iFlytek Chairman and President Voluntarily Cut Salaries, Each Forgoing Over 20 Million Yuan; Baidu Confirms Wu Tian's Departure, Wenxin Model to Announce New Progress Next Week

Top News Briefs

1. iFlytek Responds to Questions About Executive Salaries: Chairman and President Voluntarily Cut Pay, Each Forgoing Over 20 Million Yuan

2. Internal Meeting Video Mocked as Painfully Awkward Acting! Avatr Vice President: It Was Staged, but the Events Are Real

3. Huawei "Genius Youth" Yang Yuwen Joins Nanjing University

4. Baidu Confirms Wu Tian Has Left; ERNIE Model to Announce New Progress Next Week

5. Wang Teng's Entrepreneurial Debut Thanks Xiaomi and Lei Jun! Responds to Accusations of Clout-Chasing: I Sincerely Appreciate My Past Experience

6. Chinese AAA Game Phantom Blade Zero Tops Global Bestseller Charts, Rated Higher Than Black Myth: Wukong

7. Zhiyuan's Peng Zhihui: Company Revenue Nearly 2 Billion Yuan in the First Half of 2026

8. Breaking! Nvidia Under Investigation: GPU Bundling Sales in Focus

Today's Headlines

iFlytek Responds to Questions About Executive Salaries: Chairman and President Voluntarily Cut Pay, Each Forgoing Over 20 Million Yuan

October 29 news: Recently, an investor asked iFlytek a question on an interactive platform, raising concerns about the collective rise in the company's executive compensation and how it compares with peers. iFlytek responded, disclosing details of the company's executives voluntarily taking substantial pay cuts.

iFlytek stated that its executive compensation is strictly implemented in accordance with the "Remuneration Management System for Directors and Senior Management" revised in May 2026. According to calculations under the system, the total basic annual salary and performance annual salary payable to the company's chairman and president for the 2025 fiscal year was 27.9569 million yuan. However, considering the company's stage of development and in order to better reward Class A outstanding employees, Chairman Liu Qingfeng and President Wu Xiaoru voluntarily proposed salary reductions. In the 2025 fiscal year, the two actually received compensation of 4.1 million yuan and 3 million yuan respectively; for these two alone, the payable compensation was reduced by more than 20 million yuan each compared with the amounts actually received.

In addition, iFlytek disclosed that the total compensation received by the company's directors and senior executives in the 2025 fiscal year was 18.6085 million yuan (17.226 million yuan in 2024). In its response, the company emphasized that the artificial intelligence industry presents vast opportunities, and the company has always adhered to "putting talent first," welcoming outstanding technology professionals and talent from home and abroad to join and share in the fruits of industry development. (Kuai Technology) Domestic News

Internal Meeting Video Mocked as Painfully Awkward Acting! Avatr Vice President: It Was Staged, but the Events Are Real

October 29 news: Late at night on the 28th, Avatr posted on social media that the online launch event for the Avatr 07L Max pure electric version, originally scheduled for October 29, had been canceled. "The launch event can be skipped, but the sincerity of the product cannot be lacking." Avatr also stated that in order to bring the Avatr 07L Max pure electric version to everyone at a more sincere price, it conducted multiple rounds of discussion and repeated weighing among product configuration, user needs, and price. "The new product launch plan remains unchanged, and product information will not be hidden."

Avatr stated: "At the same time, we will also make public a video of an internal meeting, to show everyone the story behind this launch decision." The subsequently circulated "Avatr internal video" showed several executives communicating about project budget, rights and interests of existing owners, trade-offs regarding the launch event, and communication strategy. But the content quickly sparked controversy, with some netizens questioning its filming method: "They even hired people to film this kind of meeting, with multiple camera angles and makeup—do they take users for fools?" Some bloggers also said, "Everyone thinks the video's acting is too awkward."

On the 29th, Avatr Technology Vice President Yong Jun posted again on Weibo, saying: Some friends pointed out that the video was staged. Yes, the video was specially filmed, but the events are real, and the intention to better serve users is genuine. He also said, "Some friends also pointed out that the acting was not good enough. I accept that humbly, but I do not plan to improve. My profession is to make good cars, not to be a good actor." (Kuai Technology)

Huawei "Genius Youth" Yang Yuwen Joins Nanjing University

October 29 news: Recently, the official website of Nanjing University's Institute of Intelligent Networks and Communications updated its information, showing that Yang Yuwen has officially joined the Institute as an assistant professor, distinguished researcher, and doctoral supervisor.

