This free-to-use AI agent is 8x faster than DeepSeek's R1
31 Mar 2025

Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, Zhipu AI, has launched a free AI agent called AutoGLM Rumination.

The launch comes as part of a growing trend in China's competitive AI market.

The new product can conduct in-depth research and perform tasks like web searches, travel planning, and writing research reports.

"The agent is powered by Zhipu's proprietary models," CEO Zhang Peng said at an event in Beijing.

AutoGLM Rumination: A high-performance AI agent
Product details

The AutoGLM Rumination is powered by Zhipu's own models, including its reasoning model GLM-Z1-Air and foundation model GLM-4-Air-0414.

The company says the GLM-Z1-Air performs on par with competitor DeepSeek's R1 while running up to eight times faster and consuming just one-30th of the computing resources.

This makes Zhipu AI a strong contender in China's fast-paced tech race.

Zhipu AI's free agent outshines competitors
Market competition

The launch of AutoGLM Rumination comes on the heels of a wave of Chinese AI products, triggered by DeepSeek's model running at much lower costs than its US counterparts.

The new offering also comes just days after Manus launched what it touted as the world's first general AI agent.

However, unlike Manus, which charges users up to $199 monthly, Zhipu's AutoGLM Rumination will be free via the company's official channels.

A leading force in China's tech industry
Company profile

Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from a Tsinghua University laboratory, Zhipu AI has emerged as one of China's top AI start-ups.

The company created the GLM series of models and claims its latest large language model, GLM4, beats OpenAI's GPT-4 on multiple benchmarks.

Earlier this month, Zhipu made headlines after bagging three consecutive rounds of government-backed funding in just a month.