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Bottom Line Up Front China and the U.S. agree to launch a formal AI dialogue, with the next round set for November, and to set up a channel for communicating about AI incidents, according to Beijing's account of Xi Jinping's state visit. The Chinese Academy of Sciences puts chips, AI, quantum and fusion at the top of its 2026-2030 plan, which also calls for a large AI model built for scientific research. Energy company ENN claims the first hydrogen-boron fusion reaction by a commercial fusion company, using a fuel that releases almost no reactor-damaging neutrons, and a panel of international fusion experts judged the measurements valid and repeatable. |
China and the U.S. agree to set up a formal AI dialogue and an AI incident channelChina and the United States agreed to establish a China-U.S. AI Dialogue, with the next round set for November, formalizing the continued AI talks Xi proposed at the White House, as CTD reported in the September 25th edition. The dialogue will serve as a venue to exchange views on the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence, with the two sides also agreeing to create a bilateral communication channel for AI incidents, according to the eight-point consensus from Xi Jinping's Sept. 23-25 state visit. Separately, the two militaries agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding on crisis communication and prevention. The trade point endorses a reciprocal tariff-reduction arrangement that Xinhua puts at "$30 billion." |
| Chinese Academy of Sciences puts chips, AI, quantum and fusion at the top of its 2026-2030 research plan The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which runs China's national network of state research institutes, released its development plan for 2026-2030. Its priority fields include integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, brain-computer interfaces and controlled nuclear fusion, according to the academy's official account, as reported by ITHome. Its AI chapter calls for Panshi, a large AI model built for scientific research, along with an "intelligent scientist" system and scientific data centers. The plan sets 2035 as the year CAS fully becomes a world-class research institution. |
| Energy company ENN claims the first hydrogen-boron fusion reaction by a commercial fusion company ENN says its EXL-50U spherical tokamak produced hydrogen-boron fusion reactions in late September, calling it the first by a commercial fusion company on its own device. A tokamak is a ring-shaped chamber that uses magnetic fields to hold plasma hot enough for atomic nuclei to fuse, and the spherical version is a more compact variant. Hydrogen-boron fuel gives off almost no neutrons, the particles that damage reactor walls and make them radioactive, but it must be heated further than conventional fusion fuel, ITHome reports. ENN fired beams of fast neutral atoms into the plasma alongside radio-frequency heating, pushing more protons to the energy where the reaction is most likely. A panel of more than ten international fusion experts reviewed the results and judged the measurements valid and repeatable. ENN's next spherical tokamak, Helong-2, is due by the end of 2027, and the company targets steady-state, high-power generation before 2035. |
| Chipmaker Hygon builds its first processor for factory controllers and other edge equipment Hygon Information Technology has launched its 1000 series, its first CPU for industrial control and other edge devices. The chip will run industrial PCs, gateways and controllers on production lines and in the field, processing data, images and video on site. President Sha Chaoqun tied the move to AI spreading from servers into factories, energy stations and rail transit, according to Leiphone. Equipment makers have begun designing circuit boards around the chip, Hygon says. The company has committed to supplying the chip and its successors for 10 years. |
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| Seven Chinese agencies set 2030 as the year all-solid-state batteries reach first large-scale use The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which sets China's industrial policy, along six other agencies, issued a 2026-2030 plan for next-generation batteries. All-solid-state batteries swap the liquid electrolyte in today's lithium-ion cells for a solid one, and the plan targets their initial large-scale application by 2030. It also targets long-life lithium batteries rated for 15,000 charge-discharge cycles, enough for one full charge a day for more than 40 years. While Lithium will remain at the center of supply alongside sodium and flow batteries, the plan also calls for faster exploration of domestic lithium and cobalt. Companies must also set up used-battery collection systems matched to their sales volumes. |
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| III | AI & FOUNDATION MODELS | |
