The Archive

Moonshot's annualized recurring revenue topped $200 million in April, driven by rapid growth in paid subscriptions and API usage.

DeepSeek approaching $45B valuation in Series A led by China's Big Fund, signaling major state backing for domestic LLM competitor.

Reddit discussion speculating on risks of autonomous robots deployed by authoritarian governments, citing anecdotal China sighting.

Reddit speculation on Owl Alpha, an unidentified model with 1M context window and China-based safety patterns.

Unconfirmed report: DeepSeek and Kimi may merge as China consolidates AI labs following historical precedent in strategic industries.

A Baidu Apollo Go robotaxi in Wuhan, China. | Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images China has suspended new licenses for autonomous vehicles, Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. The move comes after dozens of robotaxis operated by Chinese tech giant Baidu ground to a halt in traffic last month in Wuhan, creating chaos. The restrictions will prevent companies from adding new driverless cars to their fleets, expanding into new cities, or starting new test projects. It is unclear when officials will start issuing new licenses again. Bloomberg said the Wuhan incident al...

China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus, signaling stricter tech M&A oversight amid US-China competition.

The unwinding of Meta’s deal shows how tech founders struggle to cut China ties.

China has ordered Meta to unwind its multibillion-dollar Manus acquisition, dealing a potential setback to Zuckerberg’s push into AI agents.

China's NDRC blocks Meta's $2B Manus acquisition on national security grounds, signaling tightened foreign investment review in AI/infra.

Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a preview of its hotly anticipated next-generation AI model V4 on Friday, saying that the open-source model can compete with leading closed-source systems from US rivals including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. DeepSeek says V4 marks a major improvement over prior models, especially in coding, a capability that has become central to AI agents and helped drive the success of tools like ChatGPT Codex and Claude Code. The release is also a milestone for China's chip industry, with DeepSeek explicitly highlighting compatibility with domestic Huawei technology....

Trump-Xi summit may be rocked by US mulling huge sanctions.

He said it on the [Dwarkesh Podcast ](https://mrkt30.com/anthropic-mythos-triggers-chinas-ai-arms-frenzy/)this week and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. His argument was not that China is not a threat. It was that cutting them off and treating them as an enemy is probably not the smartest long term play. His actual words were that victimising them and turning them into an enemy likely is not the best answer. The context here is Huawei targeting 750,000 AI chip shipments this year. It is nowhere near Nvidia's compute but the direction of travel is clear. And if DeepSeek ends u...

I was recently invited to join an app that would pay me cryptocurrency to film myself doing tasks like putting food into a bowl, microwaving it, and then taking it out. Another website suggested I try a new game in which I’d remotely control a robotic arm in Shenzhen, China, as it completed puzzles and…

Silicon Valley AI companies follow a familiar playbook: Keep the secret sauce behind an API, and charge for every drop. China’s leading AI labs are playing a different game: They ship models as downloadable “open-weight” packages. This lets developers adapt the models and run them on their own hardware to build products without negotiating a…

China reports training armed robot dogs and attack drones for urban warfare scenarios.

A humanoid robot's record half-marathon run shows China's speed in robotics.

Tech workers in China are being instructed by their bosses to train AI agents to replace them—and it’s prompting a wave of soul-searching among otherwise enthusiastic early adopters. Earlier this month a GitHub project called Colleague Skill, which claimed workers could use it to “distill” their colleagues’ skills and personality traits and replicate them with…

GLM-5.1 and other Chinese AI models match frontier performance at lower cost via efficient engineering, narrowing US-China capability gap.

Import AI 450 covers Chinese electronic warfare model, LLM psychological effects research, and cyberattack scaling laws.

Import AI 446 covers nuclear power LLMs, China's comprehensive AI benchmark suite, and measurement for policy.

OpenAI banned likely China-origin accounts researching US persons and social-engineering tactics to enable targeted influence operations.

OpenAI banned China-linked accounts using AI for influence planning, harassment, and coordinated online operations.

OpenAI banned Operation Nine-emdash Line: unreported PRC operation using AI for regional influence on South China Sea and Hong Kong.

OpenAI banned China-origin accounts using AI to generate US political content and profile movements for influence operations.

OpenAI banned PRC-attributed threat actors using AI for vulnerability research, malware scripting, and operational cyber support.

OpenAI banned China-origin accounts using AI to generate political influence content targeting Taiwan and US topics.

OpenAI banned likely China-origin accounts using AI to draft surveillance tools and debug code.

OpenAI banned likely China-origin accounts using AI to generate English and Spanish-language social influence content.