What GLM-5 is
GLM-5 is the flagship model family of Z.ai (Z.AI Co., Ltd., formerly Zhipu AI). GLM-5 was released on 12 February 2026 with open weights (744B total / 40B active parameters) under the MIT license, followed by GLM-5.1 (March 2026, open-sourced 7 April 2026), GLM-5.2 (16 June 2026, 1M-token context) and GLM-5.3 (14 August 2026). The Z.ai consumer platform currently runs on GLM-5.3-Flash, offering interactive chat and agentic building with Deep Think and Max reasoning modes, plus ready-made generation templates for landing pages, teaching material, 3D modeling, mini games, and personal blogs. The family is distributed through the Z.ai platform, the Z.AI Open Platform API, and the ZCode developer harness. Note: the official China-facing domain is zhipuai.cn; the international Z.ai platform is at chat.z.ai.
Funding snapshot
Z.ai (Z.AI Co., Ltd.) listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX: 2513) on 8 January 2026 — China's first major LLM company IPO — and carries a market capitalisation of US$62B as of August 2026, described as the most valuable public AI pure play in China. It raised a US$400M round in May 2024 at approximately a US$3B valuation (source: Wikipedia).
Key features
- Z.ai runs on GLM-5.3-Flash, the current model powering the chatbot and agent experience (GLM-5.3 released 14 August 2026)
- GLM-5 family released with open weights: GLM-5 (12 February 2026, 744B total / 40B active) under the MIT license
- Deep Think and Max modes for harder reasoning tasks
- Built-in generation templates for landing pages, knowledge and teaching material, 3D modeling, mini games, and personal blogs
- ZCode developer harness for multi-agent coding work (released 2 July 2026)
- Z.AI Open Platform API (api.z.ai) for developer and enterprise integration
Where it lives
Alternatives to consider
Related reading
1 piece from AIUnpacker on GLM-5
Guides and articles
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Sources & media
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