 internet companies were using GLM extensively every day.

At the same time, the company continues to face cost pressure. In 2025, Zhipu AI reported a net loss of 4.718 billion yuan and research and development spending of 3.18 billion yuan, more than four times its revenue. JPMorgan previously forecast that Zhipu AI may become profitable in 2029.

The wider market backdrop also supports Zhipu AI's valuation story. IDC data showed China's enterprise MaaS market rose from 114 trillion tokens in 2024 to 1,944 trillion in 2025, with 40,000 trillion expected in 2026. QuestMobile data showed China's AI-native apps reached 440 million monthly active users in March 2026. 

But user scale does not guarantee profit. Investors are watching whether Zhipu AI and other Chinese model developers can turn model capability into revenue, gross margins, and cash flow, as Anthropic becomes a global reference point for AI commercialization.