Z.ai
Z.ai, also known as Zhipu AI, develops the GLM model family. The company was established in 2019 by a team with roots at Tsinghua University. Its work now includes text, visual understanding, image generation, speech and device-control models.
Company & leadership
- CEO
- Zhang Peng; also an executive director and general manager in the reviewed company disclosures.
- Chairman
- Liu Debing.
- Listing completed
- 8 January 2026.
Founding team
- Liu Debing, Li Juanzi, Tang Jie, Xu Bin, Zhang Peng and Wang Shaolan.
A six-person founding team with university roots
The prospectus names six founders, rather than attributing the company to one scientist. It describes a team with academic roots at Tsinghua. The company began developing the GLM pre-training framework in 2020 and launched its model-service platform in 2021.
From GLM-130B to multimodal agents
Z.ai's history records GLM-130B in 2022 and ChatGLM in 2023. In 2024 it released GLM-4, visual models, GLM-4-Voice and AutoGLM. The sequence connects its original language-model work with voice interaction and software operation.
Public listing and the Z.ai name
The 2025 annual report confirms the January 2026 Hong Kong listing. It identifies a controlling group of founders and related partnerships, including Liu Debing, Tang Jie, Li Juanzi, Xu Bin and Zhang Peng. That disclosure describes the position at 31 December 2025, not a current ownership percentage.
At the June 2026 annual meeting, shareholders approved changing the English name from Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock Company Limited to Z.AI Co., Ltd. They also approved related changes to the articles of association.