8:00 36Kr Update | Starbucks China denies canceling the 14-month pay package to reduce costs; The official version of DeepSeek V4 Pro has been launched; Lin Junyang, known as "the youngest P10 at Alibaba", has started his own business, and his new company is valued at 2 billion US dollars.

Today's Hotspot Guide

International Energy Agency: The continuous closure of the Strait of Hormuz impacts the global oil market

Anthropic will embed invisible watermarks in AI-generated text

C919 completes its first international commercial route flight

Samsung introduces the Claude model into semiconductor R&D

Duan Yongping significantly increases his position in Pop Mart

TOP 3 Major News

Starbucks China Denies Abolishing 14th-Month Salary to Cut Costs

Recently, rumors have emerged that Starbucks China has started layoffs and taken measures to reduce labor costs, including abolishing the 14th-month salary, revising employee contracts, converting most employees except store managers to part-time contracts, and canceling part of the paid leave. In this regard, after multiple verifications from various sources by reporters, Starbucks China has not abolished the 14th-month salary, revised employee contracts or canceled part of the paid leave. (21st Century Business Herald)

The official version of DeepSeek V4 Pro is launched

Blue Whale News August 13: DeepSeek updated the API documentation on its official website in the early morning of the 13th, the model version corresponding to DeepSeek V4 Pro is updated to DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813, and developers can now call it through API, which means that both the Flash and Pro official versions of DeepSeek V4 have been fully released. The documentation shows that the official V4 Pro still supports 1M context and maximum 384K output, with the price of ¥3 per million input Tokens, ¥6 per million output Tokens, and ¥0.025 per million input Tokens for cache hits. According to previous news, DeepSeek launched the official V4 Flash version at the end of July, with significantly enhanced Agent capabilities, which quickly topped the global Token call volume ranking. (Blue Whale News)

Lin Junyang Founded AI Firm Pragmatic Tech, Valued at USD 2 Billion in Angel Round Financing

On August 12, Lin Junyang, former technical lead of Qwen, announced that he has established a new company named Pragmatic Tech in Shanghai, whose research direction focuses on next-generation intelligent agents that span both the digital world and the physical world. He also disclosed that this round of financing is co-led by Gaorong Ventures and HSG, with support from Tencent and Shanghai Future Industry Fund. Reporters learned from people familiar with the matter that the "this round of financing" mentioned by Lin Junyang refers to the angel round of Pragmatic Tech, with a valuation of 2 billion US dollars. According to previous reports, Lin Junyang, born in 1993, was once the youngest P10-level technical expert at Alibaba, and is collectively called one of the "Four Outstanding Foundation Model Talents" together with Tang Jie, founder of Zhipu AI, Yang Zhilin, founder of Moonshot AI (Kimi), and Yao Shunyu, chief AI scientist of Tencent. In March this year, Lin Junyang announced his resignation from Alibaba to embark on his entrepreneurial path. (Securities Times, Yicai Global)

AI Cutting-edge Frontiers

SpaceX AI: Launches Grok 4.6

SpaceX AI officially released the newly upgraded flagship AI model Grok 4.6 on August 12. According to SpaceX AI, the pricing of GROK 4.6 is set at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. (CLS)

Google says Gemini's monthly active users have exceeded 1 billion

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai posted on social media platform X that more than 1 billion people are using Gemini every month at present. "This is our fastest-growing product in history, and also our 14th product that has reached 1 billion users," he said. (Sina Finance)

Anthropic to Embed Invisible Watermarks in AI-Generated Text

U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic plans to roll out an invisible watermark technology to identify AI-generated text content. Anthropic stated that starting from models released on August 2 and thereafter, the company will embed watermarks that are imperceptible to humans and can only be recognized by machines directly in the text generated by Claude AI. The watermark is invisible to the human naked eye and will not degrade the text quality or readability. Even if the text is copied and pasted, the watermark will be retained, and some light editing operations cannot remove the watermark. (However, large-scale rewriting or translation operations will most likely damage the watermark identifier.) (Sina Finance)

Former OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil is seeking a valuation of at least $750 million for his newly founded AI science startup

