AI News from Asia

A person familiar with the matter said that a report claiming Moonshot AI could submit a Hong Kong IPO application as early as this month is untrue. The report attributed the rebuttal to the source rather than to Moonshot AI itself, and did not indicate that the company had filed with the Hong Kong…

Low-cost Chinese open-weight models are splitting tech executives and Washington over national security and competitiveness.

The Qwen family had nearly 1 billion cumulative downloads and more than 50% of global open-source AI downloads by early 2026, according to a report.

Data: Axios research; Chart: Sara Wise/Axios Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released a powerful new coding model Friday that charges pennies for vast amounts of code. the latest sign that some of the smartest software on Earth is rapidly becoming a commodity.

Edward “Bud” Cole speaks in Japan in 2023. | Image: Jun Sato/WireImage Fender CEO Edward "Bud" Cole gave an interview to T3 in May celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster with comments on AI and music that initially flew under the radar.

deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 The latest release in DeepSeek's V4 family, "with substantially enhanced agentic capabilities". It's 304 billion parameters - 167GB on Hugging Face - but it appears to punch well above its weight. Artificial Analysis rank it ahead of MiniMax M3 - a 428B model.

MediaTek plans to produce its first custom AI chip in Q4, with a second in 2028.

The European Commission launched a tender for the buildout, in a bid to close in on U.S. and Chinese competitors.

As OpenAI and Anthropic employees grow quieter online, researchers at Chinese AI labs are flocking to X to explain their work, recruit talent, and shape the global conversation on AI.

U.S. lawmakers request information from DoorDash on use of Chinese AI models CNBC

China overcomes US ban with AI chip breakthrough Yahoo Finance Singapore

Distillation lets AI companies train new models using existing ones. The White House says Chinese firms are using it to gain an edge, raising questions about competition and intellectual property.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Monday that he has "never advocated" for a ban on open-weight AI models, rejecting accusations that his lab is seeking to shield its closed-model business from competition.

New research from LexisNexis showed the nation’s growing influence in the robotics industry.

There is no point competing in isolation. There are so many benefits to be had, in manufacturing, healthcare, research and governance Zheng Zeguang is the Chinese ambassador to the UK Artificial intelligence is widely regarded as one of the defining technologies of our time.

Governments can now deploy top-tier AI locally, bypassing costly U.S. cloud rentals.

Open-source questions stir frank discussion – and both sides have clear economic incentives for where they land Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week we’ll be looking at a debate over the future of artificial intelligence that’s dividing the tech industry, as well as how the European Union…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Over the weekend, several current and former advisors to President Donald Trump on AI publicly lobbed insults at the country’s leading AI companies.

China’s daily AI token calls reached 140 trillion by March 2026, up more than 1,000-fold from roughly 100 billion in early 2024, according to figures cited by China Academy of Information and Communications Technology deputy head Wei Liang in a CCTV Finance program preview published on July 18.

China dropped a numerical target for urban job creation over the next five years for the first time in decades, in an apparent nod to rising uncertainty over employment as AI spreads through the economy.

Runway is going global, with the AI video company opening new hubs in London, Tokyo, and Paris, and plans to invest nearly $300 million over the next few years as it scales its business and AI research.

Read this edition from ChinaTalk.

On today’s episode of Decoder, my guest is Hayden Field, senior AI reporter for The Verge. Often when Hayden comes on the show, it’s because something has gone wrong in the world of AI.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This man with ALS is the first “power user” of a brain implant that lets him speak Casey Harrell has had a set of electrodes embedded in his brain for almost…

OpenAI for Singapore launches a multi-year AI partnership to expand deployment, build local talent, and support businesses and public services with AI.