The founder of China’s most prominent AI lab has made an unambiguous case for openness. Frontier AI should stay broadly accessible rather than controlled by a select few, Zhipu’s Tang Jie wrote in an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg.
His argument inverts the usual security logic. Real safety comes from broad participation, sharing, and oversight, he said, not from technological barriers.
Zhipu has backed that with product. It released GLM-5.2 under an open-source licence, free to download and commercialise.
The awkward timing
Tang made the comments shortly after Reuters reported that Beijing is considering the opposite. Chinese officials are weighing limits on overseas access to the country’s most advanced open models.