Yang Yuwen, female, received her bachelor's degree from Xidian University in 2018 and her doctoral degree in engineering from Tsinghua University in 2023. In 2023, she joined the Wireless Network Research Department through Huawei's "Genius Youth" program, and in 2026 she joined Nanjing University's School of Intelligent Software and Engineering-Institute of Intelligent Networks and Communications. Her main research directions are Network for AI and AI for Network, focusing on network optimization for intelligent terminals and multi-agent communication and perception optimization.

In terms of academic achievements, she has published 13 high-level academic papers in total. Among them, there are 10 SCI journal papers (including 9 as first author) and 3 high-level conference papers. More than 21 patents have been granted, and more than 40 are under examination. The WeChat public account "Nansu Smart Lab" also introduced that Teacher Yang Yuwen is currently recruiting master's and doctoral students in related research directions. (The Paper)

Baidu Confirms Wu Tian Has Left; ERNIE Model to Announce New Progress Next Week

On October 29, rumors circulated that Wu Tian, vice president of Baidu Group and deputy dean of Baidu Research, had left, and a Baidu public relations manager responded to this on WeChat Moments.

The article stated that Wu Tian has ended her tenure at Baidu. It also mentioned that Baidu's technical work is still moving forward. Just two days earlier (October 27), Baidu released and open-sourced ERNIE Unlimited OCR 2, achieving arbitrary-page document parsing for the first time globally, pushing the processing limit of OCR from dozens of pages to "unlimited" and reaching the current state of the art (SOTA). Actual tests showed that the model can parse all 7 books in the entire Harry Potter series in one go, totaling more than 3,600 pages, while still maintaining high accuracy and processing efficiency despite the substantial increase in document length, driving document parsing technology into the OCR 3.0 era.

It is reported that Wu Tian stopped serving as head of the foundation model R&D department in May this year and later transferred to deputy dean of Baidu Research. In the foundation model direction, related work has likewise been continuously advancing recently. According to a person familiar with Baidu, new progress on the ERNIE model will be announced externally as soon as next week.

Wang Teng's first entrepreneurial appearance thanks Xiaomi and Lei Jun! Responds to accusations of riding the hype: I sincerely appreciate my past experience

October 30 news: Recently, Today Yixiu, founded by former Xiaomi China Marketing General Manager Wang Teng, held its first launch event, officially unveiling the ISHO Ring smart ring and the ISHO iFlow smart temperature control system.

It is worth noting that at the end of the launch event, Wang Teng also deliberately used Xiaomi as the PPT background to express thanks to Xiaomi and Lei Jun, and the related topic even trended on Weibo. Wang Teng said that over the past few years at Xiaomi he learned a great deal, from how to make a good product to how to lead a large team. Regarding questions about whether he was riding Lei Jun's hype, Wang Teng responded that he sincerely appreciates this past experience; although he has now started his own business, he still greatly cherishes this past experience.

In addition, when introducing the ISHO iFlow smart temperature control system, Wang Teng also made a cross-industry comparison with the cooling capability of the REDMI K100 Pro Max. According to the data Wang Teng gave at the launch event, the cooling capability of ISHO iFlow reaches 289 times that of the REDMI K100 Pro Max. In response, Wang Teng specifically explained: "This is mainly to let everyone understand intuitively. I still want to vouch for the K100 Pro Max—it is already the strongest in the phone industry." (Kuai Technology)

Domestic AAA game Phantom Blade Zero tops global bestseller chart, rating exceeds Black Myth: Wukong

On October 29, less than an hour after Phantom Blade Zero went on sale, its Steam concurrent online player count exceeded 300,000, with popularity continuing to climb. As of 13:30, monitoring by third-party platform SteamDB showed that Phantom Blade Zero's peak Steam concurrent online player count on its first day of release reached 430,000, firmly ranking first on Steam's global bestseller chart.

For comparison, Black Myth: Wukong, which has been on sale for 800 days, surpassed 1 million Steam concurrent online players one hour after its debut two years ago. By contrast, for a new domestic title without the support of a powerful IP (commercially valuable creative content or brand) like Journey to the West, Phantom Blade Zero's figures are already commendable.

