Z.ai Launches Programming Agent In Latest Anthropic Challenge

China's Zhipu AI brings out autonomous programming agent framework ZCode as it squares off against Anthropic, OpenAI worldwide

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Chinese start-up Zhipu AI, also known as Z.ai, has launched a framework for using its tools in semi-autonomous coding agents, as it ramps up competition with Anthropic.

The company, which trades on the Hong Kong stock exchange as Knowledge Atlas Technology - the English rendition of its Chinese name Zhipu Huazhang Keji - said the new ZCode harness would work with its latest mode GLM-5.2.

ZCode helps large language models such as GLM-5.2 execute tasks autonomously, allowing them to be used to help independently collaborate on programming projects.

AI programming

Such tools have seen a surge in popularity since Anthropic's Claude Code became a viral success last autumn.

Along with ZCode, Zhipu rolled out promotions including 50 percent higher data limits for existing subscribers and 5 million free tokens for new ZCode users.

Zhipu's head of global operations, Li Zixuan, said in a social media post that the company had built ZCode with input from the developer community.

Worldwide popularity

The company has been taking advantage of recent disruption to Anthropic's latest releases to push GLM-5.2 out to more users, turning it into the third most widely used model worldwide, after models from Anthropic and OpenAI, according to rankings from Arena AI.

Anthropic restored access to its latest models Mythos 5 and Fable 5 last week after the US administration lifted security restrictions.