Former OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil is seeking a valuation of at least $750 million for his newly founded AI science startup, and plans to raise $150 million in this round of financing. According to three people familiar with the matter, relevant details have not been finalized and are still subject to adjustment. Weil himself did not respond to the request for comment. (Sina Finance)

Big Corporations / Major News

Liang Wenfeng took the largest off-line private placement share of Unitree Robotics, and his net wealth has increased by more than 130 billion yuan this year

Following the new share subscription of Changxin Technology, the private equity fund under Liang Wenfeng has subscribed for new shares of Unitree Robotics again and taken the largest share among private placement institutions. According to reports, a total of 2,839 products under 135 private equity firms received off-line allotment from Unitree Robotics, with the total allotment amount reaching 4.299 billion yuan. Among them, 198 products under Liang Wenfeng's Ningbo High-Flyer Quantitative Investment and Zhejiang Jiuzhang Asset were allotted, with a total of 258,200 allotted shares and a corresponding amount of about 38.9374 million yuan, which ranks the first among private equity institutions in terms of the number of allotment objects. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows that as of July 15, Liang Wenfeng's net worth reached 36 billion US dollars (about 244 billion yuan), ranking 63rd in the world; his wealth has increased by 19.9 billion US dollars (about 134.2 billion yuan) within the year, with a growth rate exceeding 120%. (National Business Daily)

Duan Yongping Significantly Increased His Stake in Pop Mart

On August 12, according to the equity disclosure of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, H&H International Investment, LLC managed by Duan Yongping raised its shareholding ratio in Pop Mart's H shares from 5.55% to 7.70% on August 6. (JIEMIAN News) 

Dan Bin's US stock positions have undergone a major reshuffle: reduced holdings in Google and increased holdings in AI hardware

The latest US stock position data of Dan Bin has been released. Judging from the position adjustment moves, compared with the first quarter, the US stock positions of Oriental Harbour's overseas fund have seen a thorough reshuffle. In terms of specific operations, the Oriental Harbour overseas fund liquidated 6 targets including Apple, the 3x Long Nasdaq 100 ETF, Tesla, and CIRCLE INTERNET GROUP INC. At the same time, it newly purchased 7 targets including Intel, SanDisk, AMD, Marvell Technology, Arm Holdings plc ADR, Broadcom, and Lumentum, all of which are companies related to AI hardware. From the overall position situation, the largest heavyweight stock in Oriental Harbour's US stock portfolio is still Google-C, accounting for about 23% of its portfolio, with a position reduction compared to the first quarter. (Shanghai Securities News)

Unitree Technology's A-share "circle of friends" exposed

Recently, the highly anticipated "first humanoid robot stock" Unitree Technology has officially launched online and offline subscription on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board. This "Six Little Dragons" enterprise originating from Hangzhou only took 73 days from application acceptance to the listing committee review meeting, setting the fastest IPO review record of the year. The prospectus shows that the top ten shareholders of Unitree Technology before this issuance hold a total of 71.50% of the shares. Among them, Wang Xingxing, Chairman of Unitree Technology, directly holds 23.82% of the company's shares, making him the largest shareholder of Unitree Technology; the second largest shareholder is Shanghai Yuyi, the equity incentive shareholding platform of Unitree Technology, which holds 10.94% of the shares. 

C919 Completes Its First International Commercial Route Flight

At 16:58 on August 12, Air China flight CA723 landed smoothly at the New Chinggis Khaan International Airport in Mongolia. The flight was operated by China's domestically developed C919 large airliner. This is the first time the C919 has flown a normalized regular international passenger route since it was put into commercial operation, marking that the international development of China's domestically produced large airliners has entered a new stage. The C919 large airliner is China's first self-developed jet trunk airliner with independent intellectual property rights in accordance with internationally accepted airworthiness standards, and completed its first commercial flight on May 28, 2023. Data from COMAC shows that as of August 10, the C919 airliners operated by Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines have opened a total of 57 routes, navigated to 25 cities, and safely transported more than 7.5 million passengers. (CCTV News)

The People's Bank of China releases China's Monetary Policy Implementation Report for the Second Quarter of 2026

36Kr has learned that the People's Bank of China has released China's Monetary Policy Implementation Report for the Second Quarter of 2026. It is proposed in the report that practical and effective incremental policies will be planned and introduced in a timely manner, counter-cyclical adjustment will be intensified, efforts will be stepped up to expand domestic demand and optimize supply, so as to promote the sustained, innovative, high-quality and sound development of the economy. We will unswervingly follow the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics, further deepen financial reform and high-level opening-up to the outside world, accelerate the building of a strong financial country, improve the central bank system, establish a scientific and prudent monetary policy system and a comprehensive macro-prudential management system, and smooth the transmission mechanism of monetary policy.

