China ties export bans to EU listings | Kimi K3 at $2.3 a million tokens | Liang pauses DeepSeek's $71B round

Your morning brief on Chinese technology.

Bottom Line Up Front

China's Foreign Ministry defended export bans on dual-use goods, with spokesperson Lin Jian saying on July 27 that they answer the EU's listing and sanctioning of Chinese enterprises rather than any single country. Moonshot AI priced Kimi K3 at a blended $2.3 per million tokens, which Huxiu called a record for a Chinese model but a temporary window rather than durable pricing power. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng told investors the lab will open-source its strongest models, in leaked meeting notes that prompted him to pause a funding round valuing DeepSeek at $71 billion.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on July 27 that the bans answer what he called the erroneous EU practice of listing and sanctioning Chinese enterprises, not any specific country. Lin was responding to the Commerce Ministry listing CTD covered on July 24th, which barred exporters from supplying dual-use items, meaning goods with both civilian and military uses, to 14 EU entities. That listing was retaliation for the EU's 21st Russia sanctions package, which named 14 mainland Chinese and Hong Kong companies. The listed entities include German arms and vehicle maker Rheinmetall, Polish electronics company Vigo Photonics and Italian electric motor maker Lafert Group. European Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho said the bloc is analyzing the measures and will seek clarification from its Chinese counterparts to understand what is at stake, per Reuters.

Read at Yicaistate media ↗·Read at Xinhuastate media ↗·Read at Euronext ↗

AI developer Moonshot prices Kimi K3 at a blended $2.30 per million tokens

Moonshot AI's published rates for Kimi K3, the open-source model CTD covered on July 17th, are 20 yuan (about $3) per million input tokens on a cache miss, 2 yuan (about 30 cents) on a cache hit and 100 yuan (about $15) per million output tokens. Goldman Sachs put the blended rate — those prices weighted by how developers actually use the model— at about $2.30 per million tokens, a high for a Chinese model. Writing on Huxiu, the columnist behind the WeChat account Langchao Budian called that a temporary pricing window rather than durable pricing power, since a customer can repoint an application to a rival in about 10 minutes. Moonshot enterprise business head Huang Zhenxin said open-source models and Chinese large language models should not be labeled low-price, and that a model at the leading edge of capability can carry commercial pricing.

Read at Huxiu ↗·Read at Tencent News ↗

DeepSeek's Liang Wenfeng tells investors the lab's strongest models stay open

Notes from a roughly four-hour DeepSeek investor meeting circulated without authorization on July 23, in which founder Liang Wenfeng said the company will open-source its models including its most capable. The pledge answers the question created by DeepSeek's turn to outside capital: a month after closing its first funding round, it opened talks on a second at a $71 billion pre-money valuation and began preparing a mainland IPO, targeting a 2027 listing. Open weights cost nothing at DeepSeek's chosen margin, Liang argued, because the company aims for a return of about six times, a 10-month payback, rather than a hundred times. He has reportedly paused the new round over the leak and told the team to reassess its information disclosure and investor communication procedures.

Read at InfoQ China ↗

CHIPS & SEMICONDUCTORS

Hefei state capital holds 36.79% of DRAM maker CXMT as the memory company lists in Shanghai

CXMT opened at 49.5 yuan (about $7.30) on July 27, up 471.59% from the 8.66 yuan (about $1.30) price at which it sold shares in its initial public offering. The debut came on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-focused STAR Market. CXMT is China's largest producer of DRAM, the working memory that phones, personal computers and servers use to hold data in active use. Hefei municipal state capital holds about 36.79% of CXMT, worth more than 1.21 trillion yuan (about $180 billion) at the opening price, with Anhui provincial investment vehicles taking the state total to about 45.45%. Counting the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase II and city investment vehicles from Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Qingdao, more than 10 provincial and municipal state investors hold direct or indirect stakes.

Read at Huxiu ↗

III

ROBOTICS & AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS

BOCOM International expects wheeled and special-purpose robots to earn revenue before bipedal humanoids

Warehouse and factory work, not full-size two-legged machines, will drive the first real commercialization of embodied AI, BOCOM International said in a Securities Market Weekly analysis published July 25. Handling, loading and quality-inspection tasks have clear boundaries and controlled environments, and their returns can be calculated from labor savings, so wheeled dual-arm and special-purpose robots could reach customers sooner. The Bank of Communications investment banking arm expects the second half of 2026 to be the test. Vice Minister Ke Jixin of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on July 16 that humanoid output passed 40,000 units in the first half of 2026, against about 20,000 for all of 2025, with more than 100,000 expected this year. Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoids in 2025 at a gross margin above 60%.

Read at Huxiu ↗·Read at NBD ↗

Momenta puts driverless delivery vans into commercial service in Suzhou

Momenta, a Chinese autonomous driving developer supplying driver assistance systems to global automakers, said on July 27 that its Robovan vehicles are running express and overnight parcel routes in Suzhou's Xiangcheng district. The vans use Momenta's in-house R7 world model, an AI system that predicts how a scene will change rather than matching camera input against a stored high-definition map. The vans join more than 33,000 driverless delivery vehicles operating in China at the end of 2025. Cainiao-backed Zelos held a 52.3% share of that market in the first quarter of 2026 and Neolix 36.2%. People familiar with the matter told 21st Century Business Herald on July 24 that the Suzhou vans had already run for several months before the announcement.

Read at Jiemian News ↗·Read at ITHome ↗·Read at CnEVPost ↗