Singapore Tech News, Features & Reviews

StartLux, a Shanghai-based artificial intelligence organisation, achieved second place in the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology MCP test. Its 27 billion parameter local model surpassed DeepSeek-V4-Flash, a considerably larger model, performing at a level often associated with trillion parameter systems. This outcome suggests a notable capability for smaller AI architectures.

Zhipu AI's GLM-5.3-Flash, previously an anonymous entity known as Ox Alpha, has achieved the highest global AI model call volume. This marks 18 consecutive weeks of Chinese models leading worldwide inference volume. The recent surge saw global AI model traffic reach 113 trillion tokens, a significant weekly increase.

Hugging Face, an organisation known for its open-source artificial intelligence models, has unveiled a new biped robot named Microduck. This device is 25 centimetres tall, weighs 800 grams, and is priced at USD 399. Pre-orders for Microduck commenced on Aug. 27, with shipping anticipated before Christmas 2026.

Zhipu AI, a Chinese artificial intelligence organisation, has launched its GLM-5.3-Flash frontier model, according to reports from Pandaily. This model operates entirely on domestically produced AI chips. It has gained attention across both benchmark and usage rankings, indicating a notable development in China's domestic compute capabilities. One hundred thousand locally made accelerators reportedly support all of its online inference traffic.

Chinese artificial intelligence companies are demonstrating a notable lead over their US counterparts in video generation. This position arises from extensive short video ecosystems, less stringent copyright regulations, and aggressive pricing strategies. Analysts suggest compute capacity alone does not guarantee success in this sector.

Major music publishers, including Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, have initiated a new lawsuit against artificial intelligence firm Anthropic. The complaint, filed in California, accuses Anthropic and its co founders of extensive, unlawful acquisition of copyrighted material. This action marks a significant legal challenge as the AI company reportedly prepares for a large initial public offering.

Xiaomi reported its second-quarter 2026 financial results, indicating a stabilisation after a period of competitive challenges. The technology organisation achieved revenue of approximately USD 15.02 billion. Adjusted net profit reached roughly USD 0.86 billion, with attributable net profit at about USD 1.30 billion, representing a quarterly doubling.

Nvidia is reportedly paying USD 12.9 billion for Hugging Face. This acquisition aims to secure the layer where developers select artificial intelligence models, influencing the open-weights ecosystem's growth and future compute demand. Hugging Face hosts 2.96 million public model repositories. However, 85.6 per cent are downloaded fewer than 200 times, with just 1.5 per cent accounting for 99.2 per cent of all downloads, according to its State of Open Models report.

Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, has introduced a research preview of its "Model Hardware Standard" (MHS). This framework enables artificial intelligence agents to control physical devices. Its intended applications include scientific research and advanced manufacturing, marking a new phase in automated system functionality.

Researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology have engineered a novel robot, designated BeanBot, drawing inspiration from the unpredictable motion of Mexican jumping beans. This device operates without traditional motors, batteries, electronics, or onboard computing. Its movement depends solely on its interaction with its immediate environment, allowing it to hop, roll, flip, or slide in unpredictable ways. This represents a different approach to robotic locomotion.

Xiaomi has publicly introduced three artificial intelligence chips designed for device integration. The company presented these at its Xuanjie briefing. However, Xiaomi has not yet provided a definitive explanation for what constitutes an artificial intelligence phone.

Chinese artificial intelligence firm MiniMax reported a 283 per cent surge in first-half revenue to US$116.6 million, powered by a 700 per cent jump in its enterprise business. This growth, however, falls short of full-year analyst forecasts. Performance indicates strong competition from American and Chinese AI laboratories.