Chinese artificial intelligence company Zhipu AI has released the GLM‑4.5 model, designed for intelligent AI agents, as an open-source resource.
Zhipu AI is one of the leading AI startups in China, known as part of the so-called "AI Tigers" and reportedly directly backed by the Chinese government. Although well-known in China, the company first came to Western attention earlier this year, especially following statements by OpenAI. OpenAI revealed that Chinese AI firms have secured significant contracts from public projects, enabling rapid financial growth. Among these contract holders, Zhipu AI emerged as a major player.
As of July 2025, out of 3,755 large language models released worldwide, 1,509 originate from China. The GLM-4.5 model stands out as a new symbol of fierce competition in the Chinese market.
With its GLM‑4 family, Zhipu AI has made significant progress toward competing with OpenAI’s GPT‑4 in China. The GLM‑4 model is known for its long text processing capacity, multimodal capabilities, and cost-effective inference. Variants like GLM‑4‑32B‑0414 with 32 billion parameters have demonstrated high performance.
The new GLM‑4.5 model is released under the MIT license as open source, allowing users free commercial use.
