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China’s Zhipu AI sparks new ‘DeepSeek moment’ with cost-effective coding model

While other Chinese releases have made significant gains, GLM-5.2 is the first model to rank in the top three globally on a major benchmark

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Zhipu AI, known internationally as Z.ai, made the GLM-5.2 model available on June 13. Photo: Shutterstock
Xinmei Shenin Hong KongandMinxiao Changin Shenzhen
Nearly a year and a half after China’s DeepSeek shook Silicon Valley with its powerful yet affordable artificial intelligence model, Beijing-based Zhipu AI has delivered another jolt to the US tech industry.
American entrepreneurs and researchers are praising the coding performance and cost-effectiveness of Zhipu’s new flagship model, GLM-5.2. Released earlier this month, the model’s release is being hailed by some as a new “DeepSeek moment”, with users calling it the first-ever open-weight model reliable enough for day-to-day coding workflows.

Matt Velloso, a former vice-president at Meta Platforms and Google DeepMind, said on X last week that he had been using GLM-5.2 “all day” and found it to be the “first open model that passes the bar as a daily driver”.

“Things are not going to be the same,” Velloso wrote. Responding to a user comparing GLM-5.2 to OpenAI’s proprietary GPT-5.5 released in April, he added that the Chinese model was “more to the point, doesn’t talk too much, doesn’t go in circles trying to explain itself, just does the job”.

Zhipu AI, known internationally as Z.ai, made GLM-5.2 available on June 13. The launch came a day after leading US lab Anthropic shelved its most advanced public-facing model, Claude Fable 5, to comply with a Washington directive blocking foreign users.

While recent Chinese releases like DeepSeek V4 Pro, MiniMax M3 and Alibaba’s Qwen3.7-Max have made significant gains, GLM-5.2 stands out as the first Chinese model to rank in the top three globally on a major benchmark.

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