StepFun open-sources Step 5, DeepSeek eyes robots, Kimi's teenage architect walks

The Number

DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash runs $0.15/M input (cache miss, off-peak) on its API, half the peak rate, per DeepSeek's pricing docs as of 2026-10-15.
StepFun's Step 5 Preview scores 44 on Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index, top-three among open models by that metric, as of 2026-10-15 per Artificial Analysis.
Qwen3.7-flash lists at $0.03/M input on OpenRouter, the cheapest Qwen tier routed there as of 2026-10-15.

StepFun open-sources Step 5 Preview, a 600B-param sparse MoE with 27B active and 1M context, after the model hit second on OpenRouter's weekly token-use board, per 智东西 and its HuggingFace/ModelScope drop.
Kunlun ships Matrix-Game 4.0, a video world-model game it says runs 480p/60fps on a single RTX 5090 under 150ms latency, released open-source, company-stated per 雷峰网.
ByteDance's Doubao assistant closes its screen-automation opt-out with 155 apps refusing GUI control, including WeChat, Taobao, Kimi and DeepSeek, per 极客公园.

Chen Guangyu (Nathan Chen), the 17-year-old first author of the Attention Residuals paper who joined Moonshot at 16 and worked on Kimi K3, announces he is leaving Kimi after under a year, per his X farewell as recorded by 夕小瑶科技说; verify destination independently.
DeepSeek's Liang Wenfeng is approaching several embodied-AI startups about entering robotics, circulating and unconfirmed, framed by 有界UnKnown via 虎嗅 against his leaked AGI roadmap ending in embodiment.
Top white-hat hacker 古河 (Chen Xuebin / Yuki Chen), a repeat MSRC top-ranked researcher, joins Zhipu for security research using GLM, per his X post relayed by 智东西.
Hengdian's film base awards a 235M-yuan AI studio build to a ByteDance subsidiary and Volcano Engine, as long-drama shoots there fell 31% and short-drama 82.5% year-on-year over 14 weeks, per 娱乐资本论 via 虎嗅.
Shanghai AI Lab's Intern-S2 model helped prove the three-dimensional Ghys conjecture with human-machine collaboration, formally verified by a Peking University team, preprint on arXiv, per 雷峰网.

Chen Guangyu's recruiter at Moonshot was Yulun Du, a former MIT PhD and generative-models researcher who bet on hiring a 16-year-old, a detail Chen singled out in his farewell note, as recorded by 夕小瑶科技说.

Tencent quietly launches 绿泡泡, a free short-drama app aimed squarely at ByteDance's Hongguo, per 极客公园.