Zhipu AI Disbands Key Product R&D Coronary heart Amid Itemizing Plans And Strategic Shift

October 17 – Blue Whale Info — Chinese language language AI agency Zhipu AI has undergone a severe inside restructuring, dissolving its 60-member Product R&D Coronary heart beneath the economic division on the end of September. The switch comes as the company prepares for an IPO and seeks to steadiness its shopper (To C) and enterprise (To B/G) enterprise strategies.

An employee involved in quite a few provide initiatives suggested Blue Whale Tech that the Product R&D Coronary heart had handled necessary duties akin to residence chip adaptation and multi-model integration. “The crew’s effectivity inside the first half of the 12 months was secure, with quite a few private deployments already in place and plenty of new orders lined up,” he talked about, together with that workers had been shocked by the sudden selection.

Swift Inside Shake-Up
The adjustment occurred spherical September 23. Workers had been educated verbally that the division may be disbanded, adopted by specific individual HR conferences for same-day termination and settlement. There have been no inside bulletins or official emails. Departing workers acquired compensation based totally on the “N + 1” formulation, and had been required to advertise once more agency shares on the genuine grant price.

Paperwork reviewed by Blue Whale Tech confirmed the official objective: “Your division and place have been eradicated attributable to inside restructuring, and there are presently no totally different positions accessible.”
Roughly half of the 60 staff have since left, whereas the remaining had been reassigned to provide teams. Totally different departments akin to product sales and choices moreover expert minor modifications. Zhipu presently employs about 1,000 people, along with contractors.

This marks Zhipu’s second predominant reorganization in 2025. The first occurred in late June when COO Zhang Fan resigned to start a model new enterprise. Following his departure, the company merged its To B and To G enterprise strains, and positioned product sales, product R&D, and provide teams beneath CEO Zhang Peng.

Strategic Refocus, Not Retreat
The now-dissolved Product R&D Coronary heart was part of Zhipu’s industrial division — the company’s elementary revenue engine serving authorities and enterprise purchasers. Its core duties included rising private large-model choices and sustaining Zhipu’s Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform for custom-made enterprise fashions.

Commerce insiders say the switch may signal a strategic realignment reasonably than retreat. “The private AI market is becoming increasingly more aggressive. Prolonged-term success depends upon a lot much less on manpower-heavy provide and additional on product standardization, ecosystem partnerships, and worth administration,” one AI govt suggested Blue Whale Tech. “This seems to be like like Zhipu tightening its focus to boost effectivity and profitability sooner than going public.”

Betting on Z.ai as Shopper Pivot
Zhipu’s whole product portfolio spans three strains:

• BigModel, its open API platform;
• Shopper merchandise, along with Qingyan, Z.ai, the multimodal Animal Circle, and AutoGLM;
• Industrial choices for To B and To G purchasers.
  The company’s AI Institute leads evaluation and model development, whereas its Engineering Institute handles core infrastructure.

In December 2024, former Alibaba Damo Academy expert and Alipay China’s Chief Information Officer Hu Yunhua joined Zhipu to steer Qingyan, as quickly as the company’s fastest-growing product with better than 25 million prospects. After DeepSeek’s open-source launch earlier this 12 months, nonetheless, the customer AI market cooled, and Qingyan’s month-to-month energetic prospects dropped from 10.4 million in March to 7.1 million in September.

Zhipu is now shifting focus to Z.ai, which has seen quick improvement. In step with AI Product Rankings, Z.ai recorded 3.47 million month-to-month visits in August — a 219% surge, score first globally in improvement cost.
“The company’s foundation stays in commercialization,” one employee talked about. “We’re attempting to interrupt into the customer market, nonetheless it’s a difficult path.”