Manus breaks from Meta and goes independent. Can it get its groove back?

On 12 August, Manus published an open letter to users announcing it would soon resume operating as an independent company and keep serving its millions of users worldwide. As part of resuming independence and complying with regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions, data some users generated on or after Meta’s acquisition day of 29 December 2025 … Read more

DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng puts down the price butcher’s knife

DeepSeek, once nicknamed the large-model “price butcher”, is sheathing the knife. At 00:00 on 17 August, its new API prices took effect. Founder Liang Wenfeng is walking back the rock-bottom pricing that built DeepSeek’s brand. (Source: Sohu Tech) The adjustment covers V4 Pro and V4 Flash and introduces peak-valley pricing for the V4 series. Beijing … Read more

US Commerce chief warns Apple off ChangXin Memory, exposing a supply-chain fault line

PChome reported on 17 August that Apple is grappling with a memory shortage that has pushed up production costs and created supply-chain risk. To relieve the crisis Apple wants to bring in Chinese supply and has already been testing memory from ChangXin Memory, also known as CXMT. CXMT’s memory passed Apple’s validation, then Washington stepped … Read more

ByteDance stops hiding on AI: Doubao takes a 12 per cent cut, bans distillation, bets on 5 trillion parameters

Doubao, ByteDance’s AI assistant, has started charging a commission. The same hotel room on the same settlement system costs an 8 per cent platform fee from the Douyin feed but 12 per cent when the order jumps from the Doubao chat box. The four-percentage-point gap has a single variable: the traffic came from an AI … Read more

ModelBest files for STAR Market listing as edge-LLM front-runner

Beijing ModelBest Technology has registered for IPO tutoring with China’s securities regulator, making it one of the first edge large-language-model developers to test a new STAR Market listing route for AI companies without scale revenue. The filing, dated 12 August 2026, names CITIC Securities as sponsor; the company completed its joint-stock reform on 5 August, … Read more

DeepSeek says it will raise API prices substantially, warns users to plan ahead

On 6 August, DeepSeek said it plans to raise the pricing of its API services overall in the near term, with a substantial increase expected, and advised users to arrange their usage sensibly. Specifics will follow an official notice. DeepSeek currently runs a peak-and-off-peak schedule. On weekdays, peak hours, Beijing time 09:00 to 12:00 and … Read more