Zhipu AI launches free AI agent to challenge China's competitive AI market
Chinese artificial intelligence startup Zhipu AI has launched a free AI agent that furthers the competitive landscape of the country’s burgeoning AI market.
At a lunch event in Beijing on Monday, CEO Zhang Peng announced AutoGLM Rumination, which is designed to assist with deep research, web searches, travel planning and even writing research reports.
The agent draws upon Zhipu’s own models, including the GLM-Z1-Air reasoning model and the GLM-4-Air-0414 foundation model. The company claims its reasoning model matches the performance of DeepSeek’s R1 model, while operating up to eight times faster and using one-thirtieth of the computing resources.
The launch follows a wave of AI product launches in China, particularly following DeepSeek’s introduction of a cost-effective model and Manus’ announcement of what it claimed was the world’s first general AI agent, which charges users as much as $199 per month.
Zhipu’s offering, however, will be available for free through official channels like the GLM model website and mobile app.
Founded in 2019 as a spinoff from a laboratory at Tsinghua University, Zhipu AI has quickly become one of the leading lights in the sector. It recently claimed its latest large language model outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 on a variety of benchmarks.
The company has also been in the news for securing three consecutive rounds of funding backed by the Chinese government. The most recent round saw Zhipu secure 300 million yuan ($41.5 million) from the city of Chengdu.
