China’s frontier artificial intelligence labs are ending the lunar year on a high note, racing to release a series of new AI models in the last few weeks of the Year of the Snake as the country gears up to celebrate the start of the Year of the Horse.
Beijing-based Zhipu AI and Shanghai-quartered MiniMax, which just made their stock exchange debuts in Hong Kong, would be the next to update their flagship AI systems with across-the-board enhancements, according to sources familiar with their release plans.
Zhipu AI, known as Z.ai internationally, is set to launch the fifth iteration of its flagship GLM model series, GLM-5, in the next two weeks, before the Lunar New Year starts the week of February 15.
GLM-5 was expected to come with comprehensive and significant improvements in creative writing, coding, reasoning and agentic capabilities, according to two sources.
Meanwhile MiniMax would release its M2.2 – a minor update to its M2.1 model with coding-focused enhancements – before the holiday, said the sources, who requested anonymity as they were not authorised to speak with the media.
Zhipu AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. MiniMax declined to comment.
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