Zhipu's business model is very impressive, mainly serving government and enterprise clients.

Currently, it’s difficult to make money on the consumer side; on the enterprise side, especially with government clients, as long as the government approves, it’s a stable profit.
For example, specific charges:
Model perpetual licensing/annual software license fees (the main revenue)
• Lightweight GLM-4-Air (district and county government, small and medium enterprise bureaus): 300k RMB/year
• Standard general GLM-4/GLM-5 (municipal governments, ordinary state-owned enterprises): 500k–1 million RMB/year; three-year packages 1.2–2.2 million RMB
• Flagship GLM-5 large-parameter model (provincial departments, leading banks, smart cities, meteorology, energy groups): 1.5–3 million RMB/year
Annual maintenance + upgrade service fees (mandatory, included in the contract)
Standard is 20%–30% of the software license fee per year, including model iteration, vulnerability fixes, on-site technical support, and training.
Example: license fee of 800k RMB/year, maintenance fee of 160,000–240k RMB/year.
Investments are mainly funded by the government: Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Zhuhai, Chengdu all have investments.
Currently, a clear feature of China’s tech industry is that the wealthiest are the government; if a tech project can secure government investment and other support, it’s half the success.
Companies like Zhongji Xuchuang, Changxin Storage, and others have brought technology back from the U.S., with government investment and support for factory construction and other initiatives.
This kind of business model is unrelated to most people.