Wow — Shanghai's got self-driving taxis now. Want to book one? Dare to?

🍎 Apple Won't Launch AI Siri This Year

🎞️ X to Integrate Grok LLM

💰 Anthropic: AI Model Costs Will Skyrocket

🎨 Moonshot AI Browser Extension Arrives

🎡 Shanghai Issues First Fully Driverless Robotaxi Permits

☕️ CICC Forecast: AI to Boost Economic Growth by ~10%

🧑‍🍳 BOTINKIT Closes 100 Million Yuan Series A+ Round

🔥 Sequoia Capital Leads Dust Round

⛄️ Hand-Rolling a Minecraft Companion Bot

Apple Won't Launch AI Siri This Year

According to Bloomberg, Apple does not plan to release a new Siri powered by Apple Intelligence this year. Instead, the company intends to begin testing the technology in January and ship the official version in iOS 18.4.

At WWDC 2024, Apple previewed several new Siri capabilities. The upgraded assistant will converse more naturally with users and understand context, eliminating the need to repeat information across consecutive requests. Additionally, App Intents will enable deeper integration with third-party apps, and Siri will be able to take actions based on whatever the user is currently viewing on screen.

X to Integrate Grok LLM

X is developing multiple features built on xAI's Grok model, aimed at enriching the experience for X Premium subscribers. These include a Grok side panel that functions like a generative AI chatbot, allowing users to interact with the Grok bot directly on the platform.

X also plans to introduce account summaries and highlighted-text search. When users hover over any X account name, a "More about this account" option will appear, expected to display additional information about that account generated by Grok. When users highlight post content, an "Ask Grok" button will appear, enabling direct AI-powered search via the Grok model.

Independent app researcher Nima Owji confirmed to TechCrunch that these features are not yet publicly available. The development of these new capabilities is intended to boost the appeal of X Premium subscriptions, which represent a significant revenue stream for the platform beyond advertising. According to Appfigures data, X's mobile revenue fell for two consecutive months in May, reaching just $7.6 million.

Anthropic: AI Model Costs Will Skyrocket

In a podcast interview, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei offered projections for future AI training costs. He noted that current models like GPT-4o cost roughly $100 million to train, but models now in development could reach $1 billion. He further predicted that within three years, these costs could escalate to $10 billion or even $100 billion.

Amodei believes that artificial general intelligence (AGI) won't arrive in a single leap but will emerge gradually, with each new model building on its predecessors — much like how children learn.

The report also notes that if AI model compute requirements grow 10x annually, the underlying hardware must become at least 10x more powerful, likely becoming the primary cost driver in AI training. For context, ChatGPT's 2023 training run required more than 30,000 GPUs. OpenAI's CEO has confirmed that GPT-4 cost $100 million to train. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has expressed interest in purchasing 300,000 NVIDIA B200 AI chips, and OpenAI and Microsoft are planning a $100 billion AI data center — all indicators of rapidly escalating investment and costs across the AI sector.

Moonshot AI Browser Extension Arrives

Moonshot AI has officially launched its browser extension, designed to optimize users' web and app experiences. The extension offers two core features: "Ask Pen" for on-demand explanations of selected text, and "Summarizer" for quick full-text summaries and Q&A. It supports both floating window and sidebar modes, making it convenient for sustained dialogue and search while drafting documents.

The extension also includes handy keyboard shortcuts — Command + K on Mac and Alt + K on Windows — for instant access to Moonshot AI.

Shanghai Issues First Fully Driverless Robotaxi Permits

At the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Shanghai issued its first demonstration application permits for driverless intelligent connected vehicles — essentially "fully driverless robotaxi licenses."

SAIC Intelligent Technology (Shanghai), Baidu Intelligent Driving Technology (Shanghai), Shanghai WeRide Technology (AutoX), and Pony.ai Technology (Shanghai) were among the first companies to receive permits.

All vehicles in this demonstration phase are currently free to ride. Taking Pony.ai as an example, users can download the company's app to book a driverless Robotaxi.

To qualify for full commercial operations, these companies must complete at least 5,000 kilometers of demonstration driving per vehicle and demonstrate the safety and reliability of both their vehicle operating systems and passenger services. Following this, regulators will conduct evaluations. Companies that pass will be authorized to operate autonomous vehicles commercially within designated areas.

CICC Forecast: AI to Boost Economic Growth by ~10%

During the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), Huimin Wu, Managing Director at CICC Research Institute, shared her views on how AI will impact China's economy. She described AI as a general-purpose technology and platform that, like electricity and the internet, can rapidly transform daily life. She projected that by 2035, AI could raise China's economic growth approximately 9.8 percentage points above baseline levels — equivalent to roughly 0.8 percentage points of additional annualized growth.

Wu emphasized that AI development in China and globally has already crossed the threshold of technical feasibility and is now entering the stage of economic viability. She identified China's massive market demand as a key driver of AI R&D and application, noting that this large-scale, diverse demand not only stimulates production and innovation but also enables widespread deployment of AI research outcomes, creating a positive feedback loop.

BOTINKIT Closes 100 Million Yuan Series A+ Round

BOTINKIT's completion of a nearly 100 million yuan Series A+ round signals both the potential of AI in the food service industry and market validation of its solutions.

By providing integrated hardware-software AI digital kitchen solutions, BOTINKIT's products enable digital transformation of kitchen operations — improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and addressing labor shortages for restaurants. Its smart cooking robots and intelligent kitchen dispatch systems help standardize dish preparation and ensure consistency, which is critical for food quality control and customer satisfaction. Huashan Capital led the round.

Sequoia Capital Leads Dust Round

Sequoia Capital recently led the Series A funding for French AI startup Dust, which raised $16 million in the round. Despite its relatively short history, Dust focuses on the enterprise market, offering software that connects to AI models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Mistral AI, with integrations into apps like Slack.

Dust's customers use its digital assistants to improve customer service responses, manage sales data, and parse codebases — making it easier for enterprises to deploy large language models and offering customized AI chatbot services. Sequoia Capital had previously invested $5.5 million in Dust's seed round last July.

Dust's latest funding reflects the continued flow of overseas venture capital into French AI. For instance, French model company Mistral AI recently completed a round at a valuation of $6.2 billion, underscoring the sector's active investment momentum.

Hand-Rolling a Minecraft Companion Bot

As AI arrives and multimodal large models can learn from your screen, building your own game companion bot has become a viable DIY project.

Recently, content creator "是花子呀_" used Google Gemini 1.5 Flash to build a personalized companion bot for Minecraft — one that helps build worlds and explore them together.

If you value intelligence above every other human quality, you will create a bad era with your own hands.

— Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist, founder of SSI

Editor: Yuki Design: Ivan

For business partnerships, add on WeChat: Rwkfbcianvd