Hong Kong-listed Chinese AI company Z.AI, formerly known as Zhipu AI, plans to raise roughly $5 billion through new shares and zero-coupon convertible bonds. It will issue about 21.97 million H shares at HK$714 each, raising roughly HK$15.7 billion, or $2 billion, at a 9.96% discount to Friday's close. The company will also issue 20.14 billion yuan, or $3 billion, of convertible bonds due in 2027, with a conversion price of HK$892.50, about 12.6% above Friday's closing price. Z.AI said surging demand for AI services and continued development of next-generation language models are increasing its need for computing capacity, while the fundraising will broaden its shareholder base. About 60% of the proceeds is earmarked for next-generation model research and development, autonomous learning, large-scale training and inference infrastructure, compatibility with domestically produced semiconductors and greater inference efficiency. The fundraising follows a $4 billion share placement in July, after related lock-up restrictions expired. Z.AI raised HK$31.4 billion in an earlier offering of 19.78 million shares priced at HK$1,588 each. Founded in 2019 by Tsinghua University researchers and listed in Hong Kong in January, Z.AI increased first-half revenue 400% year on year to 953.89 million yuan, while research and development expenses reached 2.13 billion yuan and losses totaled 2.07 billion yuan. The company faces global competition from OpenAI and Anthropic and domestic competition from DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax.