# Zai Chief Predicts China Mythos-Class Model Before 2027 > Source: > Published: 2026-06-19 05:31:10.724251+00:00 # Zai Chief Predicts China Mythos-Class Model Before 2027 Z.ai (Zhipu AI) co-founder Tang Jie declared on X on June 18 that China "won't take that long" to reach Fable-class AI capability, responding to an X user who asked his timeline after Z.ai's GLM-5.2 release. Elon Musk had estimated "Probably Q1" (of 2027) in the same thread. India Today reports an X user in the same exchange predicted "full PRC Mythos ('Fable') by Nov-Dec '26." The exchange follows a week in which the U.S. Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to suspend all foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on June 13, citing national security concerns about a potential jailbreak technique. Anthropic called the directive "a misunderstanding," stressing the same technique works on GPT-5.5. GLM-5.2, the 744B-parameter MoE model Z.ai released the same day as the ban, ranked as the highest-scoring open-weights model on Design Arena at launch. ### The X Exchange On June 18, 2026, an X user asked Z.ai co-founder Tang Jie for his timeline for China to match "Fable class" capability, noting that GLM-5.2 "certainly shorten[ed] the gap." Elon Musk replied to the thread: "Probably Q1" -- implying Q1 2027. Tang Jie responded: "won't take that long," signalling Z.ai expects to reach Fable-class capability before early 2027, plausibly within 2026. India Today reports another user in the thread predicted "full PRC Mythos ('Fable') by Nov-Dec '26." Marc Andreessen also engaged with the post, per Dealroom. ### The U.S. Export Ban The exchange came less than a week after the U.S. Commerce Department used national security export controls to order Anthropic to suspend all foreign national access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on June 13, 2026 (Fortune, Al Jazeera/Reuters). The order covered users outside the U.S. and foreign national employees at Anthropic itself. The government cited concerns that a jailbreak technique -- described by Fortune as involving the phrase "Fix this code" -- could bypass Fable 5's safeguards and unlock Mythos's advanced cybersecurity capabilities. Anthropic said it received the directive at 5:21 PM Eastern and called it "a misunderstanding." The company argued the technique was narrow, affected only one specific scenario, and produced similar outputs from other publicly available models including GPT-5.5. Anthropic said it had "no choice" but to disable both models for all users while disputing the order. Access to other Claude models, including Claude Opus 4.8, was not affected. ### Fable 5 vs. Mythos 5 Al Jazeera and Fortune reporting clarifies the architecture: Fable 5 is the consumer-facing product built on Mythos technology, with its advanced cybersecurity and biotechnology capabilities blocked for end users. Mythos 5 is the more powerful underlying model, used by U.S. government agencies and selected corporate partners. Anthropic had previously described Mythos as too dangerous for broad release -- framing that Fortune notes gave the government a legal basis to invoke export controls. ### GLM-5.2 and Z.ai Z.ai released GLM-5.2 the same day as the export ban, with company messaging framing it as a response to frontier Western model restrictions. GLM-5.2 is a 744B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts system with 40B active parameters and a 1 million-token context window; Zhipu plans to release MIT-licensed open weights. The model ranked as the highest-scoring open-weights model on Design Arena at launch (Cryptobriefing). Z.ai went public in 2026 at a $6.6B valuation; Tang Jie is a Tsinghua University professor who co-founded Zhipu AI as a university spin-off in 2019. ### What to Watch Observable signals include GLM-5.2's open-weights release and independent benchmark disclosures, any Anthropic update on restoring Fable 5 and Mythos 5 access, and legislative or regulatory follow-on to the export control order. Public X exchanges signal intent but are not substitutes for verified model releases or technical publications. ## Scoring Rationale The story ties three concurrent events -- China's GLM-5.2 launch, the unprecedented U.S. export ban on Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5, and Tang Jie's public timeline claim -- into a single geopolitical AI-race narrative that is notable for practitioners tracking frontier model availability and policy. The piece is a secondary synthesis published six days after the primary events and relies primarily on a public X exchange rather than new technical disclosures, placing it at the high end of Solid rather than clearly Notable. Practice interview problems based on real data 1,500+ SQL & Python problems across 15 industry datasets — the exact type of data you work with. [Try 250 free problems](/problems)