Flash News

TREE NEWS update: China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) held a meeting on October 19 on ‘AI plus drug regulation,’ chaired by party secretary and commissioner Huang Guo. The agency said AI is penetrating the entire drug R&D, production, distribution and use chain, and pledged to set rules, stabilize expectations and create a regulation environment that encourages innovation. It will draft a special plan to support breakthroughs in key tracks and move review services earlier to the source of innovation.

TREE NEWS update: SpaceX will report third-quarter 2026 financial results after the U.S. market close on Oct. 20, with a call at 4:30 p.m. ET, its second quarterly report since its June 2026 IPO. Wall Street expects revenue of about $12.7 billion to $12.9 billion, up from $7.81 billion in the second quarter. Investors will focus on AI infrastructure revenue, Starlink growth and heavy capital spending.

TREE NEWS reports: Baidu Dazi reached 9.77 million monthly active users in September, ranking second among typical office AI agents. WorkBuddy led the list with 32.353 million MAU. Baidu Dazi posted a quarter-on-quarter gain of 1,567.5%, the fastest growth on the ranking.

TREE NEWS update: Former People’s Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan said on Oct. 20 that massive capital flows into artificial intelligence and related infrastructure could trigger financial turmoil and even a crisis if a portion of those investments fail. Speaking at the 2026 Bund Summit roundtable on AI and productivity, Zhou called for research and contingency plans, including policy tools to support the economy and rescue some financial institutions.

TREE NEWS update: Former People’s Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan said on Oct. 20 that with huge sums flowing into AI and related infrastructure, some of those investments will fail and could trigger financial turmoil or a crisis. Speaking at the 2026 Bund Summit, he called for research and contingency plans, including policy tools to support the economy and bail out some financial institutions.

TREE NEWS update: China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is drafting policies to accelerate the deep integration of artificial intelligence into manufacturing, the State Council Information Office said at a press conference on October 20. The ministry said it supports companies in building high-quality industrial datasets around core processes and developing advanced, applicable vertical large models and various specialized industrial models.

TREE NEWS update: Elon Musk said he will give one share of his SpaceX stock to each of the roughly 70 million children in the United States next year, worth just over $10 billion at the Oct. 19 closing price of $147.96. He framed the pledge alongside a broader push toward universal basic income, a direction also taken by OpenAI’s Sam Altman through World’s WLD token distributions and by Anthropic, which placed 5% of its shares into a public benefit fund.

TREE NEWS update: Tencent announced that Yuanbao Search is now open to external users through Tencent Cloud as of today. The search engine, built for large models and agents, integrates public web resources with Tencent content and applies AI across indexing, understanding and retrieval. It has built an index of hundreds of billions of entries and handles hundreds of millions of daily calls, supporting over 50 core businesses including WorkBuddy, ima, Tencent Financial Technology and Tencent Video.

TREE NEWS update: Seoul-based data center infrastructure company Elice Inc. fell 32% on its trading debut, after dropping as much as 38%, marking the worst first-day performance of any large South Korean IPO on record. The company raised 201 billion won ($151 million) in its offering, priced at the top of its guidance range, with the retail tranche 400 times oversubscribed. The slump reflects investor concern over whether AI growth can justify the sector’s heavy spending.

TREE NEWS update: The U.S. government has instructed federal agencies to stop using DeepSeek and other Chinese AI products over concerns that sensitive data could be transferred, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Oct. 20. Spokeswoman Mao Ning said Beijing opposes the broadening of national security concepts and the politicization of technology and trade issues, and will firmly protect the lawful rights of Chinese companies.

TREE NEWS reports: Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol recorded about 138.5 million transactions on the Base blockchain by the end of Q3 2026, up from 58,800 in Q3 2025. 15. The surge comes as crypto networks and payment teams build infrastructure for AI agents to pay for services on-chain, with Pharos Network outlining an Agent Native roadmap that targets end-to-end agent workflows by 2028.

TREE NEWS update: A Google executive pushed back on European concerns that the United States is dominating artificial intelligence, arguing against the view that the continent is falling behind in the field. The remarks address a widening debate over AI leadership between the US and Europe. No further details were provided.

TREE NEWS update: The US has barred DeepSeek from civilian federal agency IT systems, extending restrictions already in place at defense and security agencies. Officials cited concerns that the Chinese AI model could expose federal information to China. The ban applies to civilian agencies’ information technology systems.

TREE NEWS update: The National Data Labeling Pilot Su-Wan City Alliance was established in Nanjing, Jiangsu, on the sidelines of the 2026 Physical AI and World Model Conference, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Ten cities in the Yangtze River Delta will jointly develop the data-labeling industry to support regional artificial intelligence innovation.

TREE NEWS update: Chinese autonomous delivery vehicle maker Neolix raised $400 million in a Series E round led by Boyu Capital, with new investors including Alibaba Group’s AEF NextGen Fund, Monolith Management, Granite Asia Capital and Temasek-backed Vertex. Existing shareholders Stone Venture and CITIC Capital also participated. The round brings Neolix’s cumulative fundraising to more than $1.4 billion; the company did not disclose a valuation and said it was the largest autonomous driving funding round in China this year.

TREE NEWS update: MiniMax released its M3.1 Flash model on Monday evening, claiming a 3x increase in inference speed and a 70% reduction in cost. Citi said the model strengthens MiniMax’s competitive position and could accelerate its B2B monetization across developer and enterprise ecosystems. The launch underscores a shift in Chinese AI competition toward end-to-end agent workflows and inference cost efficiency.

TREE NEWS reports: PEARL broke above $2 to trade at $2.01, up more than 5% in 24 hours and 82.2% over the past month, with a market capitalization of about $702 million. Coinbase previously said it would add Pearl (PEARL) to its listing roadmap. Pearl is a standalone public chain launched in April 2026 that bills itself as an “AI version of Bitcoin,” using GPUs to run large-model matrix computations so miners provide verifiable AI compute alongside block production; total token supply is about 2.1 billion.

TREE NEWS reports: OpenAI is accelerating a funding round of about $30 billion that could value the company at more than $1.4 trillion, with the company aiming to close the round before rival Anthropic’s expected mid-November IPO. The financing has not been formally completed and terms remain uncertain.

TREE NEWS reports: OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments for a roughly $30 billion funding round before rival Anthropic’s expected mid-November IPO, a pace that could push the ChatGPT developer’s valuation above $1.4 trillion. SoftBank Group, MGX and other existing OpenAI investors are in talks to participate, with the tight timeline partly reflecting OpenAI’s wish to get ahead of Anthropic as both labs draw from similar investor pools.

TREE NEWS update: Waymo plans to use a newly obtained $5 billion loan to expand its robotaxi fleet from 4,000 vehicles to 20,000 by the end of next year, targeting 8,000 by this year-end. The company operates in 15 U.S. cities and plans to expand to Toronto, San Diego, Tampa and San Antonio.