Z.ai Releases GLM-5.2 Chinese AI Model Catching Up to US Labs

Z.ai released its GLM-5.2 model, according to a New York Times report on Chinese artificial intelligence models gaining ground on U.S. competitors. The model is open source software, allowing anyone to use and modify it for free. When performing certain tasks, GLM-5.2 costs about an eighth as much as Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8, according to OpenRouter, a start-up that runs the A.I. leaderboard. GLM-5.2 is particularly good at generating computer code and powering A.I. agents, digital assistants that can use other software to perform tasks. Z.ai's technology is now the third most widely used in the world for A.I. tasks, said Anastasios Angelopoulos, chief executive of ArenaAI, which tracks millions of A.I. users. The model is not quite as powerful as what American companies have created, the report stated.