The Number
- DeepSeek retires deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp, folding both into DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash at the Flash price, per DeepSeek docs as of 2026-09-18.
- Qwen's flagship qwen3.8-max lists at 12 yuan per 1M input tokens, half the qwen3.8-max-prime tier, per Alibaba DashScope pricing as of 2026-09-18.
- The cheapest paid Qwen model on OpenRouter, qwen3.7-flash, runs $0.03/M input, undercutting every paid China-lab id on the board, on OpenRouter as of 2026-09-18.
Top of the Fold
- Kimi ships a desktop Kimi Code for macOS and Windows with K3 built in and three tiers from 99 to 699 yuan/month, splitting coding users off from the Kimi Work client, per 智东西.
- Manus advances new financing at a reported $4B valuation, roughly double its level, seventeen days after relaunch, per 量子位.
- Huawei Cloud says its 灵衢 Ascend 950 compute cluster service is going global with MiniMax and Kingsoft Office named as users, framed as an agentic-cloud push, per 智东西.
Untranslated
- SemiAnalysis's own AI token bill now runs 30% of payroll, about 5B tokens per employee per month, a figure 夕小瑶科技说 uses to argue model vendors are capturing most of the value, per 夕小瑶科技说.
- Leiphone's account of cloud MaaS sales quotas describes reps carrying 10M+ yuan personal targets this year after AI-coding demand spiked, with staff saying revenue may still trail 2025, per 雷峰网.
- 千问办公 helped a National Astronomical Observatories team build a research-grade telescope simulation system in three days for under 1,000 yuan, against a prior three-month, tens-of-thousands-yuan norm, per 雷峰网.
- Zhipu is pitching a $5B compute-and-infra spend with recursive self-improvement at the infra layer, per an investor call write-up, framed as a bet to outrun a 30B-yuan compute-cost war, per 雷峰网.
The Backstory
- Exoskeleton maker Hypershell is raising at a near $4B valuation after roughly 30,000 units in 2025, but its new hip-knee Halo lands months after a DJI-alumni startup crowdfunded a similar rig, complicating its 'industry first' claim, per 雷峰网.
The Kicker
- A Fijian farmer traveled 10,000km to Pinduoduo to learn e-commerce, farming by day and coding by night, per 量子位.
