(Yicai) May 22 -- Shares in Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock, better known as Zhipu AI, soared to an all-time high today after the Chinese artificial intelligence startup released a new application programming interface for its latest model which it says has set a new global record for output speed among AI firms.

Zhipu’s share price [HKG: 2513] closed up 26.9 percent at HKD1,282 (USD163.61) after briefly peaking at HKD1,341, lifting the company’s market valuation to HKD570 billion (USD72.7 billion). Since the Beijing-based firm’s listing earlier this year, the stock has gained more than 10-fold in value.

Zhipu rolled out the high-speed version of its latest coding model GLM-5.1, called “GLM-5.1-highspeed,” for selected business clients today. The API has an output speed of 400 tokens per second, equivalent to an engineer finishing a task that normally takes three days in the time that it takes to drink a cup of coffee, it said.

Programming is one of the most speed-sensitive use cases for AI. A single coding task often requires dozens of rounds of model calls. If the response time for each round is delayed by even a few seconds this can extend the total completion time by more than ten minutes. Therefore, API response speed is a key focus for long-horizon tasks, which is when an AI agent runs continuously to complete complex goals.

The area where AI is most likely to achieve a breakthrough this year is in solving long-horizon tasks, Zhipu founder Tang Jie said earlier. This breakthrough could accelerate the shift from one-person companies to firms with no employees and make autonomous AI agent systems the next technological frontier.

Founded in 2019, Zhipu focuses on general artificial intelligence. The company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Jan. 8, becoming the first AI startup in the world to complete an initial public offering. Last year, the firm’s revenue more than doubled, soaring 132 percent to CNY724 million (USD106.6 million), but its losses also widened 59 percent to CNY4.7 billion (USD691.5 million).

Given Zhipu’s position among the global top tier in programming capabilities, and the fact that today’s fast-growing AI agent products are all based on strong coding performance, the company’s growth potential is huge, Guosheng Securities said in a recent research note. The brokerage recently assigned the firm a price-to-sales ratio of 75 times in 2027.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor