The Number
- DeepSeek-flash now bills $0.15/M input on a cache miss off-peak, half the peak rate, after V4-Flash was retired into V4.1-Flash, per DeepSeek's pricing docs (2026-09-18).
- qwen3.7-flash sits at $0.03/M input on OpenRouter, the cheapest paid China-lab prompt tier listed, per OpenRouter (2026-09-18).
- 地瓜机器人 closed a $400M Series C led by Mirae Asset, a club deal roughly five months after its April round, per GeekPark (2026-09-17).
Top of the Fold
- Manus is closing a $500M round at a reported $4B valuation, double its last mark and the highest for a Chinese agent startup, its first raise since scrapping the Meta deal, per Bloomberg via 凤凰网科技 (2026-09-17).
- Moonshot shipped a Kimi Code desktop app for macOS and Windows running Kimi K3, aimed at coding users on plans from 99 to 699 yuan a month, per 智东西 (2026-09-18).
- Huawei laid out an "AI landing seven-step method" and DIMAK engineering system at its Connect conference, alongside 157 transformation case studies, its pitch for getting agents into enterprise workflows, per 智东西 (2026-09-18).
Untranslated
- Cloud sales teams at BAT are being handed MaaS quotas of over 10M yuan per head this year, up from tens of thousands to low millions last year, and one salesperson says the gap may leave 2026 revenue below 2025, per 雷峰网 (2026-09-18).
- 智谱 is spending a reported $5B and building recursive self-improvement at the infra layer to out-run a 30-billion compute-cost war, framed on a call as buying a technology-generation lead, as reported by 雷峰网 (2026-09-18); treat the figure as reported, not confirmed.
- Qwen's office agent helped a National Astronomical Observatory team build a large-telescope simulation system in three days for under 1,000 yuan, against the usual three months and tens of thousands, per 雷峰网 (2026-09-18).
- SemiAnalysis says its own AI token spend now runs at 30% of payroll, about 5B tokens per employee a month, a number 夕小瑶科技说 uses to argue model vendors are capturing the value; verify the figure independently, as recorded by 夕小瑶科技说 (2026-09-18).
The Backstory
- Plaud's AI recorder card has now passed 1M units and 2.5M users as of September, and a wave of founders is now crowding onto the back of the phone, from magnetic e-paper cases to passive ink-screen shells that 极稚科技 says sold 140,000 units with eighty percent going overseas, per 极客公园 (2026-09-18).
The Kicker
- A Fijian farmer flew ten thousand kilometers to Pinduoduo to learn the trade, farming by day and coding by night, per 量子位 (2026-09-18).
