The first major model company officially announces: Price increase! Multiple major companies are intensively upgrading to new models!

Source: Securities Times Network Author: Chen Xiachang

Zhipu announces a price increase.

On February 12, Zhipu issued a price adjustment letter for the GLM Coding Plan, stating that recently, market demand for the GLM Coding Plan has continued to grow strongly, with rapid increases in user scale and call volume.

To ensure stability and service quality under high load, the company has simultaneously increased investment in computing power and model optimization, continuously upgrading product capabilities. Based on actual usage and resource input changes, the company has decided to make a structural adjustment to the pricing system of the GLM Coding Plan package.

The adjustment details are as follows: cancel the first-time purchase discount, retain quarterly and annual subscription discounts; structurally adjust package prices, with an overall increase starting from 30%; prices for existing subscribers will remain unchanged. Effective date: February 12, 2026.

In the secondary market, Zhipu, known as the “First Stock of Large Models” that only listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January this year, has recently seen a strong rise. Its market value once exceeded HKD 150 billion.

Besides Zhipu, many AI companies like MiniMax have also become popular among Hong Kong stock investors. As several tech giants upgrade large models and more AI applications are launched, the investment value of AI companies is attracting increasing attention.

“Two Giants” of Large Models Gaining Popularity

Zhipu’s recent rise began with rumors of a new model launch. The global model service platform OpenRouter recently launched an anonymous model codenamed “Pony Alpha,” which has attracted high attention due to its coding ability reaching the top tier worldwide. The market generally believes this new model is Zhipu’s GLM-5. Previously, Zhipu’s chief scientist Tang Jie publicly hinted “GLM is coming soon,” which was interpreted as a teaser for the upcoming model release. Securities Times reporters inquired about these rumors with Zhipu but received no response.

“Zhipu has been relatively low-profile before going public, mainly serving government and enterprise clients. Whether this anonymous model belongs to Zhipu or not, the company’s R&D capability in large models is very strong,” said an analyst who has been tracking domestic large model development for a long time. GF Securities also pointed out in its latest research report that Zhipu has built a complete technical matrix centered on its self-developed GLM base model, covering multimodal, agent, and code generation directions, and has formed multiple monetization paths through API services, localized deployment, and industry-specific solutions.

“Besides the new model, the scarcity of Hong Kong-listed targets is also a reason for market enthusiasm. Zhipu, as the ‘First Stock of Large Models’ in Hong Kong, along with MiniMax, which also listed in January, are called the ‘Double Giants’ of Hong Kong’s large model sector. Their listings fill a gap in AI base targets in Hong Kong stocks and have become essential assets for global capital allocation. Coupled with market enthusiasm for AI hot topics and short-term arbitrage by speculators, this has further driven the short-term rapid rise in stock prices,” said the analyst.

Foreign investment banks are also optimistic about the recent surge in large model companies’ stock prices. JPMorgan analyst Xu Wentao recently issued a research report covering Zhipu and MiniMax, both rated “Overweight,” with target prices of HKD 400 and HKD 700 respectively, viewing them as the top targets to capture the next wave of global AI value creation. The report believes that China’s AI industry is entering a new era defined by commercialization, model innovation, and global expansion, with these two companies standing out as the most distinctive and globally accelerating independent large model developers.

However, regarding the sharp recent rise in stock prices of these two companies, a private equity fund manager in Shenzhen who invests in Hong Kong stocks warned of risks: “There have been many cases in the past where newly listed stocks were heavily speculated upon after listing, mainly to meet inclusion criteria for major stock indices and further inclusion in Hong Kong Stock Connect. But afterwards, stock prices are likely to pull back.”

Intensive Launch of AI Applications

In fact, several major tech companies have recently upgraded new models and launched new applications, greatly increasing investor attention to the AI sector.

Securities Times learned that ByteDance, Alibaba, and other leading domestic tech giants have all undergone intensive updates around the Spring Festival. ByteDance recently released the AI video generation model Seedance 2.0, which supports text or image input and can generate multi-angle videos with native audio within 60 seconds; Alibaba’s new flagship AI model Qwen 3.5 is scheduled for release during the Spring Festival; DeepSeek plans to launch its new generation large model after a year. On the product front, Yuanbao, Doubao, and Qwen are competing fiercely in the Spring Festival AI red envelope battle. Overseas, the open-source project Clawdbot has gained attention for its ability to run on local Macs or servers, acting as a personal AI assistant.

“In the short term, the underlying models will not undergo fundamental changes; the main improvements will be in reducing costs and enhancing coherence. In the long term, models that reflect real-world scenarios will become a trend,” said Zhang Renqi, Executive Director of the Investment Department at Cornerstone Capital, to Securities Times. Cornerstone Capital had invested in MiniMax in 2023 and has deep research and investment in AI.

However, amid rapid industry growth, the sector still faces multiple challenges, especially high investment and high loss issues, with most AI companies still in the “burning money” stage.

“Commercialization is the current focus. With Zhipu and MiniMax listed in Hong Kong, the large model industry has entered a validation period in the capital market. The industry has bid farewell to wild growth and entered a mature stage of ‘emphasizing both models and products, with general-purpose and vertical applications running in parallel.’ Vertical applications will be an important growth point. On one hand, scenarios like social entertainment and emotional companionship have been validated; although user stickiness is not yet a necessity, there is a stable audience. On the other hand, professional scenarios such as healthcare and finance are also expanding. For example, in healthcare, the market is very hot this year, with companies like Ant Financial’s A-Fu and Baichuan actively deploying,” said Zhang.

The Era of Global Competition Begins

“From the perspective of industry competition, the high-speed iteration period of ‘daily model updates’ from 2023-2024 has passed, and the growth in training model technology has slowed. Now, the domestic market has basically formed a competitive pattern of several large companies plus several leading independent firms,” Zhang said about the future outlook.

JPMorgan’s research report also states that China’s AI industry is shifting from the “Hundred Models Battle” stage to a stage where success depends on commercialization capability, model innovation strength, and global deployment. The Chinese AI market is rapidly consolidating, with the number of capable and well-funded model developers shrinking from over 200 to fewer than 10. JPMorgan also pointed out that the largest profit pool in the domestic AI industry may flow to platform giants with distribution capabilities; independent firms’ breakthroughs depend on finding survival niches through “structural neutrality.”

In the global AI competition, US tech giants continue to invest heavily. Amazon plans to spend $200 billion throughout the year, Google expects $175-185 billion, Meta will spend $115-135 billion, and Microsoft estimates over $100 billion, with all surpassing market expectations significantly.

“Chinese companies have strong commercialization capabilities and are expected to hold a significant share in the global open-source model market, laying a foundation for globalization. The ‘coming of age’ for large models has just begun, and more industry revolutions are brewing,” said Zhang.

(Edited by: Wen Jing)

Keywords: Large Models