Goldman Sachs on Z.AI (Zhipu, 2513.HK): H1 2026 Review: Strong Recurring Revenue Growth; Expansion into Agents, Co-work and Autonomous AI Workflows; Neutral Rating

Goldman Sachs views Z.AI's (Zhipu, 2513.HK) H1 2026 results as mixed: open-platform/API monetization and ARR ramp exceeded expectations, but overall revenue and profitability were dragged down by the transition from on-premises deployment toward cloud MaaS. August ARR surpassed US$1.6bn (roughly US$2.0bn annualized on the latest weekly run-rate), accelerating from US$250mn in March and US$1.0bn in July; token consumption is up 40x year-to-date, Coding Plan usage 23x and API ASP 101%, while top-ten customers' daily usage rose 98x and GLM now serves as primary model supplier to four leading Chinese internet platforms. GS raised its end-2026 ARR forecast from US$2.5bn to US$2.7bn, sees 2H26/FY26 revenue of RMB7.0bn/7.9bn and open-platform gross margins of 25.3%/25.2%, but trimmed 2026-28E revenue by 8%/4%/2% and earnings by 2%/4%/2% on the on-premises decline (H1 adjusted net loss RMB1.96bn). Monetization centers on higher-value tokens, with Coding the main entry point expanding into Agents, Co-work and autonomous AI workflows; models ship every 2-3 months, a 100k+ domestic chip cluster supports large-scale inference, and unit token inference cost has fallen 80% YTD. GS maintains Neutral and a DCF-based HK$1,610 target (12% WACC, 2% terminal growth; price HK$1,195, 34.7% upside; bull/bear HK$2,508/HK$839).