It is reported that on the eve of release, market heat had already begun to build. On October 27, Phantom Blade Zero topped Steam's global top sellers chart. Some institutions estimate that from October 27 to 28, its cumulative pre-orders across Steam and PS5 reached about 850,000 copies, with pre-order revenue equivalent to about RMB 287 million. In terms of reputation, the PC version of Phantom Blade Zero received a Metacritic average media score of 88, exceeding Black Myth: Wukong's 81. Internationally renowned gaming media IGN gave it a 9/10 review. (21st Century Business Herald)

Another core member of Tencent AI Lab confirms new destination! Former "Honor of Kings: Juewu" technical lead Ye Deheng joins ByteDance Seed

October 29 news: Recently, Ye Deheng, former partner of Tencent AI Lab's R4 department and technical lead of "Honor of Kings: Juewu," updated his career information on his personal homepage, confirming that he has joined the ByteDance Seed team as a researcher, working on research related to Foundation Models. Ye Deheng wrote on his personal homepage hosted on GitHub Pages: I am a Researcher at ByteDance Seed working on foundation models. That is, "I am currently a researcher on the ByteDance Seed team, working on foundation model research."

The work history listed on the page shows that he worked at Tencent from 2017 to 2026 and joined ByteDance starting in 2026. (AI Frontline)

Li Liang again responds to Hongguo App

On October 29, Li Liang, vice president of Douyin Group, posted that short dramas are not essentially different from traditional film and television dramas; the main difference lies in the medium and form of expression, and there is no inherent superiority or inferiority. Using episode length as an example, he said that if short dramas were changed to 45-minute or 90-minute episodes, the difference from TV series and films would not be great, and the core still lies in content quality.

Li Liang believes that short dramas have developed over a relatively short period, but driven by social attention and industry criticism, content quality has improved rapidly; in particular, more and more knowledgeable and cultured creators are joining, continuously raising the level of short-drama creation. With the development of AI technology, Li Liang judges that video creation represented by short dramas is expected to usher in new room for development. Especially in genres such as history and science fiction, AI can present scenes that are difficult to achieve with traditional production methods at a lower cost.

The rapid development of the short-drama market has also attracted more platforms to enter. Tencent's Green Bubble Short Drama has grown rapidly recently, but in terms of user scale, Hongguo Short Drama has already established a clear market advantage. Data shows that in May 2026, Hongguo's monthly active users rose to 356 million; in July, its daily active users reached 168 million, a year-on-year increase of 107%, exceeding the combined daily active users of the four long-video platforms Tencent Video, iQIYI, Youku and Mango TV. (Yicai)

Zhiyuan's Peng Zhihui: Company revenue in the first half of 2026 nearly 2 billion yuan

On October 29, at the Zhiyuan AGIBOT Innovation Day conference, Peng Zhihui, co-founder, president and CTO of Zhiyuan, revealed that the company's revenue in the first half of 2026 was close to 2 billion yuan, making it the general-purpose robot company with the highest current revenue scale. At the same time, the cumulative number of the company's latest general-purpose AI robots rolling off the production line exceeded 20,000 units, corresponding to a share of nearly 40% globally.

On the same day, Zhiyuan Robotics (AGIBOT) released the all-new "Genie G2 Max" safety-certified heavy-duty embodied industrial robot. The product focuses on "heavy-load precision, free movement in all directions, safety and reliability," and is committed to enabling heavy-load operations to truly possess embodied intelligence.

In terms of core performance, the G2 Max has 21 full-body degrees of freedom, achieves a 40kg dual-arm payload, covers a vertical working range of 0.1 to 2.5 meters, and has a battery life of about 8 hours. The robot's chassis is extremely flexible and can move longitudinally and laterally and turn in place within narrow spaces, perfectly adapting to multi-row bin arrays and high-level stacking, and meeting the needs of complex scenarios such as palletizing and warehousing. (Sina Tech, Lanjing Tech)

Geely Automobile's third-quarter revenue was 99 billion yuan, with core net profit attributable to parent of 5.21 billion yuan

On the afternoon of October 29, Geely Automobile Holdings Limited released its third-quarter 2026 financial report. In the third quarter, the company achieved revenue of 99 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10%; core net profit attributable to parent reached 5.21 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32%, with both revenue and core profit hitting new highs for the same period.

In the first three quarters, the company's total revenue reached 272.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13%; cumulative core net profit attributable to parent was 14.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41%, with core profit growth higher than revenue growth; gross margin reached 18%, up 1.5 percentage points year on year, and profit quality reached a new level.

Moonshot's Kimi connects to Google Gmail, Drive and Calendar

October 29 news: Moonshot announced overseas that Kimi has now connected to Google Gmail, Google Drive and Calendar, and users can enable them through the Plugins page.

According to the official introduction, users can now summarize Gmail email conversations, find files in Google Drive, and use Google Calendar to plan their daily schedules. All operations are carried out through a secure OAuth authorization mechanism.

