{"slug": "zhipu-weighs-multibillion-dollar-raise-after-2000-surge", "title": "Zhipu weighs multibillion-dollar raise after 2,000% surge", "summary": "Chinese AI lab Zhipu is considering a multibillion-dollar share sale in Hong Kong after its stock surged roughly 2,000% since January, pushing its market value above HK$1 trillion. The rally follows the launch of its open-source GLM-5.2 model, which gained traction after Anthropic pulled its Fable 5 model worldwide due to US export controls. Despite the stock surge, analysts question whether the deeply unprofitable company can turn the geopolitical opportunity into a sustainable business.", "body_md": "*A 2,000% rally has handed Beijing’s Zhipu a rare fundraising window, and Anthropic’s vanished Fable 5 widened it. The harder question is whether a deeply unprofitable lab can turn the moment into a durable business.*\n\nSix months ago, Zhipu was a Chinese artificial-intelligence lab fresh off a $558M Hong Kong listing. Its shares priced at HK$116.2. This week they touched HK$2,980.\n\nThat is a gain of roughly 2,000% since January. It has pushed the company, now trading as Knowledge Atlas Technology, above HK$1 trillion in market value. That is about $128bn.\n\nNow Zhipu wants to use the moment. The company is weighing a **Zhipu share sale** to raise several billion US dollars in Hong Kong, [people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-24/zhipu-considers-multibillion-dollar-share-sale-in-hong-kong-after-2-000-gain). A placement could come as soon as next month. A six-month lock-up from the IPO expires on 8 July. Zhipu also aims to [issue shares in Shanghai](https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3357858/zhipu-ai-market-cap-tops-hk1-trillion-shares-glm-52-developer-soar). A deal of that size would dwarf the original listing.\n\nThe shares rose as much as 16% on Wednesday. They pared the gain after the Bloomberg report, closing at HK$2,174.\n\nThe obvious read: a hot stock doing what hot stocks do, striking while the iron glows. The more interesting shift is what the rally actually prices in. Investors are not just betting on a Chinese AI lab. They are betting on a geopolitical opening that a foreign government handed Zhipu by accident.\n\n## The Fable 5 window\n\nThat opening has a name: Fable 5. In early June, Anthropic released it as the public-facing version of its powerful Mythos model. The company had earlier described Mythos as good enough at writing code to pose a global cybersecurity risk.\n\nThree days later, the US government placed export controls on the release. It barred all foreign nationals from access, including Anthropic’s own employees.\n\nUnable to guarantee compliance, Anthropic [pulled both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 worldwide](https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/22/1139424/three-things-to-watch-amid-anthropics-latest-feud-with-the-government/) on 12 June. The most advanced AI model on the planet went dark. Developers, enterprises and governments started asking whether they wanted to depend on something Washington could switch off.\n\nZhipu launched its answer the next day. GLM-5.2, a 744-billion-parameter model, ships fully open. Anyone can build on it for free. It climbed to second place on Arena’s front-end coding leaderboard, behind only Fable 5. No Chinese model had reached the global top three before, on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, where only Anthropic and OpenAI rank higher.\n\nJefferies called it [“a milestone for Chinese AI”](https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3358067/how-anthropics-fable-5-shutdown-could-help-chinas-zhipu-glm-52-gain-ground). JPMorgan projected a revenue jump of more than 534% this year and a swing to profit by 2028.\n\nThe confidence is loud enough that Zhipu’s founder picked a fight about it. In a [rare exchange on X](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/chinese-ai-company-ceo-corrects-elon-musk-on-china-launching-anthropic-fable-5-kind-ai-model-says-you-are-wrong-it-wont-/articleshow/131952811.cms), Elon Musk predicted that a Chinese rival to Fable 5 was “probably” a first-quarter event. Tang Jie, Zhipu’s founder and chief scientist, replied that it “won’t take that long”. Musk pushed back.\n\nBenchmarks were not the same as “true usefulness”, he said, and Anthropic’s edge “shows up in revenue”. Tang answered: “Focus is all we need, especially focusing on what intelligence truly is.”\n\n## The bull case meets the balance sheet\n\nRevenue is exactly where the bull case gets thin. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Lea and Jasmine Lyu wrote that comparisons with Anthropic “don’t stand up to scrutiny”.\n\nThe American company holds the firepower, the operational reach and the research resources. Zhipu, they said, “will likely remain deeply unprofitable”, with rising agentic demand driving its losses higher over the next 24 months.\n\nAfter the share-sale report, the pair added a warning. The cash-hungry business will need continual fundraising for three years as agentic AI use widens its operating losses. Read that way, a multibillion-dollar placement looks less like a victory lap and more like a refuelling stop.\n\nThe migration story invites doubt too. Open-weight models still trail the best proprietary systems. Jefferies argues that a Fable 5 ban will not translate into meaningful revenue for Chinese labs, because most enterprise AI still runs through direct interface access rather than self-hosted open models.\n\nJonathan Zhun Qiu, a partner at Meridian Capital Asia, rates GLM-5.2 as comparable to Anthropic’s previous-generation Opus 4.7, and still behind Opus 4.8 on coding. The gap keeps narrowing. It has not closed.\n\n## US versus the world\n\nWhat has changed is the politics, and that is what the rally is really about. The Fable 5 shutdown made one thing plain. Access to a leading American model can hinge on US domestic decisions. Lizzi Lee of the Asia Society Policy Institute said the market “immediately understood the opening that Anthropic just created”.\n\nFrench politician Bruno Retailleau called the episode a “wake-up call” for Europe.\n\nAnalysts such as Albright Stonebridge’s Paul Triolo increasingly frame the contest differently. It is no longer simply US against China, but, as one IMD professor put it, “US versus the world”. A tech stack that cannot rely on a single provider starts shopping. China’s open models are cheap, capable and unrestricted.\n\nZhipu’s plan has clear precedent. Contemporary Amperex Technology, the battery giant, raised $5bn in a Hong Kong placement in April, not long after its own debut there. CATL’s market value is still more than twice Zhipu’s. The difference: CATL sells a profitable physical product. Zhipu sells a story about where intelligence, and sovereignty, will come from next.\n\nThe deliberations may lead nowhere.\n\nBloomberg’s sources stressed the talks are ongoing and might not produce a deal, and Zhipu did not respond to requests for comment. But the timing tells you what the company sees. A lock-up is about to lift, a rival’s flagship has vanished, and the stock is up 2,000% on the bet that the gap stays open.\n\nThe test is not whether Zhipu can raise the money. It is whether, by 2028, it has built a business worth what June 2026 decided it was.\n\n## Get the TNW newsletter\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/zhipu-weighs-multibillion-dollar-raise-after-2000-surge", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/zhipu-share-sale-hong-kong-fable-5", "published_at": "2026-06-24 12:30:27+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-24 13:15:45.977174+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-policy", "ai-startups", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Zhipu", "Knowledge Atlas Technology", "Anthropic", "Fable 5", "GLM-5.2", "Tang Jie", "Elon Musk", "Bloomberg"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/zhipu-weighs-multibillion-dollar-raise-after-2000-surge", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/zhipu-weighs-multibillion-dollar-raise-after-2000-surge.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/zhipu-weighs-multibillion-dollar-raise-after-2000-surge.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/zhipu-weighs-multibillion-dollar-raise-after-2000-surge.jsonld"}}