Five things that happened in tech worth knowing. Two or three lines each, link to the source.
The largest open-weight model ever built comes out of China
Moonshot AI launched Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model, the largest open source AI model released so far. In blind tests on Arena, developers preferred it over GPT-5.6 Sol and Fable 5 for front-end coding. Full weights land on July 27, priced around $12 per million tokens, close to Anthropic's mid-tier models.
Apple sues OpenAI over stolen trade secrets
Apple has taken OpenAI to federal court in California, accusing it of stealing trade secrets to build its first consumer hardware device. In the filing, Apple claims OpenAI's hardware chief, a former Apple vice president, asked job candidates to bring Apple parts to interviews for show-and-tell sessions, and that another former employee stole a company laptop. The lawsuit comes two years after the deal that brought ChatGPT into iOS, and now threatens to derail OpenAI's own consumer device plans.
China turns on the world's first law on AI agents
Since July 15, China has enforced the world's first regulation dedicated specifically to AI agents, the Cyberspace Administration of China's Implementation Opinions. The rules define agents as systems capable of perceiving, remembering, deciding, and acting on their own, and set a three-tier authorization framework scaled to how serious the consequences of their actions can be. Anyone deploying agents in sensitive sectors like healthcare, transport, and public safety must register with regulators and pass compliance testing.
Intel ships the first chips on the world's most advanced lithography
Intel is the first company to ship high-volume logic chips made with ASML's High-NA EUV lithography, the most advanced manufacturing technology ever put into real production. It applies to select layers of Panther Lake processors on the Intel 18A node, with yields now matching those of standard EUV lithography. It is the first solid sign that a technology costing hundreds of millions of dollars per machine is moving from the lab into actual production.
ZTE launches a smartphone built around an AI agent
ZTE unveiled the Nubia NaviX Ultra at WAIC in Shanghai, a smartphone built around ByteDance's Doubao AI agent instead of around traditional apps. A dedicated button activates the agent, which completes tasks across multiple apps with minimal user input. The first 30,000 units, sold at 3,499 yuan, sold out within hours and now resell for double that on the secondhand market.
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