GLM-5 is the fifth-generation large language model developed by Zhipu AI (Z.ai), one of China's foremost artificial intelligence companies. Now accessible via Z.ai's platform and WaveSpeed API, GLM-5 represents a generational leap in AI capability — featuring approximately 745 billion total parameters in a Mixture of Experts architecture with 256 experts, 8 activated per token (5.9% sparsity rate), and 44 billion active parameters per inference. It is engineered from the ground up for agentic intelligence, advanced multi-step reasoning, and frontier-level performance across coding, creative writing, and complex problem-solving.

Zhipu AI, founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Tsinghua University, has rapidly established itself as a leader in open-source AI research. The company completed a landmark Hong Kong IPO on January 8, 2026, raising approximately HKD 4.35 billion (USD $558 million) — funding that has directly accelerated GLM-5's development and positioned Zhipu AI for sustained investment in next-generation model architectures.

In a strategically significant move, GLM-5 has been trained entirely on Huawei Ascend chips using the MindSpore framework, achieving full independence from US-manufactured hardware. This positions GLM-5 not only as a technical achievement but as a milestone in China's drive toward self-reliant AI infrastructure — and a direct challenger to models such as OpenAI's GPT-5 and Anthropic's Claude.