Startup Watch
DeepSeek nears a $15B round backed by Tencent and CATL
DeepSeek is close to raising about $15 billion, or 100 billion yuan, at a $74 billion pre-money valuation, reports said on October 22, 2026.
China news and analysis
Chinese companies building AI models and hardware: Alibaba's Qwen releases, DeepSeek's chip orders and funding talks, and a HarmonyOS port. Each story names the company, the dollar or chip figures, and whether they come from the company itself or outside reporting.
Tech Industry
DeepSeek ban: DHS orders US agencies to remove its AI
A DHS notice published October 20 orders US civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek and third-party tools built on its models, and to stop buying them.
Dev Stack
DeepSeek open-sources DeepInfer inference engine
The engine behind DeepSeek's own API is now Apache 2.0 code. It runs V4.1-Flash on Nvidia SM100 GPUs and Huawei Ascend 950 chips, minus a KV cache layer.
AI & LLMs
MiniMax M3.1 Flash rolls out, claims 70% cheaper agents
MiniMax's new model costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 output, and the company says it runs AI agents for 70% less than M3.
New & Next
RedMagic 12 Pro+ adds RGB liquid cooling and 185Hz screen
RedMagic's 12 Pro+ gaming phone launched in China on October 15 from 6,999 yuan, with a 185Hz screen, an 8,400mAh battery and a 25,500 RPM fan.
Dev Stack
BeyondTrust Remote Support zero-day exploited since August
A China-linked group exploited a BeyondTrust Remote Support flaw from August 29, 2026. Self-hosted 26.2.3 and older need the BT26-05-RS patch now.
AI & LLMs
Ling-3.1-flash: Ant Group opens 560B model under MIT
Ant Group's inclusionAI published Ling-3.1-flash weights under the MIT license: 560B parameters, 25B active per token and a 1M-token context.
Tech Industry
China drafts export curbs on AI models and chip designs
China's draft adds 23 AI technologies to its export control list, from models with 2 trillion parameters to chip designs. Comments close on November 15.
New & Next
Apple Intelligence heads to China in iOS 27.3
Apple plans to launch Apple Intelligence in China in December with iOS 27.3, Bloomberg reports, running on Alibaba's Qwen models and without Siri AI.
Tech Industry
ByteDance nears MediaTek deal for custom AI chips
ByteDance is in advanced talks to buy custom AI chips from MediaTek, Bloomberg reports. It would be MediaTek's second big chip client after Google.
New & Next
Alibaba Qwen N1 AI glasses go on sale in China
Alibaba's Qwen N1 AI glasses went on sale in China on October 13 from 2,999 yuan, about $450. The N1 Pro adds eye tracking and iris-scan payments.
Tech Industry
Solidigm ties a US NAND fab to China chip tool approval
SK hynix's Solidigm wants US approval to ship more chip tools to its Dalian, China plant, Reuters reports, and links it to a new US NAND factory.
New & Next
E Ink Kaleido 4 doubles the color range of e-paper
E Ink's Kaleido 4 color e-paper doubles color range, adds 50% contrast and plays video at 18 fps. Hanvon's M10C II, sold in China, is the first device.
AI & LLMs
Anthropic says new defenses cut Claude distillation 90-99%
Anthropic says new defenses cut the data distillers harvest from Claude by 90-99%. Some changes reach API users, from locked context to charged blocks.
Tech Industry
Kospi drops 5.46% as SK hynix falls 10% on chip fears
South Korea's Kospi fell 5.46% to 6,035.35 on October 13 as SK hynix dropped 10.09% and Samsung 7.39%, after foreign investors sold memory chip stocks.
New & Next
OnePlus 16 launches with a 9,000mAh battery in China
OnePlus launched the OnePlus 16 in China on October 12 from CNY 5,999, with a 9,000mAh battery, a 200MP camera and a display that reaches 185Hz in games.
Tech Industry
CXMT 4F² DRAM progress knocks Samsung and SK Hynix shares
China's CXMT says it made progress on a smaller 4F² DRAM cell and plans DDR5 server memory by end-2026. Samsung fell 3.6% and SK Hynix 3.4% on October 12.
Startup Watch
Manus raises over $500M after its Meta sale is unwound
Manus's parent raised more than $500 million, led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital. It is the first round since China ordered Meta's $2 billion deal unwound.
AI & LLMs
Xiaomi MiMo-V2.6-Pro ships 1T open weights under MIT
Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro has 1.02 trillion parameters, 42 billion active, a 1M-token context and MIT-licensed weights, but needs about 680 GB of GPU memory.
AI & LLMs
OpenAI links reasoning-extraction campaign to Moonshot AI
OpenAI says a campaign it ties to Moonshot AI, maker of Kimi, sent 16,000 requests from 4,000+ users in July to copy its models' hidden reasoning.
Dev Stack
ZCode uploaded whole Git histories; Zhipu apologizes
One snapshot reached 313MB and 42,411 files, and 86.6% of it was the .git directory, sent to cloud storage the user cannot decrypt.
AI & LLMs
Qwen3.8-Omni-Flash cuts audio input costs by 98%
Alibaba's new omnimodal model reads text, images, audio and video inside a 1M-token context, and prices audio input more than 98% below its predecessor.
Dev Stack
SDL3 gains HarmonyOS support, headed for SDL 3.6.0
Ryan Gordon's port, sponsored by Outfit7 and squashed from 77 commits, merged upstream on September 15, 2026 with video, audio and touch working.
Tech Industry
DeepSeek plans to order 160,000 Huawei chips for new center
DeepSeek plans to order at least 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT chips for a new Inner Mongolia data center, using them for inference while still training on Nvidia hardware.
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