The U.S. Department of Commerce has placed Chinese artificial intelligence company Zhipu AI on the Entity List, accusing it of threatening U.S. national security. This move marks a new round of U.S. suppression of China’s AI industry and has also drawn global attention to Sino-U.S. technology competition. Zhipu AI responded that it has full-link large model core technology and the sanctions will not have a substantial impact on its operations. This incident not only highlights the tension between China and the United States in technological competition, but also reflects the important position of large-scale model technology in international geopolitics.
According to reports, the U.S. Department of Commerce has added Zhipu AI to the export control entity list, accusing it of promoting China's military modernization and infringing on U.S. national security and diplomatic interests. **This decision makes Zhipu AI the first large Chinese model company to be included in the U.S. Entity List, marking a new round of U.S. suppression of China’s artificial intelligence industry.
Zhipu AI subsequently issued a statement, emphasizing the company’s transformation of technological achievements derived from Tsinghua University, and reviewed its technological development history in detail. Zhipu AI has been developing the GLM pre-training architecture since 2020, launching the open source GLM-130B model in 2022, and releasing ChatGLM in 2023. By 2024, it will launch new generation large models such as GLM-4 and GLM-4-Plus. Zhipu AI stated that despite encountering U.S. sanctions, the current sanctions will not have a substantial impact on the company's normal operations and business development due to its mastery of the core technology of the full-link large model.
As one of the "Six Little Dragons" of China's large-scale models, Zhipu AI has strong similarities with top international companies such as OpenAI in terms of technical route, model scale and commercialization process. Zhipu AI provides large model services in various industries through its bigmodel.cn platform, and its Zhipu Qingyan product has successfully provided services to tens of millions of users. It was previously reported that Zhipu AI is negotiating with Apple to integrate its large model technology into the National Bank iPhone. This cooperation potential shows the technical strength and market prospects of Zhipu AI.
Although the global large model field has encountered development bottlenecks in the past year, Chinese AI companies have demonstrated competitiveness that cannot be ignored in some fields. In technical fields such as video generation, companies such as Keling, Conch, and Jimeng have achieved innovative breakthroughs and promoted the rapid development of China's AI industry.
However, in the face of an increasingly severe external environment, especially the US sanctions against China's AI industry, 2025 will be a year for China's large model companies to face more challenges.
The Zhipu AI incident indicates that Chinese AI companies will face a more complex international environment and competitive pressure in the future. How to develop and grow in a complex international landscape will become a key challenge for Chinese AI companies. At the same time, this also prompts China's AI industry to further enhance its independent innovation capabilities and strengthen core technology research and development to cope with external risks and challenges.