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Why China’s Carmakers Are Racing Into Humanoid Robots — Tesla’s Bet, Copied
Chinese automakers, facing declining car profit margins, are heavily investing in humanoid robots, mirroring Tesla's strategy. Xpeng's robotics arm recently secured significant funding, highlighting a broader trend across the sector with companies like BYD and Chery also developing humanoid robots. While hardware manufacturing is a strength for these companies, catching up to Tesla in AI development remains a key challenge.
Alibaba Opens Wan3.0 Beta: 30-Second AI Video Built From Text, Images — Even PDFs
Alibaba has launched Wan3.0, a new AI video generation model available in beta, capable of producing 30-second videos from text, images, PDFs, and web pages. The model aims to improve detail preservation and consistency compared to its predecessor, Wan2.5, and offers a Standard tier with a 30 percent discount. This development is part of Alibaba's significant investment in AI, despite a recent decline in quarterly profits.
AI model distillation, explained: the cheap way to inherit an expensive model’s brain
AI model distillation, also known as knowledge distillation, is a technique where a smaller "student" model learns from a larger "teacher" model. This process allows for the creation of cheaper, more efficient AI systems by inheriting the capabilities of expensive, pre-trained models. However, concerns exist regarding the potential loss of safety knowledge and the inheritance of biases during this distillation process.
Two AI Commercials, Two Futures: Anthropic Sells Fear, Alibaba Sells Free Time
Alibaba's new Qwen3.8-Max AI model, with 2.4 trillion parameters, demonstrates impressive long-horizon agentic task capabilities, operating autonomously for nearly five days on an experiment. Priced significantly lower than competitors like Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol, Alibaba's model is poised to disrupt the market, with some users already switching from Western AI subscriptions. The article contrasts Alibaba's commercial, which emphasizes free time and leisure, with Anthropic's fear-based advertising, reflecting differing public sentiments towards AI in China and the US.
Morning Safety Dance
A government-funded study warns that the Dutch semiconductor sector faces a high risk of Chinese interference. This warning comes alongside a CISA vulnerability summary for the week of July 13, 2026, highlighting ongoing cybersecurity concerns.
Apple Intelligence finally gets regulatory approval in China
Apple's AI service, Apple Intelligence, has reportedly received regulatory approval in China. The company is expected to partner with Chinese firms Baidu and Alibaba to launch the service in the country.
Evening Tech Bits
China is reportedly considering reversing its ban on NVIDIA chips, potentially allowing companies like Alibaba and ByteDance to purchase H200 chips. Separately, Linus Torvalds commented on his current programming tools, stating he is no longer a programmer in the traditional sense.
China's National Vulnerability Database warns that recent Claude Code models have a security backdoor
The Chinese National Vulnerability Database (NVDB) has issued a warning regarding Anthropic's Claude Code models, specifically versions 2.1.91 through 2.1.196. The NVDB claims these versions contain a backdoor that transmits sensitive user information, including location data, to remote servers without consent. Users are advised to uninstall affected versions or update to the latest release. This issue follows previous reports of Alibaba banning Claude use due to similar data security concerns.
Alibaba gets a reprieve from US Chinese military ban
A judge has ruled that the Pentagon must grant Alibaba a reprieve regarding its placement on a Chinese military list. This decision provides a temporary halt to the ban affecting the company.
AI Yi-Yi!
Anthropic has stated that Alibaba should face consequences for allegedly orchestrating the largest cloning attack on its AI model, Claude. This incident highlights ongoing concerns about AI security and intellectual property.
Alibaba sues the US government for adding it to list of firms linked to Chinese military
Alibaba has filed a lawsuit against the US government, seeking to be removed from a list of companies allegedly linked to China's People's Liberation Army. The company aims to contest its inclusion on this blacklist.
AliBAE Debuts Qwen Platform with 100,000 CHECK Reward Pool
Animoca Brands and Alibaba have launched AliBAE, a new platform utilizing Alibaba's Qwen AI models for content creation, specifically for promotional videos related to Animoca's AI technology and the mobile game King's Gambit. The platform features challenges with a total prize pool of 100,000 CHECK tokens and aims to reward the quality of contributions over participation volume.
Report: US government may compel Tencent to divest gaming investments
The US government, under the Trump administration, is reportedly considering forcing Tencent to divest its gaming investments due to national security and data privacy concerns. Investigations initiated under the Biden administration have raised questions about Tencent's access to data from millions of American players through its stakes in companies like Epic Games and Riot Games.
In yet another twist in the US-China chip export fiasco, it seems like America may limit the number of H200 AI chips…
The US government is reportedly considering new restrictions on AI chip exports to China, potentially limiting Nvidia's H200 and AMD's MI325 chips. These proposed limits would cap exports at 75,000 units per Chinese firm, significantly reducing previous purchase requests. This development occurs amidst ongoing trade tensions and evolving export policies between the US and China.
