China’s Z.ai Debuts First Major Model Trained Fully on Huawei’s AI Chip Stack

Chinese AI startup Z.ai has unveiled GLM-Image, an advanced multimodal AI model that represents a shift in the ongoing tech war between superpowers.
Z.ai (formerly known as Zhipu AI outside China until its rebranding in 2025) disclosed that GLM-Image is reportedly the first top-tier multimodal model trained entirely on Ascend chips developed by Huawei Technologies.
The announcement says it was built using Huawei’s Ascend Atlas 800T A2 servers and the MindSpore framework, with servers equip