PAI-1 plays significant roles in cancer occurrence, relapse and multidrug resistance and is highly expressed in tumours. ACT001, which is currently in phase I clinical trials for the treatment of glioblastoma (GBM). However, the detailed molecular mechanism of ACT001 is still unclear. In this study, we investigated the effects of ACT001 on glioma cell proliferation and clarified its mechanism. We discovered that PAI-1 was the direct target of ACT001 by a cellular thermal shift assay. Then, the interaction between ACT001 and PAI-1 was verified by Biacore assays, thermal stability assays and ACT001 probe assays. Furthermore, from the proteomic analysis, we found that ACT001 directly binds PAI-1 to inhibit the PI3K/AKT pathway, which induces the inhibition of glioma cell proliferation, invasion and migration. Moreover, the combination of ACT001 and cisplatin showed a synergistic effect on the inhibition of glioma in vitro and in vivo. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that PAI-1 is a new target of ACT001, the inhibition of PAI-1 induces glioma inhibition, and ACT001 has a synergistic effect with cisplatin through the inhibition of the PAI-1/PI3K/AKT pathway.