Zhipu AI surges after launching open-source rival to Claude and GPT

Z.ai Releases GLM-5.2, an Open-Weight Rival to Frontier Coding Models, as Anthropic Shutdown Reshapes AI Landscape

Beijing-based AI company Z.ai released GLM-5.2 on June 13, positioning its most powerful open-source model as a direct alternative to closed proprietary systems from OpenAI and Anthropic at a fraction of the cost. The release came hours after the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to shut down its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, a coincidence that Z.ai’s founder Jie Tang leveraged to make a broader case for open AI development.

A Frontier Model Under MIT License

GLM-5.2 features a one-million-token context window, 128K maximum output tokens, and two thinking-effort presets optimized for coding tasks. The model is available immediately to subscribers of Z.ai’s GLM Coding Plan, with full API access and open-source release under the MIT license scheduled for later this week.scmp

Z.ai has not published formal benchmark scores for GLM-5.2, an unusual choice the company acknowledged. However, early community testing suggests performance comparable to Claude Opus 4.7 on coding tasks, according to Ellie Jiang, head of internet and media research at Macquarie Capital. The GLM model line has consistently undercut closed competitors on price — GLM-5 runs at roughly $1 per million input tokens and $3.20 per million output tokens, compared to $1.75 and $14 respectively for OpenAI’s GPT-5.2, representing a cost reduction of approximately five to seven times on output-heavy workloads.cnbc

Anthropic’s Fable Shutdown Fuels Open-Source Momentum

The timing proved fortuitous for Z.ai. On the evening of June 12, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick issued a directive ordering Anthropic to suspend all foreign national access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns related to a reported jailbreaking vulnerability. Because Anthropic lacked a mechanism to verify user nationality, it disabled both models for all customers worldwide. Customers who had upgraded their subscriptions specifically for Fable 5 — which launched just three days earlier on June 9 — began seeking refunds.forbes

Tang framed GLM-5.2’s release as a response. “The sudden denial of access to frontier models for non-technical reasons strengthens our conviction that science should be global,” he wrote on X. “The path to AGI should not be surrounded by high walls.”gigazine

Market Response

Shares of Zhipu AI surged 33% on Monday following the announcement, as Wall Street banks raised bets on the company’s ability to capture global AI demand displaced by Anthropic’s restrictions. CNBC reported that analysts see the launch enhancing Zhipu’s pricing power in upcoming subscription offerings. GLM-5.2 was added to the Arena AI Agent leaderboard on June 16, joining a growing roster of competitive Chinese open-source models that includes offerings from DeepSeek and Minimax.arena