GLM

GLM is the name of a series of computer programs that can understand and write texts themselves. Such programs are called language models: they repeatedly predict the next word and thereby generate entire answers. GLM is developed by the Chinese company Zhipu AI, which calls itself Z.ai internationally and emerged from Tsinghua University in Beijing. The abbreviation stands for General Language Model. This means that a single model handles many different tasks: translating, summarizing, programming, answering questions. The versions carry numbers like GLM-4, GLM-4.5 or GLM-4.6, where a higher number stands for a newer and more powerful version.

China’s answer to ChatGPT

For a long time, the best-known language models came from the USA, for example from OpenAI, Google or Anthropic. GLM is one of the models that show China has caught up technically. In public benchmark tests, the newer GLM versions are close to the top American models. For investors and politicians, this is relevant news because it shows that leadership in the field of AI is not secured.

A second point is the price. Zhipu often offers the use of its models much cheaper than Western providers. Anyone building an app that pays per request saves considerably as a result. This price pressure also forces competitors to lower their rates.

Third, Zhipu releases several GLM versions as so-called open models. This means: the trained file may be downloaded and run on one’s own computers. Companies that do not want to send their data to a foreign server appreciate this. Together with models like DeepSeek and Qwen, GLM has contributed to the fact that many of the freely available top models today come from China.

What’s behind the name General Language Model

Like almost all of today’s language models, GLM is based on an architecture called Transformer. Put simply, it breaks text down into small building blocks and calculates how strongly these building blocks are related to each other. From this the prediction for the next word emerges. The model learns this from huge amounts of text that it worked through during training.

The name goes back to a peculiarity of the first versions. Earlier models were either good at understanding text or good at generating text. The GLM researchers trained their model so that it had to reinsert pieces deliberately removed from a text. This was meant to make a model master both at the same time. In today’s versions, this distinction is barely decisive technically anymore, but the name stuck.

Newer GLM versions additionally use a method in which only part of the model computes per request. This lowers costs without losing capabilities. There is also a thinking mode: the model writes down intermediate steps for itself before answering. For mathematics or programming tasks, this significantly improves the hit rate.

GLM in apps, stock market news, and developer tools

You can try GLM directly via Z.ai’s chat page, which works similarly to ChatGPT. In China itself, the app is widespread under the name Zhipu Qingyan. Programmers integrate the models into their own software via an interface, for example in assistants that write code and search for bugs.

In business news, GLM usually appears for two reasons. First, when a new version lands high up in benchmark rankings. Second, because of the company behind it: Zhipu AI is considered one of China’s most valuable AI startups and has gone public. The company is also a political topic, because the USA has placed it on a trade restriction list.

A common misconception: GLM is not the same as an LLM. LLM generally stands for Large Language Model, i.e. for the entire category of large language models. GLM, on the other hand, is a specific product name of a single company. In statistics, the abbreviation GLM also means something completely different, namely generalized linear model. The context usually makes clear which meaning is intended.