Transformation of Business Models and Reshaping of Product Forms
In this financial report, Zhipu AI introduced a new dimension of business categorization by splitting according to business forms, marking a shift for large model vendors from merely being model providers to becoming comprehensive intelligent solution providers. Currently, the "enterprise-level general large model" utilizing a privatized local deployment model remains the company's foundation, contributing about half of the total revenue. However, the "exponential" growth in the consumption of paid tokens primarily occurs in the cloud, indicating that the future will see standardized, subscription-based API calling methods gradually replacing traditional one-time local deployments.
Industry Chain Propagation: The Game Between Computing Costs and Profit Margins
In the AI industry chain, large model vendors are at the confluence of computing power demand and application supply. The surge in Zhipu's computational service fees in 2025 reveals the capital-intensive nature of foundational model research and development. With the release of flagship models like GLM-5, the demand for high-quality computing power has extended from merely the pre-training phase to inference and long-term agent execution stages. The growth in sales costs outstripping revenue growth indicates that before model capabilities can translate into profits, large model vendors must first prioritize large-scale investments in computational infrastructure.
Competitive Landscape and A-share Counseling Filing
Zhipu AI currently faces the most intense competition in the domestic large model sector. Besides independent vendors like MiniMax (100:HK), it also faces pricing challenges from major internet giants. Against this backdrop, Zhipu has updated its A-share listing counseling filing with the regulators. With most of the 4.35 billion Hong Kong dollars raised from its Hong Kong listing already invested in R&D and computing power construction, the company seeks secondary financing in mainland China, underscoring the ongoing capital requirement to maintain its leading position in model leadership.
