The Number
- DeepSeek-V4-Pro (0813) runs $0.66/M input at cache-miss off-peak, cheaper than any US flagship listing, per DeepSeek's pricing docs as of 2026-08-19.
- Alibaba's qwen3.8-max sits #8 on Arena's text preference ranking at Elo 1491, the top China-lab entry, per LMArena as of 2026-08-18.
- Moonshot's kimi-k3-max holds #2 on Arena's coding preference ranking at Elo 1674, ahead of every model but Anthropic's, per LMArena as of 2026-08-18.
- z-ai/glm-5.2 lists at $0/MTok on a free tier, the cheapest China-lab route on OpenRouter, per OpenRouter as of 2026-08-19.
Top of the Fold
- Unitree lists on the STAR Market at 150.80 yuan/share, becoming A-share's first humanoid-robot stock ten years after founding, per 虎嗅.
- Baidu's AI business tops 50% of core revenue for a second straight quarter on Q2 total revenue of 31.3B yuan, marking the search pivot's crossover, per 雷峰网.
- Xiaomi reports Q2 adjusted net profit down 42.6% to about 6.2B yuan as auto and AI spend keeps burning cash, per 智东西.
- Alibaba's 千问办公 Agent connects to WeChat Work, completing coverage of all three major Chinese office suites, per 量子位.
Untranslated
- 网易传媒 launches 蜜蜂AI as a C-end AI base already live in its youth community 网易小蜜蜂, betting on an AI-native social product with a personal "pet shrimp" assistant, per 智东西.
- 智象未来 drops HiDream-O1-World, a native full-modal interactive world model that company-stated tops the WBench Navi board at 80.9 average, per 智东西.
- 闪极 ships the loomos L1 AI glasses at 2699 yuan, 40g with a 40-hour battery and an always-on active-memory mode that logs a user's day, per 智东西.
- 人大高瓴 and 至知创新 open-source ClawGym II, folding real Agent harnesses like OpenClaw and Claude Code directly into the RL loop, per 智东西.
- 夕小瑶科技说's read is that Cursor's new Origin code host declares GitHub "last era," one named view worth watching but not yet proven, per 夕小瑶科技说.
The Backstory
- Unitree founder 王兴兴 was still sitting on the floor debugging a robot in August 2016; a Spring Festival Gala cameo last year turned the lab viral, and today his direct stake is worth billions on listing, per 虎嗅.
The Kicker
- Gree's 董明珠, 72, opened a vocational school in Zhuhai as its principal, first class of 300, graduates get priority hiring at Gree, per 虎嗅.
