Tech
Z.ai powers up a 1-gigawatt AI data center built entirely on Chinese chips, report claims - GLM developer now runs
Chinese AI developer Z.ai (formerly Zhipu) has completed construction on a 1-gigawatt data center built entirely with domestic Chinese chips and has activated
Key takeaways
- Z.ai finished building a 1GW data center stocked exclusively with domestic chips and switched part of it on.
- Z.ai operates several computing clusters holding more than 10,000 chips apiece.
- Beijing is drafting a plan to spend roughly 2 trillion yuan ($295 billion) over five years on a nationwide grid of AI data centers.
- A gigawatt of domestic silicon delivers less usable training compute than a gigawatt consumed by Nvidia systems due to lower performance per watt.
- SMIC's most advanced stable node, the N+2 process, is running above 93% utilization.
Chinese AI developer Z.ai (formerly Zhipu) has completed construction on a 1-gigawatt data center built entirely with domestic Chinese chips and has activated a portion of it. The facility will train the company's GLM model family. Z.ai now operates multiple computing clusters containing over 10,000 chips each. While the chip supplier was not named, Z.ai's GLM-5.2 model was trained entirely on Huawei Ascend accelerators. Z.ai has been on the U.S. Commerce Department's entity list since January 2025, blocking its access to Nvidia hardware.
By the numbers
- 1GW
- Power capacity of Z.ai's new domestic-chip data center
- 10,000+
- Chips held in each of Z.ai's computing clusters
- 2T yuan
- Beijing's planned five-year spending on an AI data center grid
- 93%
- Utilization rate of SMIC's advanced N+2 process node
- $1B
- Z.ai's projected annual recurring revenue after July sales
How it unfolded
- Huawei shipped around 812,000 AI chips
- Z.ai added to U.S. Commerce Department entity list
- Z.ai released GLM-5.2 trained entirely on Huawei hardware
- Z.ai hit its 2026 sales target
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Common questions
- What happened with Z.ai?
- Z.ai finished building a 1GW data center stocked exclusively with domestic chips and switched part of it on.
- Where can I read the original report?
- Read the full report at toms_hardware.
