
At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, held July 17-20 across "three districts and four venues" with more than 1,100 exhibitors, one phrase recurred across vendor booths and keynotes: the "token factory".
Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI said it welcomes competition from the world's top model developers after Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested his in-training 2-trillion-parameter model could "possibly surpass Kimi." The company also disclosed that roughly 70% of its business-to-business revenue now comes from API services, underscoring the growing weight of enterprise customers in its commercialization strategy.
China is considering tighter export controls on artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies amid intensifying competition with the US in frontier AI. The proposed measures, reported by Financial Times, would also target overseas acquisitions of advanced technology startups and could appear in the next revision of Beijing's export control catalogue.
Academia Sinica has warned that the rapid spread of AI could create broader social risks if people lack the basic knowledge needed to judge whether AI-generated information is true. As Taiwan's highest academic institution, it is preparing an AI policy proposal to help inform policymaking, according to Academia Sinica president Chien-Jen Chen.
Microsoft is evaluating Moonshot AI's open-source Kimi K3 model for some Copilot functions as it looks for lower-cost alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic systems. According to The Information, the software company has already started adding Kimi K3 to Azure while its engineering teams assess whether the model can be used in Copilot.
Zeiss, the exclusive supplier of ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) optical systems, says the two companies operate as though they were one business. The comment comes as ASML's results for the second quarter of 2026 beat expectations, with the lithography equipment maker lifting its full-year outlook again. Zeiss Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology (SMT) President and CEO Frank Rohmund said the strong ASML report is good news for Zeiss as well, underscoring a partnership that has become deeply intertwined.

