The Number
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash-Vision-Exp lists a cache-miss input price of $0.22/M off-peak, matching text V4-Flash, per DeepSeek's pricing docs (2026-08-21).
- Alibaba's flagship qwen3.8-max sits #3 on Arena's coding preference ranking at Elo 1669, the top-rated Chinese lab entry there, per LMArena (2026-08-21).
- Alibaba Cloud external commercialization revenue grew 45% year on year last quarter, a 22-quarter high, per its earnings release (2026-08-20).
- Cheapest routable Chinese model on OpenRouter is qwen3.7-flash at $0.03/M prompt, per OpenRouter (2026-08-21).
Top of the Fold
- DeepSeek quietly puts an experimental vision model, DeepSeek-V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, on its API, its first multimodal step after a text-only run, with company-stated multimodal-agent scores it claims approach Opus, per 智东西.
- Alibaba pushes a full model matrix across text, image, speech, video and music in one month, moving from single-benchmark wins to a all-lines push, per 极客公园 and its earnings.
- Xiaohongshu open-sources its first base model overseas, the 280B MoE dots3-note preview, a content platform building its own foundation layer, per 极客公园.
- SenseTime open-sources the full SenseNova U1.5 Lite unified multimodal model on GitHub and Hugging Face, aimed at native 4K visual generation, per 雷峰网.
Untranslated
- Cloud vendors are reselling rivals' models below cost, with sales quoting 4.8折 on Zhipu, Kimi and DeepSeek and some pushing toward 3折, breaching cost lines in a fresh price war, per 雷峰网.
- Kuaishou's Kling core technical lead 王鑫涛, a key figure in building the video model from zero, has left, with his next stop reportedly another internet major, per 雷峰网 (circulating, company unconfirmed).
- Alibaba Cloud reshuffles its public-cloud channel ecosystem, with 程传珂 taking over as distribution-ecosystem head and 李鹏 stepping down, per 雷峰网.
- MiniMax gives its H3 video model a dedicated harness, MiniMax Design, organizing generation, planning and editing into one multimodal agent workbench, per 智东西.
The Backstory
- 明略科技 founder 吴明辉 told the WRC main forum that robots need two brains, an individual one and an organizational one connecting robots, agents and IT, noting he co-founded hotel-service robot maker 云迹科技 twelve years ago, as recorded by 雷峰网.
The Kicker
- Go player 柯洁 shared his secret to beating AI: play dumb, per 极客公园's morning roundup.
