Chinese artificial intelligence startup Zhipu AI has commenced the so-called “tutoring process” with an investment bank, a process mandatory for IPO applicants in China, the China Securities Regulatory Commission website showed.
Pre-listing tutoring, which typically takes place before a company files its official listing plan to the regulators, is a process where the sponsors coach the company and its executives over IPO-related issues.
The AI unicorn has hired investment bank China International Capital Corporation for the pre-listing tutoring, which is expected to complete before October 2025, per the statement. However, the statement did not disclose which local bourse the Zhipu AI is targeting.
As one of China’s “six AI tigers”, Zhipu AI’s recent move could make it the first large language model firm to go public locally.
Most recently, the firm secured a total of around $220 million in three separate funding announcements in March, counting state-backed Hangzhou City Investment Group Industrial Fund, Shangcheng Capital, Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, and Zhuhai Huafa Group among the investors.
The flurry of capital infusions comes at a time when some of the country’s AI majors are strategically pivoting themselves in the face of DeepSeek’s rise, whose success in developing language models rivals those developed by US tech giants, has taken the world by storm.
But some of the top Chinese investors believe that the country’s AI sector remains underinvested. There remains “an enormous investment gap” within China’s AI industry, Duane Kuang, founding managing partner of Chinese top VC firm Qiming Venture Partners, said during a panel discussion at the China Development Forum in Beijing in late March.
AI startup funding in China was a fraction of what US AI startups raised in 2024. Only $5.2 billion was raised by Chinese AI startups in 2024, which was 7% of the $76.3 billion raised by US companies, according to data provider CB Insights.
Most recently, ChatGPT creator OpenAI received a whopping $40 billion of investment at a $300-billion post-money valuation in late March, as the firm plans to further push its AI research and scale up its compute infrastructure.
