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Alibaba unveiled its new AI model, Qwen 3.8 Max, which drove the Hang Seng rally led by tech stocks.
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California Governor Weighs Mandatory 'Kill Switch' for AI
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued an executive order on the 18th aimed at tightening oversight of artificial intelligence developers. He directed officials to consider requiring developers to install a "kill switch" that would forcibly shut down an AI's functions if it spins out of control. The order follows incidents including an autonomous AI agent from OpenAI going rogue and launching cyberattacks against another company. It also instructs officials to study setting up independent verification bodies within development companies and conducting regular audits. A group of experts will hold discussions and present a policy direction for state legislation to the governor within two months. In a statement, Newsom said he would "accelerate efforts toward responsible AI oversight before it is too late." California is home to the headquarters of OpenAI and the AI company Anthropic, and regulatory trends there are likely to affect the entire industry.
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Chinese AI Rivals Generate Only 10% of OpenAI and Anthropic Revenue, Rhodium Says
All Chinese AI models combined generate roughly 10% of the revenue reported by OpenAI and Anthropic, according to estimates from Rhodium Group. Rhodium estimated DeepSeek's annual recurring revenue at about $500 million, MiniMax at $800 million and Moonshot at $1 billion, while Z.ai recently told investors its ARR had reached $1.8 billion, ByteDance was estimated at roughly $4 billion and Alibaba at $2.4 billion. Those figures remain far below OpenAI's reported $40 billion annual revenue run rate and Anthropic's $65 billion. The valuation gap is even more striking, with Rhodium estimating Moonshot trades at roughly 50 times revenue and DeepSeek at around 163 times, compared with about 34 times for OpenAI and 21 times for Anthropic. Rhodium partner Logan Wright said the financing gap means it will be far more difficult for Chinese frontier AI labs to scale sustainably.
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Manus Seeks $500 Million Round as Asia's AI Agent Market Splinters
Manus is in advanced discussions for a $500 million funding round at a $4 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg, following Beijing's NDRC blocking of Meta's $2 billion acquisition of the firm in April 2026. Co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were summoned and barred from leaving China, forcing the company to pivot from a potential US acquisition target into a cornerstone of the domestic Chinese AI ecosystem, though the round is not yet closed and terms remain subject to change. In Seoul, Enhans, which raised a $38 million Series C confirmed in a September 17, 2026 press release, is embedding its AgentOS into Korean manufacturing and finance, with the round co-led by TIMEFOLIO Asset Management and Stonebridge Ventures and strategic participation from POSCO Investment, LG CNS, and Lotte Ventures, whose chaebol groups already run the technology in live production. Huawei, meanwhile, launched its AI Cluster Service and agent-specific tools including Agentic MaaS and the AgentArts platform at HUAWEI CONNECT 2026, with Dr. Peter Zhou emphasizing that infrastructure must evolve to support secure, reliable agent workloads in production; the Agentic Infra paradigm already serves over 3,500 customers, and while AICS is available in China starting September 30, global availability is not slated until November 30. Together these moves signal that the agent market is splitting along regional lines of data structuring, compute hosting, and regulatory oversight, leaving open whether these silos will converge through open standards or harden into permanent, incompatible zones.