South Korea will require new investors of single leveraged ETFs to complete simulated trading exercises

South Korea will require new investors of single leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to conduct simulated trading exercises, further tightening the regulatory provisions for such high-risk products that exacerbate market volatility. The Financial Services Commission of South Korea has announced that new investors purchasing single leveraged ETFs must complete at least five days of simulated trading, with a total duration of no less than five hours. The new regulation will take effect on August 19, and apply to relevant investments inside and outside South Korea. (Sina Finance)

Samsung Introduces Claude Model in Semiconductor R&D, Cutting the Design Verification Process That Previously Took One Month to Only Two Days

According to South Korean media reports, Samsung Electronics has confirmed the introduction of Anthropic's large language model Claude, which has greatly shortened the cycle of part of semiconductor design and verification. Only about three months after Claude Code, the AI programming tool of Claude, was first opened to software developers, the report shows that significant efficiency improvement has been demonstrated on the front line of development. In the verification work of customer custom SoC, the task originally expected to take more than one month was completed in only two days. Internal evaluation shows that the work efficiency has increased by about 15 times. (CLS)

IEA: Sustained Closure of the Strait of Hormuz Shocks Global Oil Market

On local time August 12, the Paris-headquartered International Energy Agency released its latest monthly oil market report, noting that global oil supply and demand have been significantly impacted by the sustained closure of the Strait of Hormuz, high fuel prices and the evolving situation in the Middle East. The International Energy Agency forecasts that global oil demand will decline by 1.6 million barrels per day in 2026, with the decline 510,000 barrels per day larger than the prediction from last month; global oil supply is expected to drop by 4.3 million barrels per day. The report shows that global oil supply rose to 101.5 million barrels per day in July, but it is still 6.3 million barrels per day lower than the same period last year, among which 8.3 million barrels per day of production in the Gulf region remains in a suspended state. Global observable oil inventories plummeted by 69 million barrels in July, with a cumulative decline of 410 million barrels since the war broke out. (CCTV News)

The world's largest sovereign wealth fund reaps a record $184 billion profit and discloses its stake in SpaceX for the first time

The world's largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, released its performance report on Wednesday: Boosted by the rally of Asian technology stocks, the fund recorded a 9.4% rate of return, and its profit in the first half of the year hit a new high, exceeding 184 billion U.S. dollars. The fund currently has an asset size of about 2.34 trillion U.S. dollars, with investments covering more than 50 countries and more than 7,000 enterprises, holding about 1.5% of the world's publicly traded floating shares. The fund disclosed for the first time in its half-year report that it holds a 0.05% stake in SpaceX, with a valuation slightly higher than 1.2 billion U.S. dollars. (Sina Finance)

Institution says YMTC's market share ranks third globally for the first time

On August 12, market research firm Counterpoint released data showing that in the NAND flash market in the second quarter of 2026, in terms of shipment volume, the shares of Samsung, SK Hynix, and YMTC were 25%, 22%, and 14% respectively, marking the first time that YMTC's share has entered the top three. However, in terms of revenue, YMTC ranks fifth in the industry, behind Micron and Kioxia. The reason is that its product portfolio is concentrated in consumer-grade applications, and the proportion of high-unit-price data center enterprise-level solid-state drives is relatively low. (Yicai)

Innolight and Eoptolink Respond to NVIDIA Investment Rumors

Recently, there have been market rumors claiming that NVIDIA plans to invest 2 billion US dollars to acquire a strategic stake in Innolight, the leading optical module enterprise, with the funds earmarked for R&D of new-generation optical modules, global production capacity expansion, and the construction of a new factory in Thailand. In addition, NVIDIA intends to become a cornerstone investor for Eoptolink's Hong Kong stock IPO. On August 12, relevant personnel contacted by phone at Innolight responded that the company has no knowledge of the market rumors, and all relevant information shall be subject to the company's official announcements. Meanwhile, Eoptolink stated in response that the company is not in a position to comment on the rumors, and for matters related to the company's H shares, investors shall refer to the official announcements. (Financial News)

