An unidentified free model called Ox Alpha appeared on OpenRouter and quickly drew massive usage from developers who couldn't determine its origin, sparking days of speculation about which lab built it. Z.ai revealed the model was actually its own GLM-5.3-Flash, running entirely on Chinese chips, and priced at 15 cents per million input tokens and 50 cents per million output tokens, with a launch discount cutting that in half through September 9.
venturebeat.com
· 2026-08-27
The Justice Department seized domains tied to two tools, QTRouter and QScan, that a Chinese hacking group called QTFY used to route attacks through hijacked IoT devices and commercial proxy services. Prosecutors say the network, allegedly linked to Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company and used by China's Ministry of State Security and PLA, enabled breaches at NASA, the Senate, the Federal Reserve, HHS, NIH, and the DOJ itself since at least 2018.
wired.com
· 2026-08-26
New spending data from payments firm Ramp, covering 70,000 US companies, shows Anthropic's top-tier model Fable 5 accounts for just 11 percent of total spending on the company's AI tools. Businesses are increasingly reserving expensive frontier models for complex tasks while routing routine work to cheaper options, including Anthropic's own older models and open-weight offerings from Chinese competitors.
futurism.com
· 2026-08-25
A daily tech digest covers a wave of regulatory and political pushback: both US parties are souring on AI data centers ahead of midterms, Dutch regulators fined Uber nearly $1 billion for automatically deactivating drivers without human review, and TikTok agreed to pay $400 million to settle a US case over collecting children's data. Separately, New Zealand is moving to ban under-16s from social media and Chinese humanoid robots reportedly broke Usain Bolt's 100-meter record at a robotics competition.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-08-24
Alibaba is issuing new shares to raise approximately $10.20 billion, with proceeds earmarked for further investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure and technology. The move comes as the company continues to pour capital into AI development amid intense competition among Chinese and global tech giants.
wsj.com
· 2026-08-24
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