Zhipu Raises 5 Billion USD to Enhance Computing Power and Model Research

Zhipu has completed a financing round totaling approximately 5 billion USD. The funding consists of roughly 2 billion USD from a share placement and approximately 3 billion USD from the issuance of convertible bonds.

TMTPost reported the story, noting that the share placement was conducted as a primary subsequent issuance at a fixed price of 714 Hong Kong dollars per H share, representing a discount of about 10.0 percent from the last closing price of 793 Hong Kong dollars per H share. The convertible bonds were priced at 100.5 percent with zero interest and a fixed conversion premium of 25 percent over the subsequent issuance price, raising approximately 20.14 billion Chinese yuan.

The company intends to use the proceeds to develop the next generation of GLM foundation models, build a fully self-training system, and construct computing power infrastructure. Specifically, the funds will cover the strengthening of training and production inference facilities, including operator development, computing power scheduling, and the adaptation of domestic chips to improve the effective output of computing resources.

This financing is intended to strengthen the capacity of Zhipu to support continuous research and development and rapid growth requirements. The company has maintained a frequent update cycle for its models, releasing GLM-5 in February 2026, GLM-5.1 in April, GLM-5.2 in June, and GLM-5.3 in August. Zhipu stated in a technical report that the intelligence upper limit of the current foundation may not have been fully developed yet, noting that improvements in GLM-5.3 came from reinforcement learning during the post-training phase rather than changes to the underlying architecture or parameter scale.

The convertible bonds feature a zero-interest structure with an initial conversion price of 892.50 Hong Kong dollars per share. This price represents a premium of approximately 12.55 percent relative to the closing price before the announcement. The company expects to utilize the funds by June 30, 2028.

During the issuance process, indicative orders covered the issuance size during the wall-crossing period, and hundreds of institutions participated after the order book opened. The top 20 investors were allocated more than 85 percent of the share capital and over 88 percent of the convertible bonds. This group included nearly 30 long-term investors and nearly 20 investment institutions focused on technology.