Today's East and West AI news and trends relevant to builders and allocators. Lands every weekday at 5 am Silicon Valley time and 8 am Wall Street time.
Issue 2 · Wed 21 Oct 2026
2 pages: English and 中文
The day in one headline
DeepSeek and Google Open Their AI Stacks as China Queues $35bn for Nvidia Chips
East: DeepSeek open sources DeepInfer; ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent order $35bn+ of Nvidia cards.
West: Google open sources TorchTPU; Anthropic's draft IPO filing shows $16.3bn H1 revenue.
Opinion: Software is going free; scarce chips and big bills are where the risk sits.
Top 5 China and East
DeepSeek (深度求索) open sources DeepInfer, its inference engine, for Nvidia and Huawei Ascend. CONFIRMED. Sina Finance, 20 Oct
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent order 3m+ Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 cards worth $35bn+; Nvidia may fill only 5% to 10%. REPORTED. Reuters, 20 Oct
Neolix (新石器) closes a nearly $400m Series E for driverless delivery vans. COMPANY CLAIM. IT Home, 20 Oct
Today AI (此间无限), from a former Doubao PC head, has raised $200m in total; Tencent and Ant invest. COMPANY CLAIM. Zhidx, 21 Oct
Former PBOC governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川): plan now for financial risk if AI bets fail. CONFIRMED. The Paper, 20 Oct
Top 5 US and West
Google open sources TorchTPU, built with Meta, to run PyTorch natively on TPUs. CONFIRMED. Google Cloud, 20 Oct
Anthropic's draft IPO filing: H1 revenue $16.3bn, net loss $80.7bn ($72bn non-cash), about $450bn of cloud commitments. REPORTED. WSJ report, 20 Oct
DHS orders DeepSeek, and products built on it, out of federal civilian agency systems. CONFIRMED. Federal Register, 20 Oct
ASI raises $325m at a $3bn valuation for AI that forecasts grid and air traffic disruptions. COMPANY CLAIM. Reuters, 20 Oct
Otter.ai takes $320m of non-dilutive capital from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund. COMPANY CLAIM. TechCrunch, 20 Oct
Commandment 3: Respect Market Cycles
Every boom has a turn; size each bet so you survive it.
Why today: Anthropic carries about $450bn of cloud commitments; Zhou Xiaochuan urges plans for failed AI bets.
Money moves today (USD as disclosed)
Neolix (China): about $400m, Series E.
ASI: $325m, Series C, at a $3bn valuation.
Otter.ai: $320m, Customer Value Fund.
Implications for AI builders and allocators (opinion)
Builders: DeepInfer and TorchTPU make inference software free and chip portable; spend on product.
Allocators: Nvidia may fill 5% to 10% of China's orders; size bets to survive a turn.
Both: US agencies are removing DeepSeek based products; keep a fallback model for US government work.
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