Zhipu’s Chairman Amasses $22.4 Billion Fortune As Chinese AI Model Developer Soars Almost 1,000%

When Knowledge Graph Technology, a Chinese artificial intelligence model developer, listed in Hong Kong in January, the market performance was tepid. However, as the company, better known as Zhipu, has demonstrated steady technological progress, its shares have soared nearly 1,000% this year, leading Chairman Liu Debing to amass a $22.4 billion fortune on the back of a strong run.

After a wave of initial public offerings that created huge fortunes, the 50-year-old tycoon is now the richest billionaire spawned by China’s recent artificial intelligence boom. Overall, he ranks as the 15th richest person in the United States, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaire rankings. Tang Jie, chief scientist at ChiPu, is a computer science professor at China’s Tsinghua University and is also a billionaire with a net worth of $5 billion, based on his holdings, Forbes estimates. A company spokesman declined to comment on their respective net worths.

Charlie Chai, a Shanghai-based analyst at research firm 86Research, said investors are piling into Zhipu because they believe it has transformed from “too small and too a marginalized player” to “a true technology champion.” The Beijing-based company initially faced questions about its ability to effectively develop artificial intelligence after it was blacklisted by the United States last year on national security grounds. The company also faces stiff competition from local rivals, including fellow Hong Kong-listed MiniMax Group, which raised $558 million in an IPO in January.

But against the backdrop of an accelerating shift to domestic alternatives, including Huawei and Cambrian chips, Chipu has launched a world-class model. The company launched GLM-5 in February, an artificial intelligence model that can reason and write code. Chipu says its performance is comparable to Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5, released last November.

According to a May research report from Macquarie Capital, the updated version GLM-5.1 launched in April achieved a breakthrough in response speed. Such improvements are especially important in the era of artificial intelligence agents. These digital assistants need to leverage models more frequently to perform complex tasks, such as building websites and drafting business proposals, which means cumulative delays across multiple steps can significantly reduce overall performance.

According to Macquarie, GLM-5.1 enables agencies to “build a complex website in 30 seconds.” Chai said Zhipu’s models are now considered top-notch products in China, on par with products from Kimi and Alibaba Group. To further advance artificial intelligence research, the company is currently seeking to issue up to 38.8 million new shares on Shanghai’s Nasdaq Science and Technology Innovation Board to raise at least 15 billion yuan ($2.2 billion), according to a filing with the stock exchange on Tuesday.

“In recent months, Zhipu has made very strong progress in LLM (large language model), occupying a first-tier position in global competition and gaining global recognition,” Chai said. “Its reasoning and coding capabilities are particularly strong and are actually quite close to global leaders like Cloud.”

Last year, Zhipu’s revenue surged 132% year-on-year to 724.3 million yuan. As the company invested heavily in research and development, its losses increased by nearly 60% to 4.7 billion yuan. The company charges developers a fee per million tokens used — a measure of how much data is processed. Kenny Wu, a securities strategist at Everbright Securities International in Hong Kong, said sales are expected to grow by at least 100% in the next three years as its model becomes more popular. In April, Zhipu raised the prices of its models by at least 8%, its second price increase in two months, following a 30% increase in February.

Analysts warned, however, that enthusiasm may be too much. Shares of Chipu and MiniMax Group often fluctuate more than 10% in both directions within a day. These AI companies are subject to speculative trading as investors seek out industry leaders and quickly reallocate capital.

Given Shibaura’s sharp rise, Everbright’s Wu suggested a wait-and-see approach. 86Research’s Chai, who has a price target of HK$1,300 for Chipu (the company traded at HK$1,455 per share on Tuesday), also thinks the stock is quite expensive now.

“Model companies represent a very new business model and cost structure, and it is difficult for us to find comparable reference points from the ‘old economy,'” he said. Chai added that his price target for Chipu already factors in growth over the next five years until 2030, while the company may not generate profits in the next three years due to heavy research investments.