Z.ai Lights Up 1 GW All-Domestic-Chip Data Center, Acquires XCore Sigma — Shares +37%智谱点亮1GW全国产芯片数据中心并收购众志和芯，港股单日涨37%
Z.ai — the company formerly known as Zhipu — has begun partial operations at a 1-gigawatt AI data center built entirely on domestically manufactured chips, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg and SCMP. The facility has at least 10,000 Chinese-made chips installed and, at full utilization, would consume power equivalent to roughly 750,000 homes. Shares closed up 37% in Hong Kong on Tuesday, reversing a 40%-plus slide from the prior week.
The company simultaneously completed the acquisition of XCore Sigma, a heterogeneous computing software firm spun off from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology. XCore Sigma builds compilers, runtime systems and inference engines that help AI models run efficiently across chips from different domestic vendors — directly addressing a key bottleneck as Chinese labs scale on hardware that varies by architecture.
Z.ai also confirmed it hit its full 2026 annual sales target in July, putting it on track for $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. The data center and the software stack together represent a deliberate vertical integration play, reducing dependence on both imported hardware and third-party cloud compute.
Zhipu AI — listed in Hong Kong as Z.ai (HKEX: 2513) — has reached a $1 billion annual recurring revenue run-rate as of July 2026, Bloomberg reported, citing Macquarie analysis. The figure represents roughly a tenfold increase over the past twelve months and arrives several months ahead of the company's internal full-year target.
Macquarie attributes the acceleration primarily to Zhipu's decision in 2025 to concentrate on coding-focused models, which carry higher enterprise contract values and stickier renewal rates than general-purpose chatbot subscriptions. Zhipu's GLM series, trained entirely on domestic Huawei Ascend and Cambricon chips after its 2025 U.S. Entity List designation, has become one of the most widely adopted coding models in Chinese enterprise IT.
36Kr had flagged Zhipu as likely to cross the $1B threshold earlier this month; Bloomberg's independent confirmation firms the number. Zhipu completed a HK$31.41 billion placement on July 13, allocating 55% to R&D and 15% to M&A, giving it substantial runway to maintain its lead in the coding-AI segment even as Moonshot and MiniMax intensify competition.