Apple Price Hike, DeepSeek's Fastest Star, and More Tech News

Apple May Raise iPhone Prices by $100

According to tech leaker Yogesh Brar, Apple is planning to increase the price of all iPhones—including the upcoming models expected in September—by $100. The report suggests that the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the foldable iPhone Ultra could be announced on September 8th. Apple has already raised prices on Macs, iPads, and some home products, but so far, iPhone prices in the US haven't budged. If this leak is accurate, that's about to change.

DeepSeek Harness: Open-Source Agent Framework Goes Viral

DeepSeek released the developer preview of DeepSeek Harness v0.1, an open-source agent harness built on Cordis. It's designed so that models, tools, skills, sessions, sandboxes, storage, loops, scheduling, and UI are all composed as plugins. Developers can replace or extend any component without modifying the core source code. The preview offers four preset modes: Standard (full tools like file editing, shell, web search), PTC (TypeScript-based multi-step tool calls), Minimal (only shell and file editing for benchmarking), and Creative (experiment with Cordis plugins in memory). Within an hour of launch, the GitHub repo surpassed 24,000 stars, making it the fastest-starred project in GitHub history. By the morning of August 14th, it had over 40,000 stars.

Google Drops Gemini 3.7 Flash

Google has released Gemini 3.7 Flash, its latest model aimed at coding and AI agent workflows. It arrives just three weeks after Gemini 3.6 Flash, with improvements in software engineering, web development, professional document understanding, and enterprise automation. According to Google's benchmarks, the new model outperforms its predecessor on FrontierCode, DeepSWE, WebDev Arena, GDP.pdf, and AutomationBench. The company says it can generate more complete web pages with fewer prompts. Gemini 3.7 Flash is available in AI Studio, the Gemini API, Android Studio, Google Antigravity, and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. During the intro period, pricing is $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens.

Anthropic Investors Bet on $2 Trillion IPO

Financial Times reports that about six existing investors in Anthropic believe the Claude maker could achieve a record-breaking IPO valuation this fall. This is based on the company's revenue growth, not an official target. Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC on June 1st. After a $65 billion funding round in May, its post-money valuation was $965 billion, with annualized revenue exceeding $47 billion. Investors project annualized revenue could hit $100–120 billion by the end of 2026, implying a valuation of 17–20 times revenue.

Ilya's Startup Developing Real-Time Learning Engine

Rumors are swirling that Safe Superintelligence (SSI), founded by Ilya Sutskever, is working on a small-scale inference engine that can learn in real time. The account 'strawberry guy' claims the system uses meta-learning to achieve performance comparable to larger training runs. The approach is said to involve test-time training (TTT), where the model performs gradient descent and updates weights while processing tasks, retaining new experiences rather than relying on frozen weights and context windows. However, SSI hasn't confirmed any of this, and there are no reproducible benchmarks or technical papers yet, so treat it as an unverified product lead.

BYD Surpasses 3.52 Million Vehicles with Driver Assistance

BYD announced that its vehicles equipped with driver assistance systems have exceeded 3.52 million units. The 'God's Eye' system generates over 220 million kilometers of driving data daily. In July, BYD sold 187,670 such vehicles. The company participated in drafting China's mandatory national standard for combined driver assistance systems (GB 47955—2026), which takes effect January 1, 2027. BYD is among the first automakers to get certified. This data shows that 'God's Eye' is now in a million-vehicle fleet, but it's important to note that this is data generated by the system, not fully autonomous driving.

US Smartphone Sales Decline, Low-End Market Hit Hard

Counterpoint data shows US smartphone sales dropped in Q2 2026 year-over-year. While the top four vendors saw limited declines, smaller brands shrank more significantly, consolidating the market toward giants. Low-end segments are suffering the most, with entry-level and prepaid channels seeing notable drops. Rising memory costs and cautious consumer spending are squeezing budget phones, leading some manufacturers to reposition their devices at higher price points. Samsung and Motorola gained share during the downturn, proving that strong carrier relationships and full price-tier coverage help weather volatility. For smaller brands, the problem isn't just quarterly sales—it's that low-end profits and shelf space are shrinking simultaneously.