It is understood that Kimi plugins are external tools and service extensions connected to Kimi AI, enabling Kimi to directly call third-party capabilities or automatically execute operations when handling tasks. (IT Home)

Apple iPhone Duo's first-sale-period sales in China nearly 200,000 units

On October 29, digital blogger "RD Observation" posted that, according to third-party data sources, the SO (Sell-Out, usually referring to terminal sales/activations) of the iPhone Duo during the first sales period (the first sales day plus the following three days) was close to 200K, or about 200,000 units. (Bianniushi)

Tencent: More than 2 million servers deployed globally

October 29 news: At the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit, Dowson Tong, senior executive vice president of Tencent Group, said that Tencent Cloud is accelerating the construction of global data centers and has deployed more than 2 million servers. Over the past year, Tencent Cloud's overseas AI demand has grown by triple digits, and the number of overseas active customers in its international business has doubled. In addition, Tencent Cloud previously worked with the Hunyuan team to increase the single-card throughput of domestic chips by 5 times two weeks before launch, and the Hy4 model will be launched soon. (Yicai)

Alibaba Cloud ranks first with a 46.6% share of China's large language model MaaS market

On October 29, Alibaba Cloud announced that International Data Corporation (IDC) recently released the report "China AI Software Market Semiannual Tracker, 26H1." Data shows that in the first half of 2026, Alibaba Cloud's share of China's large language model MaaS market reached 46.6%, ranking first.

The report pointed out that in the first half of 2026, the size of China's MaaS market reached 10.63 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 889.4%, of which large language models accounted for 47.0% of revenue, making it the largest modality by scale.

IDC believes that model capabilities, inference efficiency, and computing power supply are key to market competition. Alibaba Cloud has achieved three layers of in-house development and joint tuning across chips, models, and the cloud. At the chip level, T-Head has covered GPUs, CPUs, smart NICs, and interconnect chips; the new-generation AI chip Zhenwu V900 reaches 3 times the performance of M890, and a single cluster can scale to 500,000 cards. At the model level, Qwen3.8-Max has 2.4 trillion total parameters, and Qwen has open-sourced more than 460 models with over 3 billion downloads. At the cloud level, Alibaba Cloud conducts joint tuning of chips, servers, networks, models, and inference systems, and plans to expand its global data center scale to more than 20 GW by 2032. (Bianews)

IKEA restaurants also require "purchase to sit"? New notice signs added at restaurant entrances

October 29 news: Recently, the Starbucks "purchase to sit" incident has attracted considerable attention. Some netizens said that the IKEA restaurant in Xuhui, Shanghai, has also begun implementing "purchase to sit" on ordinary days, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays there are even security guards persuading non-paying people who occupy seats to leave. Media saw at the IKEA Xuhui store that a new notice had been added at the restaurant entrance, mentioning behaviors such as please do not make loud noises and do not gather to play cards. IKEA staff said that some elderly people bring their own fruit and come here for blind dates, and "just the trash alone is impossible to deal with in a day."

The blind-date group that the above staff mentioned gathering uninvited here on Tuesdays and Thursdays was in fact reported eagerly by various media as early as more than a decade ago, and "purchase to sit" is not a new term for IKEA either. Back then, in order to maintain a normal dining environment, it issued a customer notice saying "buy food first, then take a seat," and the recent warm reminder is similar, both aimed at discouraging uncivilized behavior.

In response, IKEA China said: The customer warm reminder you have noticed is an initiative carried out by the IKEA Shanghai Xuhui store based on customer feedback and the store's daily operations, with the purpose of further improving the customer dining experience. (The Paper, Yicai) International News

Breaking! Nvidia under investigation: GPU bundling becomes the focus

October 29 news: The U.S. Department of Justice has now launched an antitrust investigation into Nvidia's proposed $12.9 billion (about 86.6 billion yuan) acquisition of open-source AI model hosting platform Hugging Face, focusing on assessing whether this, Nvidia's largest acquisition ever, would give it control of a key distribution node in the AI ecosystem.

Hugging Face is the core hub of the global open-source AI community, with more than 18 million developers, 3 million models, and 500,000 datasets. Acquiring it would be equivalent to controlling the "highway" for AI model distribution. Nvidia has promised that after the transaction is completed it will keep the platform open and free, and plans to complete the closing in the first half of 2027.

