China will spend $1.4 Trillion on AI

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Monday. From chatbots to intelligent toys…AI is booming in China.

Excerpts from the BBC article:

China is embracing AI in its bid to become a tech superpower by 2030.

Money is pouring into AI businesses seeking more capital, fuelling domestic competition. There are more than 4,500 firms developing and selling AI, schools in the capital Beijing are introducing AI courses for primary and secondary students later this year, and universities have increased the number of places available for students studying AI.

Beijing plans to invest 10tn Chinese yuan ($1.4tn; £1tn) in the next 15 years as it competes with Washington to gain the edge in advanced tech.

Here’s what you should know:

• Meet MAI-1: Microsoft Readies New AI Model to Compete With Google, OpenAI

  Why is Microsoft creating a new model from scratch when it’s already a big investor in OpenAI and in the French startup Mistral? The tech corporation might be hedging its bets, given the regulatory scrutiny its current AI deals are undergoing.

• US lawmakers have already introduced hundreds of AI bills in 2025

  Just over two months into 2025, the number of pending AI bills in the U.S. has grown to 781, according to an online tracking tool. The tool, maintained by consulting firm MultiState, shows that the number of pending U.S. bills pertaining to AI now exceeds the total number of AI bills proposed in all of 2024 (743). In 2023, state and federal lawmakers proposed fewer than 200 AI-related bills.

• Sony is experimenting with AI-powered PlayStation characters

  Sony is working on a prototype AI-powered version of at least one its PlayStation game characters. An anonymous tipster has shared an internal video from Sony’s PlayStation group with The Verge that demonstrates an AI-powered version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West.

• Foxconn Builds FoxBrain, Its Own AI Model

  The world’s largest contract electronics maker, Foxconn, said Monday it has built its own large language model with reasoning capabilities, developed in-house and trained in four weeks. Initially designed for internal use within the company, the artificial-intelligence model, called FoxBrain, is capable of data analysis, mathematics, reasoning and code generation, the company said.

• FIS Launches Treasury GPT, a Pioneering AI-based Product Support Tool for the Treasury Industry

  FIS’ Treasury GPT, an AI-powered product support tool, is the first large language learning model dedicated to FIS Treasury Management solutions and one of the first for the treasury industry as a whole.

• Utah Leaders Collaborate with NVIDIA to Advance Tech Talent Development

  “AI will continue to grow in importance, affecting every sector of Utah’s economy,” said Spencer Cox, governor of Utah. “We need to prepare our students and faculty for this revolution. Working with NVIDIA is an ideal path to help ensure that Utah is positioned for AI growth in the near and long term.”

The numbers:

• CoreWeave strikes $12 Billion contract with OpenAI ahead of IPO

• ServiceNow paying $2.85 Billion to buy Moveworks

  This is the largest acquisition ever by ServiceNow, a $175 billion company that's spending big to keep pace in the AI age.

• 9 US AI startups have raised $100 Million or more in 2025

Thought starters:

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says AI models "are getting commoditized"

  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that he believes that "the models are getting commoditized" and pointed out that "OpenAI is not a model company, it's a product company that happens to have fantastic models at this point."

• Stanford Medicine researchers use AI to find another Ozempic?

  A Stanford Medicine study taps artificial intelligence to find a naturally occurring molecule called a peptide that suppressed appetite and led to weight loss in mice and pigs.

• The Quest for A.I. ‘Scientific Superintelligence’

  An ambitious start-up embodies new optimism that artificial intelligence can turbocharge scientific discovery.

• The original Manus video from X (AI agents)

  Translated by Grok:

  Today, my screen was flooded with Manus. By setting up different agents (workflows) that are constantly called by the LLM, they then execute all sorts of work tasks. In essence, it’s still a Frankenstein stitched together by one person, but it’s indeed done very beautifully.

  For most ordinary people, finding a suitable agent to work with in the vast agent workshop is no small challenge. Manus has effectively solved this problem. Previously, my workflow with Deepseek + Doubao/Kimi seems like it could now be replaced by Manus. Let’s try integrating it into an actual production environment.

  ps. Currently, for code output in production environments, it’s still Claude + Trae

  Attached link: http://Manus.im 

  As shown in the video: What I’m researching more is still using Agents to assist with mobile-end tasks, such as social media matrices, or data analysis for wallets, exchanges, and browsers…………

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

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