Zhang Xue Motorcycle Gets Red China Investment

According to the Science and Technology Board Daily, Zhang Xue Motorcycle has received a sole investment from Sequoia China, though terms weren't disclosed. The company reported revenue of 670 million yuan last year and projects 2–2.5 billion yuan this year. Monthly deliveries have exceeded 10,000 units. The partnership will focus on corporate governance, talent development, industrial resources, and global expansion.

CXMT Market Cap Exceeds Tencent's

As of the close on August 13, memory chip maker CXMT's market cap reached 3.54 trillion yuan, surpassing Tencent's Hong Kong market cap of 4 trillion HKD (about 3.44 trillion yuan). This makes CXMT the most valuable company in the A+H share market. The ranking depends on closing prices and exchange rates, so it could flip again.

Didi's Q2 Orders Rise 13.2%

Didi reported Q2 2026 results: core platform orders grew 13.2% year-over-year to 5.052 billion, averaging over 55 million daily. China mobility orders rose 8.1% to 3.648 billion, marking 14 consecutive quarters of growth. International orders surged 29% to 1.403 billion, with over 15 million daily orders. Brazil's 99 Food, after one year, now covers over 100 cities. In late July, 99's flash delivery service launched in São Paulo with over 3,000 merchants including Carrefour. Didi also said its Robotaxi R2, co-developed with GAC Aion, was delivered in January and is undergoing regular testing in Beijing and Guangzhou. CEO Cheng Wei said the company will strengthen driver support and continue investing in AI and autonomous driving.

X Open-Sources 'For You' Recommendation Algorithm

X has open-sourced its 'For You' feed recommendation system under an Apache 2.0 license, according to TechCrunch. The codebase includes candidate retrieval, filtering, ranking, and signal weights, and is about 10–15 times larger than the version released in January. VP Keith Coleman said developers can run the ranker and Phoenix scoring system outside the company and submit changes via GitHub. Some Grok-based systems for predicting abusive content are excluded to prevent malicious users from circumventing rules. X is also testing an 'Under the Hood' transparency tool that lets users with at least 10 posts in the past month download a JSON report showing visibility labels applied to their accounts or posts. The pilot is initially available to accounts registered for over a year, with wider rollout later.

JD.com's First Revenue Decline in Over a Decade

JD.com's Q2 revenue fell 2.9% year-over-year to 346.4 billion yuan, its first quarterly decline in over a decade. Analysts expected 345 billion yuan, so the company slightly beat estimates. Net profit rose, but shares fell about 2% in premarket trading. Reuters attributes the decline to weak Chinese consumer confidence, with job concerns and a sluggish property market weighing on spending. JD is also pushing into Europe, planning to acquire Ceconomy, the parent of MediaMarkt and Saturn, to gain its online channels, technology, and over 1,000 stores. The deal faces EU state aid review, with a preliminary decision due by October 2, 2026.

Lenovo's Record Quarter, ISG Becomes Profit Engine

Lenovo reported Q1 FY2026/27 revenue of $26.943 billion, up 43% year-over-year, a record high. Adjusted net profit (non-HKFRS) was $1.075 billion, up 176%, with an adjusted margin of 4.0%. Under HKFRS, including warrant fair value changes, the company reported a net loss of $609 million. The Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) saw revenue jump 98% to $8.510 billion, with operating profit of $777 million, swinging from a loss to a 9.1% margin. AI server order backlog grew 157% sequentially to $54 billion, with both enterprise/SMB and cloud service provider revenue nearly doubling. The Intelligent Devices Group (IDG) revenue was $17.106 billion, up 27%, with global PC market share at 24.2%. Solutions and Services Group (SSG) revenue rose 28% to $2.884 billion, with a 24.2% operating margin. AI-related revenue grew 60% to $9.3 billion, accounting for 35% of total revenue.

YC CEO Urges Founders to 'Tokenmaxxing'

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan is advising startup founders not to worry too much about AI token costs. In a podcast, he suggested a 'Tokenmaxxing' strategy—spend heavily on AI agents to gain a competitive edge. He argues that loading 800,000 to 1 million tokens to run AI agents can give founders a glimpse of AI capabilities that won't be mainstream until 2028. The cost could be $50,000 to $100,000 a year, but he thinks it's worth it for CEOs. He also recommends 'skillifying' tasks: once an AI agent completes a task, turn the process into a reusable Markdown instruction file, which he calls 'employees that execute perfectly.' Not everyone agrees. Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga said on X that the era of chasing token consumption is ending as companies focus on cost efficiency. Cognition CEO Scott Wu also criticized using token counts to measure engineer performance, urging a focus on actual output.

