Explore GLM-4.5: The cutting-edge, open-source artificial intelligence model leading the pack.
Zhipu AI, a Beijing-based tech firm, has made waves in the AI industry with the release of its latest model, GLM-4.5. This advanced language model is designed to compete with leading Western models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4.5 and xAI's Grok-4.
GLM-4.5 boasts an impressive 355 billion parameters with 32 billion active during inference, utilising a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture for a balance between scale and computational efficiency[1][3]. A lighter variant, GLM-4.5-Air, offers 106 billion total and 12 billion active parameters[1][3].
Key Features of GLM-4.5
One of the standout features of GLM-4.5 is its dual-mode system. This allows the model to switch between a "thinking" mode for complex reasoning, coding, and tool use, and a "non-thinking" mode for faster, simpler responses[1][3].
The model also benefits from a high parameter depth and 96 attention heads per layer, focusing on depth over width[1]. Innovations like QK-Norm, Grouped Query Attention, Multi-Token Prediction, and a specialized Muon optimizer contribute to faster training convergence and improved reasoning[1].
GLM-4.5 was trained on a massive 22 trillion token corpus, including 7 trillion tokens dedicated to code and reasoning tasks[1][3]. It also employs reinforcement learning with an asynchronous agentic RL pipeline ("slime RL")[1][3].
The model offers built-in support for function calling, web browsing, code execution, and external API integration, facilitating advanced agentic AI applications with a reported 90.6% success rate in tool use[3][2]. It also boasts multilingual proficiency, with strong English-Chinese bilingual support across 24+ languages[3].
GLM-4.5's large 128K token context window allows it to handle very long documents or conversations, a feature becoming standard in state-of-the-art models in 2025[3][4]. Moreover, it is fully open-source and available for enterprise deployment on Hugging Face[3].
Performance of GLM-4.5
In global rankings, GLM-4.5 is the #3 open-source model, trailing only behind top closed-source models like GPT-4 and Claude-4, and Western open contenders like Grok-4[3][2].
On agentic tasks and tool use, it surpasses several leading open models with about a 90% success rate in tool utilization benchmarks[2][5]. In coding benchmarks across 52 tasks, GLM-4.5 achieved an 80.8% win rate against Qwen3-Coder and 53.9% against Kimi K2, demonstrating strong full-stack coding capabilities[4][5].
On math and reasoning challenges, GLM-4.5 matches or exceeds Claude 4 Opus on the MATH 500 test with 98.2% accuracy and outperforms some competitors on the AIME24 math competition, though slightly below top specialized models like Qwen3-235B-Thinking[5].
In tool-use benchmark composites (TAU-Bench, BFCL v3 Full, BrowseComp), GLM-4.5 achieved around 90.6% accuracy, outperforming Claude-4 Sonnet and other Chinese open-source rivals. However, it still trails behind some closed-source leaders like o3 in niche tasks like multi-step web browsing (BrowseComp)[5].
In conclusion, GLM-4.5 represents a significant breakthrough in open-source AI, combining massive scale, efficient computation, agentic capabilities, multi-modal tool integration, and competitive performance across coding, reasoning, and tool tasks. This positions it as one of the strongest open AI alternatives challenging Western models like GPT-4.5 and Grok-4[1][2][3][5].
The strategic timing of Zhipu AI's release of GLM-4.5, amidst growing geopolitical concerns around closed-source Western models, suggests that Zhipu AI is positioning itself as a global leader in open, high-performance AI.
[1] Zhipu AI Official Blog: Introducing GLM-4.5, Our Latest Open-Source Large Language Model [2] OpenAI Benchmark: GLM-4.5 Performance Comparison [3] Hugging Face Model Hub: GLM-4.5 [4] AICE Benchmark: GLM-4.5 Coding Performance [5] TAU-Bench, BFCL v3 Full, BrowseComp, MATH 500, AIME24: GLM-4.5 Performance in Various Benchmarks
(C) Vyom Ramani, Tech Journalist, 2025. All rights reserved.
Artificial-intelligence advances continue to push boundaries with Zhipu AI's unveiling of GLM-4.5, a model that competes effectively in the global AI landscape against leading Western models, integrating technology that excels in both depth and breadth, featuring advancements such as a dual-mode system, massive training data, and efficient Mixture-of-Experts architecture.
The cutting-edge GLM-4.5, with 355 billion parameters, underscores the growing importance of open-source AI technology in the face of the technological race, offering a compelling alternative to closed-source models like GPT-4.5 and Grok-4.
