Chinese startup Z.ai (previously known as Zhipu) has announced the launch of a new open-source AI model that the company asserts is even more cost-effective to operate than DeepSeek.
The organization has introduced three distinct models: a flagship model titled GLM-4.5, a lighter version named GLM-4.5-Air, and a completely free variant called GLM-4.5-Flash tailored for coding, reasoning, and various agent tasks. While these models may closely resemble offerings from American firms such as OpenAI, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude AI, there are significant distinctions, most notably that GLM-4.5 is entirely open-source. That’s a benefit, for sure, but other issues related to relying on an AI model built in China remain, including concerns about how your data might be collected and utilized by the company behind the new model.