| Tsinghua-linked startup Fermi Universe applies quantum physics math to a language model that runs on ordinary chips Fermi Universe released FermiQLLM 1.0, which it calls the world's first full-pipeline quantum-enhanced large language model, QbitAI reports. The model needs no quantum computer and runs on existing graphics processors (GPUs), borrowing mathematical methods from quantum physics instead. The model is a modified version of Qwen, Alibaba's open-source modelOpen-weight modelAn AI model whose trained parameters are published so anyone can download, run and modify it, as opposed to one reachable only through the developer's API. The main policy tension is that open weights spread capability widely and cannot be recalled once released. family. In the company's internal tests against conventional models of the same size, performance when generating answers rose more than 15% and training costs in the continued reinforcement learning stage fell more than 25%. Scores on standard math, science and reasoning tests rose 10-20%, the company says. |
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| IV | ROBOTICS & AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS | |
| Robotics firm Sharpa unveils a touch-sensing robot, robot hand and haptic glove at a Pittsburgh robotics conference Robotics company Sharpa launched three touch-centered products at IROS 2026, the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, in Pittsburgh. Its D01 manipulation robot is covered in electronic skin, a layer of pressure sensors, and returns to the same position within 0.2mm, about the thickness of two sheets of paper, Jiemian reports. The W02 hand fits 21 independently driven joint motions into a smaller body than its predecessor. Its camera-based fingertip sensors detect forces as light as 5 millinewtons, roughly the weight of half a gram, per Leiphone. The AE01 exoskeleton glove records the wearer's hand motion and pushes touch feedback to the fingertips. Sharpa plans to have the systems take robots out of controlled settings and into continuous work in factories, homes and restaurants. |
| Three-month-old startup Simate says its first robot-control AI model tops a robotics benchmark Simate, also called Silicon Mate, unveiled Simate-beta, a model for real-time robot manipulation, about three months after the company was founded, QbitAI reports. On the RoboDojo leaderboard, a robotics benchmark ranking, Simate-beta placed first as of Sept. 23, completing 27.96% of tasks, a little under three in ten, without leaderboard-specific tuning, according to the company. The model tracks 3D space over time and keeps layered memory of earlier steps, which Simate says lets it handle long tasks and adapt to new ones. Simate says it will disclose the model's architecture and size in a later technical report. |
| Geely's driver-assistance system passes 1 million cars, with its top tier running on two Nvidia chips Automaker Geely's G-ASD driver-assistance system, sold in China as Qianli Haohan, has passed 1 million installed vehicles 18 months after its March 2025 launch, per Geely's official account. As of Sept. 13, drivers had logged 2.37 billion kilometers of assisted driving, enough to circle the equator nearly 60,000 times. The system comes in five hardware tiers sized by computing powerComputeThe processing power used to train and run AI models, usually measured in chips, GPU-hours or FLOPs.. The top H9 tier pairs two Nvidia Thor chips for about 1,400 trillion operations per second, the most computing power of the five. It targets Level 3 driving, in which the car drives itself under set conditions but the driver must take over on request. Geely Auto Group CEO Gan Jiayue told an internal meeting in February that the system would expand overseas this year. |
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| PLA flies high-altitude drones and a radar plane around Scarborough Shoal as the coast guard rehearses boarding and towing The People's Liberation Army's Southern Theater Command, the headquarters responsible for the South China Sea, drilled around Scarborough Shoal, which China calls Huangyan Dao. WZ-7 high-altitude reconnaissance drones and a KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft flew with the frigates Tianmen and Yulin and the replenishment ship Qinghaihu. Global Times says the WZ-7 can track targets, relay the data and guide strikes. China Coast Guard cutters including the Wanshan, Chuanshan and Sifang rehearsed boarding inspections, intercepting vessels that try to force their way through, and forced towing nearby the same day. National Defense University professor Zhang Chi told the paper the exercise was a warning to the Philippines. At the time, the Philippines was rallying other countries for a maritime security field exercise under an expanded ASEAN defense ministers' forum. |
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| Commercial launch firm CAS Space cuts final assembly of its Kinetica-1 (Lijian-1) rocket from three months to 15 days CAS Space said final assembly of a single Kinetica-1 rocket now takes about 15 days, down from about three months when the rocket first flew in 2022, Wallstreetcn reports. The 15-day figure covers final assembly only and is separate from the full assembly-and-testing process. Kinetica-1 is a four-stage solid-fuel rocket that mainly launches satellites for low-orbit remote sensing and communications constellations. Its industrial base in Nansha, Guangzhou, can build 30 rockets a year, according to the company. CAS Space plans at least 8 Kinetica-1 launches this year, and the rocket's manifest is booked into the second half of 2027. |
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