Zhipu AI China: Super Full Artificial Intelligence Can't Be Achieved By 2030

Zhang Peng, CEO of Zhipu AI, is one of the hottest AI startups in China (photo; x @TMTPostGlobal)

JAKARTA Super artificial intelligence is expected to be available in 2030, but its capabilities are likely to only surpass humans in some aspects. This was conveyed by Zhang Peng, CEO of Zhipu AI, one of China's hottest AI startups, on Tuesday 30 September.

The global AI industry is busy with speculation over when this breast milk technology will truly surpass human intelligence. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last week predicted breast milk could be present by the end of the decade, while SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son last year predicted the technology could be achieved by 2035.

However, Zhang thinks the concept of breast milk is too vague to be pegged in a definite timeline.

"Maybe breast milk can surpass humans in one or more aspects by 2030, but will remain far behind in many other areas," he said at the launch of the company's latest big language model, GLM-4.6.

Zhipu AI, which was founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Tsinghua University, has now emerged as one of the main players in China's AI race. In April 2025, the company submitted documents to list shares in China's domestic market.

In June, OpenAI briefly highlighted Zhipu AI as a fast-growing competitor and called it part of Beijing's efforts to push China's AI expansion abroad. Zhang called his party "respectful" with the recognition, but emphasized that foreign expansion carried out was only part of normal business.

Zhang said foreign revenue is starting to show an increase, although the company is not yet planning to compete with the US AI model in subscription services for general consumers. Currently, their main focus is on serving company clients, including by launching subscription packages specifically for developers in the field of programming.

In China, many AI companies have difficulty convincing consumers to pay for AI services, in contrast to trends in the United States. But Zhang is optimistic that this will change in the coming years, as public revenues increase to AI value and lower service prices.

The latest model, GLM-4.6, is said to have better capabilities than the GLM-4.5 which was released last July. The improvement includes programming, reasoning, writing, and AI agent applications.