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Wency Chen

Ben Jiang

Z.ai, the Chinese artificial intelligence model developer listed in Hong Kong, is seeking to raise about HK$15.7 billion (US$2 billion) through a placement of roughly 21.97 million new H shares at HK$714 apiece, according to a company filing on Sunday.
The company also announced a 20.14 billion yuan (US$3 billion) convertible-bond sale, according to its filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Z.ai, also known as Zhipu AI, closed at HK$793 on Friday, down 73 per cent from its intraday high of HK$2,980 on June 22. Yet, the stock remains nearly seven times its January listing price.
The fundraising moves, which could help the company raise around US$5 billion, come as the company’s 60-day lock-up period following its July placement expires. The July placement raised HK$31.4 billion from the sale of 19.78 million shares at HK$1,588 each, shortly after a six-month lock-up on 25.68 million initial public offering shares held by cornerstone investors expired.
The company is also pursuing a listing on Shanghai’s Star Market. The firm has completed regulatory tutoring and secured shareholder approval for an offering targeting up to 15 billion yuan, though no application has been publicly accepted yet.
Z.ai’s repeated tapping of capital markets underscores the heavy costs of developing frontier AI models.
Its earnings show that revenue for the six months ended June 30 rose 400 per cent to 953.89 million yuan (US$142 million).
Z.ai said that its annual recurring revenue – a key metric that projects current monthly subscription income over 12 months – had reached US$1.6 billion by the end of August.
However, its total loss narrowed 12.1 per cent to 2.07 billion yuan, while adjusted net loss increased 12.1 per cent to 1.96 billion yuan. Spending on research and development rose by one-third to 2.13 billion yuan, while cash stood at 3.99 billion yuan at the end of June.
The company released its latest flagship model, GLM-5.3, in August, followed by a cheaper multimodal version called GLM-5.3-Flash.
Management said during an August earnings call that the company had begun work on its next-generation model, which would feature more parameters, a longer context window and native multimodal capabilities.
Z.ai and rival MiniMax, both Hong Kong-listed Chinese AI companies, could remain loss-making through 2030 as computing costs rise, Macquarie Group’s head of Asia internet and software research, Ellie Jiang, said in an interview.
She said that while Z.ai had targeted annual recurring revenue of about US$2.4 billion by the end of the year, Macquarie’s estimate was closer to US$3 billion.


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The Chinese AI developer is courting more backers as it scales its models and infrastructure amid intensifying competition


The Chinese AI developer is courting more backers as it scales its models and infrastructure amid intensifying competition.


Seeking cash for AI, China’s Z.ai eyes new US$5b fundraising push after July share sale

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The Chinese AI developer is courting more backers as it scales its models and infrastructure amid intensifying competition

The Chinese AI developer is courting more backers as it scales its models and infrastructure amid intensifying competition