China's Z.AI Raises $5 Billion for Next-Generation GLM

🚨 China's Z.AI Raises $5 Billion for Next-Generation GLM

China's Z.AI (Zhipu AI, the company behind the GLM models) raised approximately $5 billion on September 13, 2026: about $2 billion in new shares and about $3 billion in zero-coupon convertible bonds. This is the second major round in two months; the news caused the stock to fall by more than 10%.

🌍 Hong Kong has become the main source of funding for Chinese frontier labs without access to U.S. chips. 60% of the funds will go to the next generation of GLM and Fully Self-Training — a cycle where the model itself prepares the training data for the next version.

👤 GLM — open-weight models competing with DeepSeek; new releases are expected in the coming months. Two days before the deal, advisory NSA, FBI, and CISA named Z.AI among six Chinese companies accused of distilling American models.

Source 1: https://technode.com/2026-09-14/z-ai-completes-around-us5-billion-financing-for-next-generation-glm-models/