A Chinese AI model capable of matching Anthropic’s flagship Claude Fable 5 could arrive before the end of this year, according to the founder of Zhipu AI, escalating the global frontier model race after the release of Zhipu’s GLM-5.2.The prediction emerged from a rare online exchange between Zhipu founder and chief scientist Tang Jie and US tech trillionaire Elon Musk, sparking fresh debate over the narrowing artificial intelligence gap between the US and China.On social media platform X last week, Musk – founder of xAI, Tesla and SpaceX – responded to a post discussing when China could potentially produce a rival to Fable 5 – currently regarded as the world’s most advanced model. Musk projected the timeline would “probably” be the first quarter of next year.Tang replied that it “won’t take that long”.His confident comment came as Zhipu’s newly released 744 billion-parameter GLM-5.2 model recently secured the No 2 spot globally on benchmark firm Code Arena’s rankings for front-end coding abilities, trailing only Fable 5.Zhipu’s GLM-5.2 has been ranked No 2 globally for front-end coding abilities, trailing only Anthropic’s Fable 5. Photo: ShutterstockThe launch propelled Zhipu to the world’s third-best AI lab, behind Silicon Valley heavyweights Anthropic and OpenAI, according to the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.