Bio

Zhang Peng is a Chinese computer scientist. He is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Z.AI, the Beijing-headquartered foundation-model company he established in 2019 with Tsinghua University professor Tang Jie. He led the company through its January 2026 Hong Kong Stock Exchange initial public offering, making Z.AI the first major Chinese large-language-model company to list publicly. He is also a member of the 14th Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Education

Zhang entered the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University in 1998 and completed his bachelor's degree there. He earned his doctorate in computer science at Tsinghua in 2018 through the Innovation Leader Engineering Doctorate program.

Career

Zhang's pre-Z.AI career was concentrated at Tsinghua University, where he served as deputy director of the Science and Technology Big Data Research Center at the university's Institute of Data Science. The role placed him at the operational head of the Tsinghua Knowledge Engineering Group's data infrastructure and applied research, alongside academic principal Tang Jie.

He co-founded Z.AI, then known as Zhipu AI, in 2019 alongside Tang Jie. The company was incubated at the Tsinghua University Science Park in the Zhongguancun district of Beijing and grew out of the GLM and AMiner research projects from the Knowledge Engineering Group. Zhang has led commercial strategy and product, while Tang has remained the chief scientist and academic anchor.

Z.AI's product and model portfolio under Zhang's tenure has included the GLM and ChatGLM open-source language-model families, the CogView and CogVideo image and video generation lines, and the CodeGeeX code generation series. The company became one of the four "AI Tigers" of the Chinese frontier-AI startup cohort that emerged in 2023 and 2024, alongside Moonshot AI, MiniMax, and Baichuan.

In January 2026 Z.AI completed its initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the first major Chinese LLM company to list publicly. Press coverage at the time of the listing noted that effective control of the company sits with Tang Jie and Chairman Liu Debing, who together hold approximately thirty-seven percent of voting rights. Zhang's role through the listing has been the operating chief executive position, with strategic and academic direction held primarily by Tang.

Notable contributions

Zhang's research and product portfolio is concentrated on the Z.AI operating record alongside earlier Tsinghua engineering contributions to the GLM and AMiner research lines.

• GLM model series. Co-developer of the GLM general language model family during the Tsinghua Knowledge Engineering Group period.
• AMiner academic search platform. Engineering and product contributions to the AMiner platform during the Tsinghua period.
• XLORE knowledge graph. Contributions to the XLORE multilingual knowledge graph project.
• Z.AI founding (2019). Co-founded the Beijing-headquartered foundation-model company alongside Tang Jie.
• Z.AI Hong Kong IPO (January 2026). Led the company through its public listing, the first major Chinese LLM company to do so.

Affiliations

• Tsinghua University: Bachelor's student, Department of Computer Science and Technology, 1998 onward; Doctoral student, Innovation Leader Engineering Doctorate program, completed 2018; Deputy Director, Science and Technology Big Data Research Center, Institute of Data Science.
• Z.AI (formerly Zhipu AI): Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, 2019 to present.
• Beijing Municipal Committee of the CPPCC: Member of the 14th Committee.

Position in the field

As of May 2026, Zhang is the operating chief executive of one of the four major Chinese frontier-AI startups, with the Hong Kong listing of Z.AI in January 2026 setting a precedent for public-market access for Chinese LLM companies. The contemporaneous IPO of MiniMax on the same exchange the same month, combined with the continuing private-company status of Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, produces a bifurcation between publicly listed and privately held Chinese frontier developers that did not exist in 2025.

Zhang's English-language press coverage is substantially thinner than that of co-founder Tang Jie, with most public profiles concentrated in Chinese-language sources and post-IPO January 2026 coverage. Birth year is not publicly disclosed in English-language sources, with available evidence suggesting the late 1970s based on the Tsinghua undergraduate entry year of 1998.

Sources

• Z.AI Wikipedia entry. Company overview including Zhang Peng's role, ownership structure, and the January 2026 Hong Kong listing.
• Peng Zhang LinkedIn. LinkedIn profile.
• Zhipu CEO Zhang Peng on taking China's AI public. GingerRiver interview at the time of the Hong Kong listing.
• Zhipu CEO interview at 36Kr. 36Kr interview.
• Zhipu AI's rise from Tsinghua lab. Pandaily company history.