Chinese large-model company ZhiPu AI has released a new generation model, GLM-5.2, which has once again sparked discussions about the competition between China and the United States in the field of AI.
According to Hong Kong English media The South China Morning Post, on June 22, an online interaction between Tang Jie, co-founder of Zipu, and Elon Musk caught attention. At that time, Musk predicted that Chinese large models might catch up with Anthropic's Fable level in the first quarter of 2027. Tang Jie openly stated that "it won't take that long."
On June 19th, a netizen asked Musk on the X platform, wanting to know when China will be able to match Fable in terms of large models, and mentioned that Zhipu’s GLM-5.2 has significantly narrowed the gap between the two.
Musk's response was: "It may be (Q1 of 2027)."
“In response, Tang Jie stated in the post's comments, ‘I do not need that much time.’”
On June 22, 2026, a young person in Shanghai accessed the Zhipu AI large model page via mobile phone and computer. IC Photo
Musk also believes that the Chinese model may be able to match the Fable 5 in standardized benchmarks by next year. However, achieving “true usefulness” is a more challenging goal. He stated that even if this is achieved in the first quarter of next year, it would still be “very impressive”.
He added that Anthropic focuses on “maximizing useful intelligence… This strategy is clearly reflected in its revenue performance.”
In this regard, Tang Jie emphasized Zipu's determination: "We only need to focus, especially on what intelligence really is."
On June 17th, Zhipu officially released and made the flagship model GLM-5.2 open-source. This model has a total of 744 billion parameters and 40 billion activation parameters, and it supports stable processing of up to 1 million context windows. It performs excellently when dealing with long-term software engineering tasks.
In the Code Arena evaluation system, GLM-5.2 ranked second in the overall chart with a score of 1595 points. It is only behind the temporarily unavailable Fable 5, but it ranks first among the globally available models.
According to data from the independent AI analysis platform Artificial Analysis, this announcement places Zhipu as the third-largest AI laboratory in the world, behind the Silicon Valley giants Anthropic and OpenAI.
Jefferies investment banking analysts noted in a report last week that GLM-5.2 can be considered a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence in China. This is the first time a domestically developed model has made it to the top three globally. The model features a million-level ultra-long context window, demonstrating outstanding performance in code writing and handling extremely long autonomous tasks.
This release coincides with the changes in US export restrictions and security regulations.
Earlier this month, Anthropic announced restrictions on queries related to scientific and cutting-edge artificial intelligence research, allowing only the use of an older Opus 4.8 model for such queries. This move sparked global controversy. Subsequently, the company stopped making Fable 5 available to all users due to instructions issued by the U.S. government based on national security concerns.
Several hours later, Tang Jie announced the launch of GLM-5.2 on the X platform. He stated that this model would be “fully open to the public,” and emphasized that “advanced intelligence belongs to everyone.”
The release of the new model has raised market expectations regarding Zhipu's financial prospects.
JPMorgan in a research report last week predicted that ZP Science's revenue will increase by more than 534% this year, and expects the company to become profitable by 2028, reversing its previous expectation of net losses.
On June 22, the stock price of Zhipu in Hong Kong trading surged by more than 42% during the session, reaching a high of HK$2980 per share, with a total market value of HK$1.27 trillion. By the close of the day, Zhipu's stock price had slightly declined to 15.09%, ending at HK$2410 per share, with a total market value of HK$1.07 trillion. Since its listing in January this year, the stock has increased by more than 1700%.
