Chinese AI firm Zhipu AI (Z.ai), backed by Alibaba, has launched its GLM-4.5 family of models, claiming superiority over Anthropic’s Claude 4 Sonnet in key benchmarks. The release includes two variants: the flagship GLM-4.5 and a lighter GLM-4.5-Air, both excelling in reasoning, coding, and multilingual tasks. This follows Moonshot AI’s Kimi Chat advancements, signaling China’s accelerating dominance in open-source AI.

Industry experts note the rapid pace of Chinese AI innovation, with some suggesting the West is losing its lead in open-source development. The models’ performance highlights China’s strategic push for self-reliance in AI, though questions linger about global accessibility and alignment with Western safety standards.