The Number
- MiniMax M3 and z-ai GLM-5.2 both list at $0/MTok on OpenRouter's free tier as of 2026-09-01, per OpenRouter.
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash cache-miss input runs $0.22/M off-peak (1M context, 384K max output) as of 2026-09-01, per DeepSeek docs.
- Qwen3-max off-peak input starts at 2.5元/M under 32K tokens as of 2026-09-01, per DashScope pricing.
Top of the Fold
- Manus declares itself independent again, ending its reported Meta acquisition, with founders 肖弘, 季逸超 and 张涛 staying on and teasing new products, per 智东西.
- 梅卡曼德 lists on the Hong Kong exchange, drawing $186M from cornerstones including Baillie Gifford and Jane Street for its robot eye-brain-hand components, per 智东西.
- Tencent ships a lightweight Hy4 preview that compresses weights from 1.5TB to 214GB, holding long-context performance with a small math drop, company-stated, per 智东西.
- AI 3D unicorn VAST closes B and B+ rounds of 约30亿元, taking half-year fundraising to about 50亿元 on a record for native-3D, per 智东西.
Untranslated
- 影眸科技 releases world-generation model Hyper3D WorldGen, turning a single photo into an editable multi-object 3D scene via its SIGGRAPH-2025 CAST architecture, per 智东西.
- 追觅科技 confirms it has dropped mass-production plans for its car project, folding the effort into a research arm for technology reserves only, per 虎嗅.
- Data-labeling startup 简智机器人 (GenRobot) closes an A round led by Momenta as capital chases the embodied-AI 'shovel sellers' over robot bodies, per 虎嗅.
- MiniMax pitches real-time AI video at 3-second generation, faster than playback, as a commercial path, per 量子位.
- Otherwise quiet across the Chinese community overnight.
The Backstory
- VAST CEO 宋亚宸, born 1997 and a Johns Hopkins undergrad, worked on AIGC 3D at SenseTime before joining MiniMax as employee 001, then left to found the 3D lab, as recorded by 智东西.
The Kicker
- Nous Research's Hermes agent adds a group-chat mode named Pantheon, giving each bot its own name, avatar and room, after merging about 2,475 PRs from 760-plus contributors, per 智东西.