Xiaomi HyperOS 4 Beta Recruitment Opens

Xiaomi has opened beta recruitment for HyperOS 4, with the first batch of devices receiving updates starting August 14, followed by more on August 27 and September 17. The new system introduces 'load precision' and 'memory preload' features. The former reduces redundant instructions across 168 high-frequency scenarios, cutting total instructions by 14.4% in tests. The latter records app startup memory usage, pre-allocates resources, and reduces fragmentation, improving available memory by 27.2% on a Xiaomi 15 Pro after 8 hours of continuous use. Xiaomi has also migrated its first-party apps to a new runtime environment, with the photo app scanning 10,000 photos 90% faster and using 28% less CPU and 32% less memory. The new 'Super Xiao Ai 2.0' assistant, powered by Xiaomi MiMo, can display task status on the Super Island and use a 'Inspiration Ball' for voice commands with screen pointing. Its 'Expert Mode' can call system apps like Photos, Notes, Recorder, and Calendar, and integrate with third-party services like Alipay and Amap to find photos, summarize pickup codes, organize recording reminders, and schedule tasks. The updated Xiaomi Interconnect Service also allows Macs and third-party Windows PCs to use this mode. Some Expert Mode features will be rolled out via OTA updates.

ChatGPT Gets 'Computer History' and Ultrafast Preview

ChatGPT now has a 'Computer History' feature that records which apps and websites you use on desktop, allowing for more personalized interactions and reducing the need to repeat background information. Additionally, OpenAI is previewing 'Ultrafast', a service layer that runs GPT-5.6 Sol at up to 14 times faster than standard, with output throughput up to 750 tokens per second. This is powered by Cerebras' low-latency inference hardware. Use cases include incident response, customer service, financial market analysis, and e-commerce. Ultrafast is initially available to a limited set of API customers, with broader access as Cerebras capacity increases.

Alipay's 'Abao' AI Assistant Testing on HarmonyOS

Alipay has started rolling out its AI assistant 'Abao' to HarmonyOS users. After updating to version 12.12.16, users can swipe right on the home page to access it, though the rollout is in batches. Abao can use natural language to call Alipay services like booking cleaning, hailing taxis, finding nearby deals, and checking social security info. Actions involving authorization or payment still require user confirmation. Alipay also said Abao will work with Huawei's on-device assistant 'Xiaoyi' in the future, but didn't give a timeline.

DJI Osmo 360 II: 8K/60fps, $460 Starting Price

DJI has launched the Osmo 360 II panoramic camera, featuring a square high-dynamic-range sensor for a 1-inch panoramic image field and native 8K/60fps recording. It offers 14.5 stops of dynamic range, AI Night Scene 2.0, 1.2-megapixel panoramas, 16K time-lapse, and 8K/120fps slow motion, all in 10-bit color. New features include AI subject tracking, NFC one-touch connection, and simultaneous front-back shooting. The DJI Mimo app can mark highlights based on laughter and cheers, and DJI Studio supports multi-angle preview editing with a plugin for DaVinci Resolve. The camera weighs 183 grams, has 105GB of internal storage, and user-replaceable lenses. It's waterproof to 10 meters without a case and 50 meters with one. It can record 8K/30fps for 100 minutes and charges to 80% in 22 minutes. It supports DJI Mic 3 and Mic Mini 2 via OsmoAudio, and batteries are shared with Osmo Action. The standard kit costs $460, and the creator kit with three batteries, a charging case, and a 1.2m selfie stick costs $560.

WorkBuddy Upgrades Knowledge Base

Tencent's WorkBuddy has updated to version 5.3.11, turning its 'Knowledge Base' into a collaborative space for humans and AI. It now supports HTML and Markdown files in addition to Word, Excel, and PPT. HTML files can be edited simultaneously by users, team members, and AI, with changes shown in real time, and can be published as public web pages. Markdown documents allow multi-person commenting and inline edits, with AI-generated revisions appearing as suggestions that users must accept before they are applied. HTML pages can also connect to CSV tables in the knowledge base, with two-way sync for additions, modifications, and deletions. CSV files can now store files as well as text.

