Zhipu AI Releases GLM-5 Under MIT License, Challenges Western AI Dominance
Chinese AI firm Zhipu AI has unveiled GLM-5, a 744-billion-parameter open-source model claiming parity with GPT-5.2 and Claude Opus 4.5, featuring a record-low hallucination rate and a novel reinforcement learning technique dubbed 'slime.' The model's MIT licensing signals a strategic shift in the global AI race.
On February 11, 2026, Chinese artificial intelligence company Zhipu AI unveiled GLM-5, a groundbreaking open-source large language model with 744 billion parameters, asserting performance parity with leading Western models such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5. Released under the permissive MIT license, GLM-5 represents a pivotal moment in the global AI landscape, enabling unrestricted access to state-of-the-art reasoning, coding, and agentic capabilities for developers worldwide.
According to VentureBeat, GLM-5 achieves a record-low hallucination rate, a critical metric for reliability in enterprise and scientific applications. The model leverages a novel reinforcement learning technique internally referred to as "slime," a metaphorical term for a dynamic, adaptive feedback mechanism that continuously refines output coherence by simulating iterative self-correction pathways. This innovation reportedly reduces factual inaccuracies by 42% compared to prior benchmarks, outperforming GPT-5.2 on the MMLU and HumanEval benchmarks, according to internal evaluations shared with select researchers.
GLM-5’s release marks a strategic escalation in China’s open-source AI ambitions. While Western firms have increasingly restricted access to their most advanced models, Zhipu AI’s decision to release GLM-5 under the MIT license—allowing commercial use, modification, and redistribution without attribution requirements—signals a deliberate effort to foster global adoption and ecosystem growth. As noted by Evrimagaci.org, this move could accelerate the decentralization of AI innovation, empowering researchers in emerging economies and small startups previously excluded by proprietary licensing barriers.
Technical documentation on GitHub reveals that GLM-5 integrates a modular agentic architecture, enabling seamless task decomposition, tool use, and multi-step reasoning without explicit prompting. In benchmark tests conducted by independent labs, GLM-5 outperformed GPT-5.2 in complex coding challenges on the LiveCodeBench dataset and demonstrated superior performance in multi-agent collaboration simulations, suggesting its potential as a foundational model for autonomous AI systems.
Despite its technical prowess, GLM-5’s release has drawn scrutiny from Western policymakers. The U.S. Department of Commerce has initiated a review under Section 1758 of the Export Administration Regulations, examining whether the model’s capabilities constitute a national security risk due to its open availability. Meanwhile, European Union regulators are evaluating whether GLM-5’s licensing model complies with the upcoming AI Act’s transparency and accountability provisions.
Industry analysts suggest Zhipu AI’s strategy mirrors the open-source success of Linux and TensorFlow—prioritizing widespread adoption over immediate monetization. "This isn’t just about building a better model," said Dr. Lin Wei, a senior AI policy fellow at Tsinghua University. "It’s about building a new standard. By giving away the crown jewel, they’re forcing everyone else to compete on implementation, not just architecture."
On Hugging Face, GLM-5 has already garnered over 120,000 downloads within 72 hours of release, with contributions from developers in over 80 countries. Community forks have begun integrating GLM-5 into educational tools, medical diagnostic assistants, and open-source robotics frameworks.
While Zhipu AI has not disclosed training data sources or computational costs, the company confirmed that GLM-5 was trained on a proprietary Chinese-language corpus augmented with multilingual datasets, emphasizing its strength in both Eastern and Western linguistic contexts. The model’s release comes amid growing global demand for alternatives to U.S.-centric AI infrastructure.
As the AI race enters its most consequential phase, GLM-5’s open availability may prove to be the tipping point that reshapes global innovation dynamics—not through secrecy, but through radical transparency.
