Z.ai, the Hong Kong-listed Chinese AI model developer also known as Zhipu AI, is raising approximately $5 billion through a combined share placement and convertible bond sale, directing the capital toward next-generation foundation models and domestic-chip infrastructure1,2.
The company plans to issue up to 21.97 million new H shares at HK$714 each, generating gross proceeds of about HK$15.68 billion ($2 billion)5. The placement price represents a 10% discount to Z.ai's Friday closing price of HK$793. Separately, Z.ai is issuing 20.14 billion yuan ($3 billion) in zero-coupon convertible bonds due in 2027, initially convertible at HK$892.50 per share, a 12.5% premium to Friday's close.
Z.ai shares fell more than 10% on Monday following the announcement. Shares of domestic rival MiniMax also dropped about 5% on the same day.
The capital call follows a roughly $4 billion share placement Z.ai completed in July, making this the company's second major fundraising in approximately two months.
Z.ai said proceeds will fund next-generation GLM foundation models, a fully self-training system, large-scale training and inference, and computing resources and infrastructure upgrades. The plan also covers automated training-data generation and filtering, task environments, long-range reasoning, domestic-chip adaptation, and inference optimization.
The domestic-chip line item aligns with a recent technical claim: Z.ai said last month it launched a new AI model running entirely on Chinese-made chips, using 100,000 domestically produced chips to handle online inference requests.
ANALYSIS The explicit allocation toward domestic-chip adaptation and inference optimization positions Z.ai to build its model stack on locally sourced silicon.
Z.ai closed at HK$793 on Friday, down 73% from its intraday high. Arize AI's phoenix-cli added Z.ai's GLM models as a built-in provider in early September[3].