Zhipu AI nears A-share IPO after 1,300% stock surge this year

Zhipu AI's A-share IPO progress comes as its GLM 5.2 model draws Silicon Valley praise and its Hong Kong shares surge nearly 1,300% this year, widening its lead over rival MiniMax Group.

"Many smart people and AI insiders are saying GLM-5.2 is the first Chinese AI model to match and often beat the American big lab public AI models with no compromises," Marc Andreessen, general partner at a16z, wrote on X in June.

The company, which listed in Hong Kong in January alongside MiniMax, has seen its market value swell as investors rotate into the stock. Cofounder and Chairman Liu Debing now ranks as China's eighth-richest person with a net worth of $28.4 billion, according to Forbes. Fellow cofounder Tang Jie, an AI professor at Tsinghua University, holds a $6.1 billion fortune. Zhipu's GLM 5.2 model, released in June, excels at long-horizon coding tasks and is better than OpenAI's GPT-5.5 in coding abilities, the company claims, while trailing only slightly behind Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8.

An A-share listing would give Zhipu access to mainland Chinese investors through a channel separate from its Hong Kong float, potentially deepening its capital base as it competes with MiniMax, DeepSeek and global rivals. Zhipu trades at 52 times forward sales, according to BofA Securities, compared with MiniMax's 19 times — a premium reflecting faster revenue growth and stronger enterprise exposure.

The tutoring completion, disclosed by the company, marks a procedural milestone toward an initial public offering on China's A-share market. The exact timeline for a listing application and the expected fundraising size have not yet been disclosed.

Zhipu's ascent contrasts with MiniMax, which has lost $39 billion in market value since March and faces a lockup expiration this week that will free about 153.5 million additional shares for trading. MiniMax founder Yan Junjie has seen his net worth shrink to $3.3 billion from a peak of $12.6 billion, Forbes estimates.

"We do not yet see MiniMax proving its edge against DeepSeek and GLM," Ke Yan, Singapore-based head of research at DZT Research, wrote in a June note. "With the model still unproven and the lock-up supply ahead, we are bearish on the stock."

Zhipu faces its own lockup expiration this week, with about 25.7 million shares becoming eligible for trading on Tuesday. But more than 90 percent of its listed shares won't be freely traded until next January, as many pre-IPO investors have a 12-month lockup period, according to 86Research analyst Charlie Chai.

The company was added to a U.S. trade blacklist last year on national security grounds, but that has not slowed its technical progress or investor enthusiasm. Tang Jie recently said on X that "it won't take that long" for Chinese models to catch up with the best in the U.S.

For investors, Zhipu's A-share IPO represents both opportunity and risk. A mainland listing could unlock additional demand from China's domestic fund managers, who have limited access to Hong Kong-listed AI stocks. But the premium valuation — 52 times forward sales — leaves little room for execution missteps in a market where AI model competition is intensifying.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.