Zhipu AI Raises About USD 5 Billion in Share Placement and Convertible Bonds

Zhipu AI, headquartered in Beijing and listed in Hong Kong, announced on September 13, 2026 that it had completed a financing of about USD 5 billion, comprising a share placement of about USD 2 billion and a convertible bond issue of about USD 3 billion. A filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange shows the company raised USD 5 billion in total through the roughly USD 2 billion Hong Kong share placement and the concurrent USD 3 billion convertible bond offering. About 60% of net proceeds will be used for research and development of next-generation models and fully autonomous training systems, 15% for the company's expansion plans, and the remainder to optimize the capital structure, supplement working capital for daily operations and for other general corporate purposes. The proceeds will also be used for the next-generation GLM model, computing infrastructure and business expansion.

According to the announcement, the placement shares were priced at HKD 714 each, a discount of about 9.96% to the closing price before the announcement, and the placement shares represent about 4.50% of the enlarged issued share capital. The convertible bonds carry a zero-coupon structure, were issued at 100.5% of principal and will be redeemed at principal at maturity; the initial conversion price is HKD 892.50 per share, a 25% premium to the placement price and a premium of about 12.55% to the closing price before the announcement. About 60% of the funds raised in this round came from the convertible bonds.

Zhipu's interim results announcement for 2026, disclosed on August 31, 2026, showed that revenue from the company's MaaS open platform and API services reached RMB 825 million in the first half, up about 2,736% year on year and accounting for 86.5% of total revenue. As of the end of August 2026, the MaaS platform's ARR, annualized based on monthly revenue, reached USD 1.6 billion, up 60% from USD 1 billion in early July 2026. In the first half of 2026, the gross margin of the company's open platform and API business rose to 24.6% from -0.4% in the same period of 2025; as of the end of August 2026, token calls on the platform had increased more than 40-fold from the start of the year, and the average API selling price rose about 101%.

As of the close on September 11, 2026, Zhipu fell 3.17% to HKD 793, giving it a market capitalization of HKD 369.2 billion. In April 2026, DeepSeek launched its first round of external financing, completing it in June with RMB 50 billion raised and a post-money valuation of more than RMB 350 billion; in August 2026, DeepSeek planned to raise about RMB 50 billion. Moonshot AI has completed its business registration change, with its market entity type changed from a limited liability company to a joint-stock company.