It is reported that the Department of Justice is assessing whether Nvidia will use control of Hugging Face to exert adverse effects on competitors, or rely on this gateway to consolidate its lock-in capability from GPU hardware to the software ecosystem. This is not an isolated review, but has been incorporated into the Department of Justice's broader antitrust investigation into Nvidia's business practices that has lasted for years. Investigators are gathering evidence to check whether Nvidia has used scarce GPU allocations as leverage to force customers to accept adjacent products such as networking equipment or Groq processors. (Kuai Technology)

FCC once again rejects TP-Link's application to sell Wi-Fi 8 routers in the United States: the latter responds helplessly

October 29 news: According to reports, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently once again rejected TP-Link's network access certification application to sell Wi-Fi 8 routers in the United States. The reason is that among the certification application materials for four router devices submitted by TP-Link, there was some false or inaccurately stated file information, and among these four models undergoing compliance review, three also had transmit power exceeding the upper limit allowed by local regulations.

In response, TP-Link officially responded publicly: For many years, routine spot checks have been a standard regulatory action carried out by the FCC in the consumer electronics industry, and occasional deviations in test results for individual products are a situation that is difficult to completely avoid in the industry.

TP-Link Systems said it fully supports the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology in performing its regulatory duties and ensuring that certified products produced by all manufacturers comply with established technical specifications. It will continue to maintain active communication and cooperation with the FCC to resolve all currently exposed technical issues one by one, and if it is ultimately verified that the products do have compliance defects, it will complete rectification at the first opportunity.

TP-Link has long been a core mainstream manufacturer in the U.S. consumer networking equipment market. Data shows that in 2024, TP-Link's sales volume share in the U.S. router market was about 36.6%, with a corresponding sales revenue share of 31%, making it the mainstream networking equipment brand ranked second by market share in the local market. (Kuai Technology)

Samsung Electronics expects 2026 capital expenditure of 84.4 trillion won

October 29: Samsung Electronics released its latest results, with third-quarter sales of 195.25 trillion won and operating profit of 107.44 trillion won; net profit was 75.21 trillion won, versus an estimate of 89.06 trillion won.

At the same time, Samsung Electronics announced its 2026 shareholder return plan, expecting total shareholder returns in 2026 to reach 90-110 trillion won, of which 35 trillion won has been planned or completed. Samsung Electronics expects 2026 capital expenditure to be 84.4 trillion won, compared with 52.7 trillion won in 2025. (Global TMT)

Residents protest that Musk's data center is too noisy; SpaceX: As long as you stop suing, we'll buy all your houses

October 29 news: SpaceX is building a power plant in the Southaven area of Mississippi, USA, to supply electricity to the nearby Colossus data center. But the project has triggered strong protests from local residents, on the grounds that this infrastructure generates unbearable noise. Residents of Southaven have already filed a lawsuit over the noise problem from the power plant. To resolve the conflict with the community, SpaceX subsidiary MZX Tech is currently buying up local residents' properties.

Real estate agents lobbying on behalf of SpaceX said that as long as homeowners agree not to participate in lawsuits over the power plant's noise problem, SpaceX is willing to buy their homes. It is reported that the entire plan will include 418 surrounding houses, and 18 owners have so far agreed to sell. After being purchased, these houses will be used to house SpaceX employees; the company is in a phase of explosive expansion in Southaven, having built three new data centers in Southaven and neighboring Memphis, Tennessee, in the past two years alone.

And this pace of expansion has inevitably intensified the conflict between the company and the local community. Three residents filed a lawsuit in June, claiming that the data center construction has brought continuous noise, vibrations and other nuisance hazards. SpaceX denied the allegations that it creates noise, and responded that the company takes neighborly relations very seriously and has adjusted power generation and built soundproof walls. (Daily Economic News)

Avoiding the controversial gesture! Apple quietly changes its MacBook Pro promotional image in South Korea

October 29 news: Apple officially released the new MacBook Pro recently, equipped with a PROLED XDR display, and it is also Apple's first touchscreen laptop. Not long after it went online, observant netizens quickly dug up a detail: for the same product, the promotional images on the official websites of China, the United States and South Korea are actually not the same version.

The comparison is obvious: in the main images on the Chinese and US official websites, the person uses the thumb and index finger to make a C-shaped gesture to operate the screen, visually demonstrating the touchscreen interaction. But on the South Korean official website, the same spot was directly replaced with another image, in which one hand is on the keyboard typing while the other taps the touchscreen, and the "C" gesture does not appear at all; even the scene was changed.

Why change globally unified material for South Korea? The core issue lies in this "C-shaped gesture." In South Korea, the C-shaped gesture formed by pinching the thumb and index finger together is regarded by many as an offensive action, and the controversy has long been significant. Earlier, MapleStory developer Nexon was forced to issue a public apology after a similar gesture appeared in a promotional video. Apple clearly does not want to take this risk, so it changed it directly at the source and chose a safer and more pragmatic marketing path. (Bianews)