The number of people who completed marriage registration across China in the first half of the year exceeded 6.5 million

On August 12, the Ministry of Civil Affairs released the civil affairs statistics for the second quarter of 2026. The figures show that 3.275 million couples (equivalent to 6.55 million individuals) registered for marriage nationwide in the first half of this year, down by 264,000 couples from the same period last year; 1.383 million couples registered for divorce, up by 52,000 couples year-on-year. In recent years, China has been vigorously advocating marriage and childbearing at the appropriate age, and building and improving a nationwide support system for marriage and childbirth. Notably, the convenience level of marriage registration has been greatly improved. Since May 10, 2025, the newly revised Regulations on Marriage Registration has been implemented, the geographical restrictions on marriage registration have been abolished, new couples no longer need to provide their household registration booklets to obtain marriage certificates, and marriage registration services can be processed anywhere across the country. (National Business Daily)

Three major US stock indexes closed mixed, while most popular Chinese concept stocks declined

36Kr learned that as of the close on August 12, the three major US stock indexes closed mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.04%, the Nasdaq rose 0.54%, and the S&P 500 Index rose 0.26%. Most large-cap tech stocks posted losses: Meta dropped over 3%, Microsoft fell more than 2%, Amazon and Tesla declined over 1%, Apple and Google saw slight drops, while Nvidia and Intel rose over 3%. Most popular Chinese concept stocks went down across the board: NetEase, Alibaba, Tencent Music and Bilibili fell more than 2%, Pinduoduo, Baidu, NIO, Li Auto and XPeng Inc. dropped over 1%, and JD.com fell nearly 1%.

Consumer electronics industry hit by new price hike notice: Microsoft reportedly raises Windows 11 licensing fees

The consumer electronics industry has already faced rising costs caused by semiconductor shortages, and the software sector also appears to show unfavorable signs. It is learned that Microsoft has raised the Windows 11 licensing fee by 7% to 10%, a noticeably larger increase than in previous years, and the higher-end the CPU, the higher the licensing fee. ASUS and Acer plan to raise prices by around 5% later this year, and the average price of ASUS products has increased by 30% compared with Q4 2025. (CLS)

IPO in Progress

Mianbi Intelligence Launches IPO

36Kr learned from the disclosure on the official website of China Securities Regulatory Commission that Beijing Mianbi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. completed the tutoring filing registration at the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau on August 11, 2026, and plans to carry out initial public offering and listing, with CITIC Securities as the tutoring securities firm. The tutoring filing report shows that the company has no controlling shareholder, and its largest shareholder is Beijing Qingyu Qihang Technology Center (Limited Partnership), with a shareholding ratio of 16.45%.

Investment and Financing

River AI, founded by xAI co-founder, raises $1.1 billion with Nvidia and AMD participating in the investment

On August 11, River AI, the startup of Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of xAI, announced that it has completed a $1.1 billion financing round led by General Catalyst and AMP PBC, with follow-on investments from Nvidia and AMD Ventures. Other investors include Y Combinator and Temasek. (Jiemian News)

"Xio Edge Computing" Completes Hundreds of Millions of Yuan in Series A Financing

36Kr has learned that server CPU manufacturer "Xio Edge Computing" has closed a Series A financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, and simultaneously moved its headquarters to Jiangbei New Area, Nanjing. This round of financing is jointly led by Mingzhe Capital, Phenomenon Capital and other VC institutions. Multiple industrial capitals and investment institutions including CSC Capital and GigaDevice have participated in the investment for the first time, while existing shareholders continue to increase their capital contribution. The raised funds will be invested in three major directions: accelerating the tape-out verification of the BlueDot V1 chip and launching small-batch trial commercial application by the end of 2026; launching the R&D of the second-generation CPU product; strengthening the adaptation and compatibility certification of software and hardware ecosystems, and improving the server CPU development ecosystem.

