The Zhipu Ecosystem Fund, also known as Z Fund, has raised 1.5 billion yuan ($211 million) from its parent company and a group of state-backed and private entities, according to a press release published Friday on its official WeChat account.

These include the investment unit of the Beijing municipal government, the Shijingshan District Modern Innovation Industry Development Fund, and Fuzuo Capital, which is affiliated with the Hangzhou Industrial Investment Group, the investment vehicle of the capital of eastern Zhejiang province.

Private equity fund Yanbei Capital and Guangdong Aofei Data Tech, a cloud computing infrastructure provider based in the southern province of Guangdong, are also among the limited partners.

Zhipu is beefing up its investment arsenal as competition heats up in China’s busy GenAI market, which has seen the launch of more than a hundred large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind products like ChatGPT from OpenAI.