OpenAI just started blocking API traffic from unsupported regions like China, sending developers scrambling for alternatives. Domestic giants like SenseTime, Baidu, and Zhipu AI are seizing the moment, giving away up to 150 million free tokens and white-glove migration services. While it triggers a rush toward domestic independence, chip shortages remain a serious bottleneck.
SenseTime just launched SenseNova 5.0, a major model trained on over 10TB of tokens with a 200,000 context window. Alongside the cloud model, it rolled out an edge-side matrix that hits 78.3 words per second on flagship chips and cuts enterprise inference costs by 80%. Why it matters: SenseTime is pushing frontier multimodal AI directly into phones, cars, and edge devices.
Baidu just officially launched its Ernie Bot chatbot to the public following regulatory clearance in China, racking up over 1 million users within its first 19 hours. The ChatGPT rival handles text analysis, summaries, and creative brainstorming, alongside an ecosystem of new plug-ins. While available globally in app stores, users still need a mainland Chinese phone number to register.