"IO-AI Tech completes financing of several hundred million yuan"

36Kr has learned that IO-AI Tech, an enterprise focusing on robotics and embodied intelligence data infrastructure, announced that it has completed a financing round worth hundreds of millions of yuan. This round of financing is jointly invested by Shunwei Capital, Pine Venture Capital and Shenzhen Venture Capital Group, and has received strategic investment from leading robot ontology enterprises. The funds raised in this round will be mainly used in three aspects: continuously increasing investment in core product R&D, building a diversified R&D team, accelerating global market expansion, and improving the large-scale application capability of robots.

Beijing Infinite Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd. Completed Nearly 100 Million Yuan Series A Financing

36Kr has learned that Beijing Infinite Aerospace Technology Co., Ltd. recently announced the completion of its nearly 100 million yuan Series A financing. This round of financing is led by Dingfeng Venture Capital, with Yunding Capital and Taiya Investment as follow-on investors, while existing shareholders Shendan Venture Capital, Songhe Venture Capital and Shouren Co-Creation continue to increase their investment. The funds raised in this round will be mainly used for the first flight verification of the "Space Bus" series of Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTV), subsequent model development, engineering iteration and construction of large-scale manufacturing capacity, to accelerate the product layout of the "Space Bus" series, and promote the company's transition from the technical verification stage to the commercial operation stage.

Financial Reports of Large Corporations

Tencent: Revenue of the second quarter reached 204.785 billion yuan, up 11% year on year

36Kr learned that Tencent released its financial report for the second quarter of 2026. The financial report shows that Tencent's revenue in the second quarter was 204.785 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 11%. Among the results, game revenue rose 11% year on year, domestic game revenue increased 17%, and international game revenue grew 4% at constant exchange rates. Marketing services revenue increased 22% year on year. Revenue from fintech and corporate services posted a 9% year-on-year growth, as cloud services benefited from incremental contributions from AI, expansion of international business and rising demand for general cloud services. Non-IFRS operating profit reached 75.64 billion yuan, up 9% year on year. Excluding the impact of new AI products, Non-IFRS operating profit rose 19% year on year to 86.1 billion yuan. Capital expenditure stood at 52.78 billion yuan, up 176% year on year.

Arawana: Net profit of 2.294 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, up 30.69% year on year

36Kr learned from the announcement of Arawana that its operating revenue in the first half of 2026 reached 122.852 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 6.20%. The net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 2.294 billion yuan, a year-on-year rise of 30.69%. The net profit excluding non-recurring gains and losses attributable to shareholders of the listed company stood at 1.481 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 6.61%. The company plans not to distribute cash dividends, issue bonus shares, or convert capital reserve into share capital.

Super Micro Computer's net sales in the fourth quarter reached 11.1 billion US dollars, nearly doubling year on year

Super Micro Computer announced on August 11 that its net sales in the fourth quarter stood at 11.1 billion US dollars, versus 5.8 billion US dollars in the same period a year earlier. Its non-GAAP diluted net earnings per common share were 1.70 US dollars, compared with 0.41 US dollars in the same period of the previous year. The net sales for the full fiscal year hit 39.1 billion US dollars, while the figure for the prior fiscal year was 22 billion US dollars. Super Micro Computer estimates that its net sales in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 will be between 14.5 billion US dollars and 15.5 billion US dollars. (Jiemian News)

Cool Products

Google releases three new smartphones equipped with the Google Tensor G6 chip

On August 12, Google officially released three new phones including Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL. Google stated that these models have achieved major upgrades in camera performance, enhanced durability, and are equipped with the Google Tensor G6 chip that can run the latest Gemini Nano model. (Jiemian News)

Honor Launches "the World's First Robot Phone" with a Starting Price of 9,999 Yuan

On August 12, Honor officially released Honor Robot Phone, "the world's first robot phone". It is reported that this device is equipped with the industry's first titanium alloy gimbal architecture and Honor's self-developed imaging chip Honor Light Master H1. The 12GB+512GB version is priced at 9,999 yuan, the 16GB+1TB version at 12,999 yuan. Pre-sales kick off on August 12, and the official sale will start on August 18. (Beijing Business Today)

Compiled｜Li Qi