KNOWLEDGE ATLAS, one of China’s prominent AI developers, has anonymously released its new large language model under a different name on OpenRouter, a popular AI model marketplace for developers.

Knowledge Atlas stock rose 6% in Hong Kong trading.

Pony Alpha, a new open-source LLM launched on OpenRouter a few days ago, is Knowledge Atlas’s new model, known as GLM-5, in disguise, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. In a post on X, OpenRouter said Pony Alpha “delivers strong performance across coding, reasoning and roleplay.”

Beijing-based Knowledge Atlas, which went public in Hong Kong under the corporate name Knowledge Atlas Technology, is planning to officially launch GLM-5 later this week, the person said. Knowledge Atlas’s previous model, GLM-4.7, was ranked high among open-source models for coding and agentic tasks.

By releasing the model first under a different name on OpenRouter without telling users that it’s a new Knowledge Atlas model, the company is trying to gather and assess feedback from users without preconceptions or prejudices, the person said.

Knowledge Atlas’s GLM-5 comes as Chinese open-source AI models are gaining popularity among U.S. developers who are looking for cheaper but capable alternatives for coding to Anthropic’s Claude and other U.S. models.