Saudi Aramco's venture capital arm, Prosperity7, has joined a $400 million investment round in Chinese AI startup Zhipu AI, according to two sources familiar with the matter, media reported on Friday.
Zhipu AI is currently valued at approximately $3 billion. This new investment provides Zhipu AI with opportunities to expand into markets beyond China.
Poised to Be the "First Big Model Stock"?
Zhipu AI, one of China's largest generative AI startups, boasts over 800 employees. The company has previously received investments from Alibaba Cloud, Tencent, and Meituan, along with support from state-owned investors such as the National Social Security Fund.
Zhipu AI specializes in developing intelligent general models and has created the GLM-130B, a bilingual trillion-scale pre-trained model, which serves as the foundation for their ChatGLM.
In May, Zhipu AI's founder Tang Jie appeared at an investment forum in Beijing hosted by Prosperity7, where an Arabic-robed humanoid robot performed a sword dance.
Analysts suggest that Zhipu AI is highly likely to become China's first public company in the large model sector, leading in three key areas: rapid commercialization, substantial computing power, and a continually improving ecosystem.
Increasing Sino-Saudi Cooperation
The partnership between China and Saudi Arabia is growing stronger, with Middle Eastern capital increasingly flowing into the Chinese market, and some Chinese enterprises expanding actively in Saudi Arabia.
Prosperity7's investment is part of broader cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Chinese tech companies, with both sides seeking new capital and markets.
This investment marks the first significant foreign investment in one of China's four leading large model companies. Besides Zhipu AI, other major Chinese AI startups-Moon Shadow, MiniMax, and Zero One Universe-primarily rely on government funds and support from large domestic cloud service providers.
Tech advisors highlight that with the absence of U.S. funds, Saudi Arabia's importance to China's tech ecosystem is growing.
This week, Lenovo signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Alat, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF). Lenovo will issue $2 billion in zero-interest convertible bonds to Alat. In return, Lenovo will establish a regional headquarters in Riyadh and build a manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, companies like SenseTime, Tencent Cloud, and Meituan are expanding their operations in Saudi Arabia.
