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”.