According to multiple independent sources, as of July 2026, Zhipu's Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) has reached a scale of $1 billion. Zhipu has not responded to this report as of the time of writing.
Over the past year, AI Coding and video generation have become the two fastest-growing areas in the commercialization of generative AI. In the overseas market, Claude Code, a product of Anthropic, achieved an ARR of $1 billion within half a year of its launch, driving continuous growth in the company's valuation. The rapid growth of Zhipu's ARR also indicates that domestic large model companies are exploring new commercialization paths.
Data shows that Zhipu's ARR grew from $1 billion to $10 billion in about five months, while Anthropic took 15 months to reach the same level. According to insiders, Zhipu's ARR increased by about 15 times between January and July 2026. Previously, the market had expected Zhipu to reach an ARR of $1 to $1.5 billion by the end of 2026.
Zhipu's rapid growth is closely related to its early efforts in AI Coding. In early 2025, the company began focusing on improving its model's code generation capabilities and advancing model development in the direction of Coding and Reasoning. Tang Jie, founder of Zhipu, once stated that coding capability is one of the key abilities that can work in conjunction with AI Agents.
Subsequently, Zhipu released multiple coding models at a pace of about one version every two months. The GLM-5.2 released in June 2026 further enhanced its coding capabilities. Even with an open-source model, several core indicators have reached or exceeded those of some closed-source models. According to the financial report, in the first quarter of this year, the total price increase of GLM API was approximately 83%, and the overseas subscription price was close to that of Claude Code, but the usage volume still increased by about 400%.
As token consumption becomes an important indicator of AI commercial value, AI Coding is becoming an important tool for enterprises and developers to improve productivity. At the same time, the video generation field has also shown strong commercial potential, with relevant products entering large-scale content production scenarios.
However, competition is intensifying. MiniMax recently launched the M3 model, focusing on enhancing coding and agent capabilities; Yuede Dark Face launched the K3 model, continuing to improve the overall capabilities of the model. On the overseas side, with the release of GPT-5.6 and the integration of ChatGPT and CodeX ecosystems, OpenAI is also strengthening its competition in the AI programming field.
The commercial value of the AI Coding sector is being validated, but as more manufacturers accelerate their entry, competition around model capabilities, ecosystem construction, and commercial efficiency will continue to escalate.
