Liu Debing, the chairman and cofounder of Chinese AI model company Knowledge Atlas Technology, better known as Zhipu, has become a billionaire following the Hong Kong market debut Thursday of hiis OpenAI challenger.

The 49-year-old, who cofounded the firm in 2019 with chief executive Zhang Peng, is worth $2.1 billion, based on his stake in Zhipu, according to Forbes estimates. The company raised $558 million n the IPO by selling 37.4 million shares , according to its prospectus. Its early investors include Alibaba, Tencent, Hillhouse, Qiming Venture Partners and Chinese government funds.

The company, which is now worth some $7.5 billion, plans to use most of the proceeds for research and development purposes, its prospectus shows. Shares ended the day up 13.2% after a muted open. During the morning trading session, shares even briefly dipped below the IPO price .

Zhipu, which operates a ChatGPT-like service called Z.ai, didn’t respond to........

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