Four founders of Zhipu AI, one of China's most promising artificial intelligence startups, carried out a joint research project with a technology research institute that the British government has identified as an espionage operation. The government said the institute maintains "very strong links" with Chinese intelligence agencies.
Britain's MI5 made the assessment in a report titled "Espionage Alert" published on Sept. 30, Bloomberg reported on the 19th. The report said the China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) exists primarily to fund academic research that directly strengthens the technical capabilities of China's main intelligence agencies for espionage activities.
The project in question ran for about four years, from January 2018 to December 2021, overlapping with 2019, the year Zhipu AI was founded. According to a 78-page report in which the project leaders summarized their findings, the research was jointly funded by CGTRI and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The project was led by Li Juanzi, a Zhipu AI co-founder and professor in the department of computer science and technology at Tsinghua University. She worked alongside Cao Weibing of CGTRI and a professor at Southeast University. The report said the three were "jointly responsible for designing the overall technical plan, coordinating work among the three participating institutions and overseeing research progress across the project."
Three other founders also appear in the list of research outputs. Tang Jie, Xu Bin and Chief Executive Zhang Peng are listed as co-authors of papers, co-inventors of patents or holders of software copyrights. Of the five people identified as founders and key figures in Zhipu AI's interim report, only Chairman Liu Debing does not appear in the project documents.
The total approved budget was 2.94 million yuan ($437,000, or about 580 million won). The research aimed to develop AI tools that analyze social media posts to detect major events and map relationships between individuals. The report listed the construction of a knowledge base of "key figures related to China" as one of its core objectives but did not explain who those figures were.
MI5 said CGTRI "has very strong links" with China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), warning that institutions or individuals that continue to conduct research ultimately funded by CGTRI after the alert was issued could face criminal prosecution.
If the report's claims are substantiated, they could prompt further scrutiny of Zhipu AI by U.S. authorities. Washington last year restricted the company's access to U.S. technology, citing allegations that its AI research supported the military. More recently, it has alleged that Zhipu AI systematically extracted proprietary knowledge from U.S. competitors. The company has said the U.S. restrictions "lack a factual basis" and would have "no material impact on its business."
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in London rejected MI5's allegations against CGTRI as "groundless." It remains unclear what the Zhipu AI founders knew about CGTRI's relationship with Chinese intelligence agencies.