Global AI Models & Regulatory Updates

According to BlockBeats, on June 18, Manus, an agentic AI startup, achieved an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of approximately $100 million by end of 2025, with a total revenue run-rate exceeding $125 million and month-over-month growth surpassing 20%. Meanwhile, early Chinese investors are

According to ChainCatcher, Meta Platforms' acquisition of AI company Manus for approximately $2 billion is facing a reversal after Chinese regulators demanded the deal be terminated. The company's early investors are now planning to repurchase equity at the same $2 billion valuation that Meta

The European Securities and Markets Authority published its 2025 Annual Report detailing a dual regulatory approach that combined expanding oversight of crypto assets, artificial intelligence, and digital resilience with efforts to simplify existing reporting requirements. ESMA Chair Verena Ross

According to Moody's Ratings, on June 18, AI adoption is reshaping Chinese service exporters' competitiveness across technology, information, logistics and travel sectors. Large language models, advanced data analytics, intelligent logistics systems and AI-driven personalization tools enable Chinese

According to Guru Club, China's Ministry of Commerce and seven other departments released implementation guidelines on June 18 to accelerate development in the AI-consumer sector. The guidance calls for faster rollout of next-generation AI-enabled smartphones, computers, and televisions, alongside e

According to a recent exchange on social media, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that Chinese AI models may reach the level of Anthropic's Claude Fable by the first quarter of 2027. A user had asked when models like Zhipu's GLM-5.2 could match Anthropic's standards, noting that GLM-5.2 has narrowed the

According to BlockBeats, on June 18, HIVE Digital announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary BUZZ HPC signed a three-year GPU cloud contract worth $220 million with Bell Canada and Cohere for sovereign AI infrastructure. The deal includes procurement of 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs configured a

According to Beating, Mihoyo's former international president Jin Wenyi has joined Moonshot AI to lead the commercialization of its core product Kimi assistant. Jin joined Mihoyo in 2017 and built the company's overseas publishing, localization operations, and global community ecosystem from

Upon taking office, Dingding's new CEO Chen Yusen announced organizational restructuring to position Dingding and Wukong as "dual engines" for AI transformation, with a focus on making the platforms Agent-friendly infrastructure. The restructuring includes integration of Wukong with AI Agent platform MuleRun, with new leadership assignments across core platform, market, and customer development divisions. MuleRun began commercial operations in mid-May and achieved 300 million CNY annual recurrin

According to Yann LeCun, former Meta chief AI scientist, in recent comments to CNBC, Elon Musk's xAI is a "failure" that will be unable to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic on the frontier of artificial intelligence. LeCun cited the departure of xAI's founding team as a key reason, stating that Musk

DeepSeek launched a web-based image recognition mode on June 18, with the mobile app in beta testing, following the company's finalization of over 50 billion yuan in first-round financing. Testing showed the feature struggled with accuracy, failing to identify founder Liang Wenfeng's photo and

According to Chinanews, DeepSeek officially launched its web version image recognition mode on June 18, with the app version in closed beta. The feature remains in early stages, with limited accuracy; the model struggled to identify DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng in test cases, eventually

China's National Financial Supervision Administration released guidelines on artificial intelligence security and development for the banking and insurance sectors on June 18. The agency encouraged large financial institutions to provide computing power services to smaller peers and supported

China's Financial Supervision and Management Bureau released guidance on safe artificial intelligence development and application for the banking and insurance sectors on June 18. The directive requires boards of directors at financial institutions to establish specialized committees overseeing AI m

According to Guru Club, China's National Financial Supervision and Administration released on June 18 guidelines on the safe development and application of artificial intelligence in the banking and insurance sectors. The directive supports financial institutions in advancing generative AI

SpaceX achieved a market capitalization of approximately $2.52 trillion, briefly surpassing the total cryptocurrency market cap of around $2.19 trillion. The aerospace company's publicly traded stock SPCX reached a valuation of roughly $2.53 trillion following its June 12 IPO. The milestone

According to Nikkei Asia, OpenAI has launched an embedded advertising service in ChatGPT for Japanese users as of June 18. Advertisements will be displayed within the conversation interface based on user interests. Japanese ad agencies including subsidiaries of Dentsu and Hakuhodo will handle ad

According to Beating, Brazil's Rio de Janeiro IplanRIO recently admitted that its Rio-3.5-Open-397B large language model was not self-developed as claimed, but instead derived from merging open-source projects Nex-N2 Pro and Alibaba's Qwen 3.5. The official statement acknowledged uploading an

According to Rest of World, U.S. developers and startups are rapidly adopting Chinese AI models such as DeepSeek, Minimax, and Kimi to reduce operating expenses. DeepSeek's token usage share on the Vercel platform jumped from below 1% to 17% in May, reflecting strong adoption driven by the models' c

According to Bloomberg, Israeli AI and cybersecurity company Dream closed a $260 million funding round today (June 18), with a post-money valuation of approximately $3 billion, up nearly threefold from $1 billion in February 2025. The round was led by Bicycle Capital and Group 11, with