It's All China AI All The Time

It's All China AI All The Time

Author: Morning Brew July 20, 2026 Duration: 21:10
Alibaba launched Qwen3.8 Max as Moonshot paused Kimi K3 signups amid demand. The Trump administration weighed a slow squeeze on Chinese AI, Hugging Face used China's GLM-5.2 after US guardrails blocked its breach forensics, and Google built a Gemini chip. Alibaba launches a 2.4T parameter Qwen3.8 Max preview that it says rivals frontier AI models and is second only to Fable 5, plans to make it "open-weight soon" (Bloomberg) The Trump administration has reportedly explored sanctions, security warnings, and executive-order requirements since 2025 to build a slow, durable squeeze on Chinese AI models instead of pursuing an outright ban (The Decoder) Ben Thompson argues the market reaction to Kimi and other Chinese models is overblown, since it's compute scarcity — not a real Chinese cost advantage — that's keeping frontier-model prices high (Stratechery) Hugging Face says it used the open-weight GLM-5.2 hosted on its own compute for breach forensics, after US frontier model safety guardrails blocked the requests (The Stack) Sources: Google is developing a specialized server chip, informally dubbed "Frozen v2", that integrates its Gemini AI model blueprint into the silicon, for 2028 (The Information) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

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Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Tech Brew Ride Home
Podcast Episodes
Hey, Want Some Models? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:26
Anthropic shipped Claude Fable and Mythos 5.1 with a 75% cache-price cut, Google countered with Gemini 3.8 Flash, OpenAI teased Astra's public release, a judge spared Google's ad exchange from a sale, and the FBI probed…
An... AI Toothbrush??!! [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:30
Tim Cook sent Apple staff a farewell memo on his last day as CEO, the FTC sued Amazon over $20B in hidden ad surcharges, Starman Optical bought GoPro for $285M, Waymo hit three cities, and Dyson made an AI toothbrush. On…
50% Toward AI Takeover? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:51
OpenClaw shipped 2.0 with shared sessions that aren't a security boundary. OpenAI's ads hit a $1B run rate, outcome-based AI pricing spread from Salesforce to OpenAI, and the Hugging Face postmortems landed, one calling…
Anthropic Is Street Legal Again [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:20
A judge blocked the Pentagon from blacklisting Anthropic, calling the retaliation illegal. OpenAI, Anthropic and 100+ companies warned the AI cyberattack window is closing, Apple TV got pricier again, Stripe walked from…
The Agentic Era [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:25
Nvidia posted $96B in quarterly revenue and guided to 70% growth next year, then agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9B. Trump weighed sweeping chip tariffs, cybersecurity stocks ripped on AI threats, and Instinct raised…
Meta Settles [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:38
Meta agreed to pay up to $16.68B to settle state claims it hooked kids on Facebook and Instagram, with teen time limits attached. Z.ai unmasked Ox Alpha, Amazon killed Mechanical Turk, and Reuters detailed Zuckerberg's a…
New Macs [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:21
Apple refreshed the Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra and gave the Mac mini M6 silicon, at higher prices. OpenAI's Jalapeño chip beat Nvidia on efficiency, Perplexity went fully local, WhatsApp toughened logins, and Ub…
Hugging Face Next? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:26
Hugging Face explored a sale at $13B+, keeping the AI M&A wave rolling. Trump scolded towns that reject data centers while Abbott said the industry dug its own grave, Fable 5 spending plateaued, and Apple cut 200+ jobs.…
(Portfolio Profile) Onix [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:18
In this episode, we explore Onix, a platform that enables experts to train their own AI models to help millions with health, wellness, and personal development. Founders Nicholas Nadeau and David Bennahum discuss how the…
Tokens As The New Currency? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:56
Stripe made the OpenRouter deal official at $7.5B. Unitree's Shanghai debut popped 460% past a $50B market cap, YouTube dangled millions to keep creators off Netflix, Slack launched Slack Code, and Binance turned AI agen…