36氪精选：中国大模型第一股「智谱」，到底是谁？

Core Viewpoint - The listing of Zhipu marks a significant milestone for China's AI industry, being recognized as the first stock of a large model company in the country, reflecting the culmination of three years of anticipation in the sector [6][11]. Company Background - Zhipu was founded in June 2019 by a team from Tsinghua University's Computer Science Department, focusing on natural language processing (NLP) and knowledge graphs, and secured 40 million in angel funding in its founding year [7][8]. - The company made a pivotal decision to develop its own architecture, creating the General Language Model (GLM) instead of following the prevalent GPT and BERT paths, which led to the development of GLM-130B, a bilingual model with a scale of hundreds of billions of parameters [8][9]. Product Development and Market Position - Zhipu's GLM-130B was recognized as the only Asian model in a major evaluation by Stanford University in November 2022, shortly before the global surge of ChatGPT [9]. - Following the release of ChatGPT, Zhipu launched ChatGLM on March 14, 2023, which became a popular tool for developers in China, sparking a wave of interest in deploying large models [9][10]. - By the time of its listing, Zhipu's GLM model was already operational in 12,000 enterprises globally, including nine of the top ten internet companies in China, as well as sectors like government, healthcare, and education [10]. Financial Performance and Future Outlook - Despite rising revenues, Zhipu faces increasing R&D expenditures and significant losses, a common scenario among independent large model companies in Silicon Valley [11]. - The company secured over 2.5 billion RMB in funding in 2023, indicating strong investor interest and support, with a diverse group of investors joining its funding rounds [11]. - The listing of Zhipu is seen as a "coming of age" for China's AI sector, but it also brings the challenge of meeting market expectations and scrutiny in the future [11][12].