Washington has blacklisted Zhipu, China’s most prominent start-up developing large language models for artificial intelligence, as the Biden administration looks to consolidate its legacy of getting tough on Chinese tech. The Beijing-based company was singled out among China’s leading LLM start-ups as it was added to the entity list, a compilation of companies deemed to be of national security concern and subject to trade restrictions, on Wednesday. Washington alleged Zhipu was advancing Chinese military capabilities through the integration of AI research, but the start-up said it “strongly disagreed” with the US move, which it said “lacked factual basis”. Zhipu, founded by Tsinghua computer science professor Tang Jie, has developed LLMs similar to the ones that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It has been working with local governments to deploy services, including chatbots for residents to ask administrative questions about rubbish collection and parking times. The start-up has also worked with Chinese and foreign companies with operations in China to deploy their LLMs for products such as tailored AI assistants. Zhipu and several affiliated companies were added to the US list, which in effect bars them from purchasing most American technology.

Full report : United States has blacklisted Zhipu, China’s most prominent start-up developing large language models for artificial intelligence.