AI Industry Development & Policy Dynamics

According to Calcalist, Israel-based AI startup AI21 Labs announced on May 18 that it will reduce its workforce from approximately 180 people to around 70 as part of a strategic restructuring focused on Maestro, its AI agent management platform. The company will discontinue selling standalone

According to Bloomberg, Baidu reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of 32.1 billion yuan (US$4.72 billion), surpassing analysts' 31.4 billion yuan estimate. Cloud, AI applications, and robotaxi revenue rose 49% to 13.6 billion yuan, while online advertising revenue declined to 12.6 billion yuan

According to Bloomberg, Apple plans to launch a standalone Siri chat app in iOS 27 with enhanced privacy controls. Users will be able to set conversation retention options for 30 days, 1 year, or indefinitely, similar to iMessage settings. The new Siri will utilize Apple Foundation Models

Baidu reported AI application revenue of CNY 25 billion in the first quarter of 2026, remaining roughly flat compared to the same period last year.

According to Beating, Perplexity is internally testing a dedicated tab called Personal CFO, aiming to build an independent financial workstation separate from general search. The panel includes three core modules: portfolio management, transaction history, and debt tracking. The dashboard

According to an OpenAI spokesperson, Singapore has ranked among OpenAI's top five markets globally for Codex adoption as of late April, based on weekly active users and blended token usage engagement. Codex reached 4 million weekly active users in late April, up from 3 million two weeks

Deputy Minister Sheng Qiuping announced on May 18 that China's Ministry of Commerce is preparing to introduce a comprehensive "AI+ Consumer" policy framework aligned with recent AI terminal intelligence standards. The ministry will support the transformation of approximately 110,000 gas stations

According to ChainCatcher, B.AI has officially launched on Solana, expanding its multi-chain ecosystem to eight networks: TRON, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Solana. Users can now log in via MetaMask or Phantom wallets and deposit SOL, USDT, USDC, or WBTC to activate

Real Vision co-founder Raoul Pal says the artificial intelligence competition between the U.S. and China is unlike any geopolitical rivalry in history, a race not for territory or weapons, but for the substratum of intelligence itself. Key Takeaways: Real Vision’s Raoul Pal called the U.S.-Chi

According to Fortune, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on May 18 nearly missed joining a delegation of U.S. business leaders heading to Beijing for a high-level China summit. Huang was initially not included simply because he failed to call and request an invitation from President Trump. However, Trump

According to NTT Data, on May 18, the company signed a definitive agreement to acquire WinWire, a Santa Clara-based Microsoft partner specializing in Azure AI, data engineering, and cloud-native development. The deal will add more than 1,000 Azure engineers and AI specialists to NTT Data's Microsoft

According to CoinDesk, Elliptic, a blockchain analysis company, has secured $120 million in funding from Nasdaq and Deutsche Bank to build an AI-powered compliance system. The investment comes as CEO Simone Maini highlighted an emerging risk in crypto security: AI-driven financial activity is

According to South China Morning Post, Alibaba and Tencent are investing billions of dollars to develop AI agents as the next generation of online gateways in China. The companies are competing to replace traditional click-and-scroll interfaces with conversational AI that can understand user

According to ARK's official announcement on May 16, ARK has entered a strategic partnership with Tencent to integrate decentralized AI infrastructure with enterprise-grade cloud computing capabilities. The collaboration aims to combine Tencent's cloud services and AI processing expertise with ARK's

According to Foresight News, Sygnum has completed a pilot program for AI agent-driven digital asset trading where agents execute real-time multi-step transactions on blockchain mainnets based on plain-text customer instructions. The agents independently plan and prepare each transaction step,

According to Jin10, on May 18 at the Tsinghua PBC Global Finance Forum, Zhou Xiaochuan, former Deputy Governor of the People's Bank of China and former IMF Deputy Director, called for the development of appropriate policies to guide AI adoption. Addressing both productivity gains and potential

According to Hana Securities and Citrini Research, Nvidia is expected to become the largest user of low-power DRAM (LPDDR) in 2027, driven by surging AI server demand. Nvidia's LPDDR capacity is estimated to rise from 3.144 billion GB in 2026 to 6.041 billion GB in 2027, exceeding Apple and

Figure AI’s three F.03 humanoid robots have been streaming 24/7 package sorting on X and YouTube since 5/13, and have now been running continuously for more than 100 hours. They are currently in “Day 5” and still live. According to a report by Interesting Engineering, the three robots rotate on a relay schedule, completing 101,391 packages sorted within the first 81 hours. The entire process is driven by Figure’s proprietary Helix-02 visual language action (VLA) model, with no human intervention