Zhipu's first annual report after going public: Revenue exceeds 700 million in 2025, with a loss of over 4.7 billion

Ask AI · Why is Zhipu’s revenue surging while it still incurs losses—why the losses are actually increasing?

China News Network (Chinanews) March 31 (Xie Jingwen) At the evening of March 31, Zhipu AI, the “first listed company of global large models,” released its first annual performance announcement after going public. In 2025, Zhipu AI achieved total operating revenue of RMB 724 million, up 131.9%; incurred a loss of RMB 4.718 billion for the year, expanding 59.5% year over year; its adjusted net loss during the year was RMB 3.182 billion, expanding 29.1% year over year; and gross profit was RMB 297 million, with a gross margin of 41.0%.

In 2025, Zhipu AI’s gross margin declined from 56.3% in 2024. The announcement said this was mainly due to the increased share of cloud-deployment business and the period-stage decline in gross margin for localized-deployment business.

Based on the data disclosed in the financial report, the main reason Zhipu AI’s revenue grew year over year in 2025 was the growth in revenue from the open platform and API, enterprise-level intelligent agents, and enterprise-level general-purpose large model business. The announcement shows that in 2025, revenue from the above three segments was RMB 190 million, RMB 166 million, and RMB 366 million, respectively.

The announcement mentioned that within 24 hours after the release of Zhipu GLM-5, official integrations were obtained from leading enterprises such as ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent. Among China’s top 10 internet companies, 9 have already deeply integrated GLM. As of March 2026, registered users exceeded 4 million.

The announcement shows that Zhipu AI’s shareholders’ equity decreased from RMB -3.955 billion in 2024 to RMB -8.111 billion in 2025, mainly due to increased R&D investment leading to a larger net loss. Regarding R&D, in 2025, Zhipu AI’s research and development expenses were RMB 3.180 billion, up 44.9% year over year. The announcement said this was mainly due to an increase in employee costs and an increase in computation service fees paid to third-party computing power suppliers.

As of December 31, 2025, Zhipu AI held cash and cash equivalents of RMB 2.259 billion, a decrease of RMB 10.10 million from 2024.

The announcement shows that Zhipu AI’s board of directors does not recommend paying a final dividend for the year ended December 31, 2025, and there was also no dividend paid in the same period of 2024.

“Over the past year, Zhipu AI’s keyword has been ‘the intelligent upper bound.’ Entering 2026, our keyword is ‘token quantity.’” On the 31st, Zhipu AI CEO Zhang Peng said at the 2025 annual performance media briefing.

Zhang Peng said that the intelligent paradigm will evolve from lightweight Vibe Coding to industrial-grade Agentic Engineering, and then further evolve into digital engineers with autonomous planning, environmental sensing, and self-iteration capabilities. Ultimately, it will achieve a Long-horizon Task closed-loop execution with multi-step iteration and logical consistency, which will further bring breakthroughs in the intelligent upper bound and an exponential growth in Token calls.

Zhang Peng mentioned that the pricing for Zhipu’s API calls increased by 83% in the first quarter. Even so, the market still shows a situation of supply not meeting demand, with call volume increasing by 400%. This confirms that high-quality tokens are a scarce resource today. Whoever controls the intelligent upper bound will control the corresponding pricing power.

On January 8, 2026, Zhipu AI was listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with an issue price of HKD 116.20 per share and a total fund-raising amount of HKD 4.348 billion.

The company’s official website shows that Zhipu AI was founded in 2019 and was derived from the commercialization of technological achievements from the Knowledge Engineering Laboratory (KEG) in the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University. It has full-chain self-developed capabilities for large models, from underlying algorithms and pretraining frameworks to domestic hardware adaptation.

On March 31, Zhipu AI opened at HKD 720 per share, closed at HKD 693.5 per share, down 5.45%, with a total market capitalization of HKD 309.2 billion.

(For more reporting leads, please contact the author of this article, Xie Jingwen: xiejingwen@chinanews.com.cn) (Chinanews WECHAT APP)

**　　(The views expressed in this article are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. There are risks in investing; please be cautious when entering the market.)**

Edited by Luo Kun and Li Zhongyuan