The CEO and founder of one of China's leading AI startups has warned that a rival Chinese Fable 5-class AI model is closer than even Elon Musk thinks.
In a post on his own platform, Musk stated that China's attempt at an AI model to rival Anthropic's new Fable 5 offering will arrive in "Probably Q1," to which Jie Tang replied, "won't take that long."
Jie Tang might be a relative unknown in the Western world, but he’s the founder of Z.ai, formerly known as Zhipu AI, and is one of the leading AI startups in China, based in Beijing. It released its latest AI model, GLM-5.2, on June 16, 2026, and the company’s benchmarks show that it has almost the same performance as Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 to 4.8, which launched in April and May of this year, respectively. It has also consistently outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro.
Anthropic launched its latest, most powerful public model, Fable 5, last June 10, which itself is a nerfed version of the Mythos 5 that was previewed to select entities in early April.
However, three days after the general public could start enjoying Fable 5, the U.S. government put an export control directive on the model and barred all foreign nationals, including Anthropic’s own employees, from accessing it.
Since the company determined that it cannot guarantee total compliance with the order, it decided to pull both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 from across the globe.