Chinese Z.ai reported this Monday (31) 954 million yuan (US$ 142 million) in the first half of 2026, up nearly 400% from the same period last year. Growth came mainly from artificial intelligence services sold via API and the company's platform.
This area accounted for 86.5% of total revenue, with 825 million yuan (US$ 123 million) in the half — an increase of 2,735.7% in a year. In 2025, APIs and platform represented only 15.2% of sales in the comparable period.
The change shows how the company is reducing its dependence on installing large models directly in corporate systems and shifting to a business based on ongoing usage and subscriptions. Since the start of 2026, the volume of calls to the platform's models has increased more than 40 times, while usage of the programming-focused plan grew more than 23 times.
The growth still comes with large losses. Net loss stood at 2.07 billion yuan, down 12.1% year over year. Meanwhile, adjusted loss rose 12.1%, to 1.96 billion yuan, while research and development spending advanced 33.6%, to 2.13 billion yuan (US$ 317 million).
Z.ai is also rapidly expanding its user base. As of the results release date, the platform had more than 7.4 million developers and enterprise clients, up 144% since the start of the year, while the number of daily active paying users had grown 603%.
The company, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since January, develops the family of models GLM and has been focusing its strategy on programming, AI agents and automation of professional tasks.