Apple in Talks to Pay Publishers for Real-Time News for Siri

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is negotiating multi-year deals with publishers to get real-time news and information for the AI-powered Siri expected later this year. Payments could be based on usage, and Apple's overall budget for such content deals might reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Apple already works with publishers through Apple News, but feeding news directly into a generative AI system for retrieval, summarization, and answering raises new licensing, attribution, and correction issues. The talks are about more than training data; they're about letting Siri access continuously updated content. This move also addresses past incidents where Apple's AI news summaries produced factual errors. If deals are signed, publishers would become part of Siri's real-time knowledge chain, but Apple will still need to clarify how content is cited, how errors are corrected, and whether publishers can see how their stories are used.

DeepSeek and Peking University Introduce Cordis

Researchers from Peking University and DeepSeek-AI have published a paper on Cordis, a formal framework for dynamic component hot-replacement. It aims to enable plugin systems, dev tools, and future self-evolving agent runtimes to update components without restarting the entire system. The paper argues that current process/container restart methods lose caches, connections, and computational state. The model breaks component composition into temporal composability (reversing side effects when a component is removed) and spatial composability (declaring context dependencies). Cordis tracks reversible operations and their inverses, and decides whether to activate, deactivate, or keep components based on dependency context changes. The implementation includes a core library, declarative component loader, incremental config coordination, and hot module replacement. If module loading fails, the system rolls back the transaction to avoid partial states. The paper uses the Koishi plugin ecosystem as a case study, which has over 4,000 community plugins and uses Cordis v3; the paper describes v4 with the same model. The authors note this is only observational validation in a single TypeScript ecosystem, and quantifiable overhead or efficiency gains haven't been measured yet.

WorkBuddy Coffee Festival

Tencent WorkBuddy is hosting a coffee festival from August 13 to 16, partnering with Peet's Coffee, COSTA, 代数学家, Something For, and 山池咖啡. Users can enter the WorkBuddy mini-program activity zone, complete tasks like AI conversations, summoning experts, setting up automations, sharing the event, or trying the desktop version, to earn AI usage points and lottery chances. Each user can get up to 12 lottery draws and win at most one coffee voucher, with redemption varying by brand. Some stores will have co-branded cup sleeves, limited drinks, and interactive activities.

Eddy Cue on 'Ted Lasso' Season 5

Apple's Eddy Cue said at the premiere of 'Ted Lasso' season 4 that he hopes to continue with a fifth season if the quality of the new episodes is good enough. He noted that the characters and world still have stories to tell. This is notable because season 3 was seen as a conclusion, and season 4 opens a new chapter. Cue didn't give a formal order or set a viewership threshold, but he made it clear that the platform is open to more, provided the current season holds up.

AI Documentary Recreates Young Billy Joel

Director Adam Ripp has created a 20-minute short film, '1971: Billy Joel's Lost Interview', using a rediscovered 1971 recording of a 22-year-old Billy Joel talking about homelessness, moving to LA, and his next record. Instead of typical interview footage, the film uses a generative system trained on authorized period photos to make a young Billy Joel speak the original audio. The production emphasizes that only licensed materials were used and includes a disclaimer, but Billy Joel himself wasn't involved or endorsed it. The film premieres September 25 at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame Film Festival. It preserves a rare recording but also raises questions about documentary authenticity: the voice is real, but the facial performance is generated.

Netflix Developing 'Lincoln Lawyer' Spinoff with Cobie Smulders

Netflix is developing a spinoff of 'The Lincoln Lawyer' starring Cobie Smulders as Artemisia 'Emi' Finch, Mickey Haller's half-sister who appeared at the end of season 4 and will continue in season 5. The spinoff is in early development and hasn't been greenlit. It would shift focus from Mickey's criminal defense to Emi's cases and career, while maintaining the family connection. The main series' fifth season will be its last, so introducing Emi first and then potentially spinning her off is a way to extend the legal drama universe without copying the original lead.