Tech Brew Ride Home · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
The mysterious AI model Ox Alpha, which rapidly gained traction on online marketplaces, has been confirmed as a creation of China's ZAI, also known as Zhipu. ZAI announced that Ox Alpha is an iteration of its GLM series and will release its weights openly, allowing developers to build upon the model. The model has surged to the top of usage charts on AI marketplace Open Router and is designed for coding and agentic tasks, capable of processing text, image, and video inputs.
“The new AI model that swept to the top of online usage charts with high performance at zero cost was created by China's ZAI, also known as Zhipu.”
“The company on Wednesday confirmed speculation that the Ox Alpha model is a new iteration of its GLM series and said it will release the weights for it tonight in response to queries by Bloomberg News.”
“Still free to use, Ox Alpha surged to the top spot on AI marketplace Open Routers leaderboard, more than doubling Deep Seek's use.”