Chinese AI Developer Zhipu’s First Half Revenue Grew Fourfold

Chinese artificial intelligence model developer Zhipu AI, whose progress has attracted Washington’s scrutiny and caught OpenAI’s attention, increased revenue as much as fourfold in the first half of the year, the Beijing-based startup’s CEO, Zhang Peng, said in an interview this week.

Zhipu’s business remains relatively small—revenue last year was only $42 million. But its strong first-half growth reflects the acceleration of China’s domestic AI usage this year. That’s partly due to DeepSeek’s release of its R1 model in January, which prompted a wave of interest among China’s municipal governments and businesses in using AI. Zhipu and other Chinese AI developers are trying to seize that opportunity, even as they are also grappling with a constant price war in a market where enterprise customers have traditionally been reluctant to pay for software.