Chinese Startup Zhipu AI Seen as a Much Greater Threat Than DeepSeek to U.S. AI Dominance, Making Massive Moves in the Realm of Sovereign AI
Well, it seems like DeepSeek has just got a new competitor, and instead of making rounds over at the LLM segment, the Chinese startup Zhipu AI is on a broader and impactful mission, which is to conquer sovereign AI.
China’s Zhipu AI Has Managed to Partner Up With Several Middle East Nations To Provide AI Infrastructure
The U.S. is the leading nation in artificial intelligence, but without prompt steps, this lead won’t last much longer, since China is moving into the industry. Under President Trump’s recent export control policies, the U.S. has managed to thwart China’s AI capabilities to a greater extent, but it seems like sidelining Beijing won’t be an easy job.
One notable Chinese AI firm, apart from DeepSeek, is Zhipu AI, and while you have never heard the name of the company, OpenAI says that this startup is poised to take the lead in “sovereign AI”, since it has now developed partnerships with several Gulf states, along with nations like Malaysia and Singapore.
If we talk about the tech stack, Zhipu AI is said to have created an ecosystem for governments to target the development of AI infrastructure, and the firm is partnering up with Huawei to provide sovereign LLM infrastructure and private hardware to several state-backed organizations. One of the more notable achievements by the company is their AutoGLM Rumination AI agent, which is said to compete with several mainstream models in tasks like browser automation and long-context reasoning.
Zhipu AI is claimed to have received over $1.4 billion in investments through state-backed organizations, and has also raised $400 million from Saudi Arabia’s Prosperity7 Ventures, so the startup has seen interest from corporate investors. The company’s involvement with governments shows that China isn’t backing down anytime soon in the AI segment, and the nation now plans to increase influence in global markets, which is why firms like Zhipu AI, Huawei and many more are targeting the Middle East, with their AI offerings.
The competition coming from Zhipu AI is indeed an “alarming” situation for the U.S. and its AI ambitions, especially since President Trump himself is eying the Middle East as the next place to establish authority, particularly in the realm of AI.
