Welcome to the newest edition of ID Tech’s AI Update. Here’s the latest big news on the shifting landscape of AI and identity technology:
MiniMax has confidentially filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Backed by Alibaba and Tencent, the firm is positioning itself as China’s flagship multimodal AI studio. It has text, code, music, and voice models, but is probably best known for its Hailuo image and video generation platform. Its HKEX listing could happen as soon as Q4.
Semifive has submitted preliminary paperwork for an IPO on the Korea Exchange (KRX). It’s a South Korean chip designer focused on helping other firms build custom chips (ASICs) without needing to hire massive engineering teams or spend hundreds of millions on infrastructure, and has had design wins with respect to FuriosaAI’s “Furion‑2” or Rebellions’ “Rebel X” chips. A decision is expected around mid-September.
Nvidia can sell its H20 GPUs in China again thanks to a White House reversal on part of its sanctions policy. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the move was part of a broader rare‑earths trade deal hammered out in London. China’s MOFCOM says that Washington “took the initiative” unilaterally. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called it “a green‑light to accelerate the recovery of our China business.”
Taiwan, meanwhile, has quietly been tightening restrictions on exports to China. Its Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has moved from narrowly targeted chip-based rules to a broader export control regime covering everything from logic chips or camera sensors, adding hundreds of China-based organizations to its Strategic High‑Tech Commodities (SHTC) entity list. Taiwanese exporters have to get special licenses to ship tech to any organization on the list.
Google has sealed a $3 billion hydropower deal with Brookfield Renewable Energy, looking to further fuel its AI efforts over the next couple of decades. It’s a 20-year power purchase agreement contracting 670 megawatts of capacity from a pair of hydro plants in Pennsylvania, and is part of a broader framework through which Google could get up to 3 gigawatts of what a Google executive called “dependable, homegrown, carbon-free electricity”.
Sam Altman-backed Oklo has contracted Nebraska-based construction firm Kiewit to build its inaugural small-scale nuclear plant in Idaho. Site prep has already finished and pre-construction is expected later this year, paving the way for one of the first grid‑connected fast reactors in the U.S., and validating micro‑reactor economics and potentially unlocking wider private‑sector financing.
OpenAI has unveiled ChatGPT Agent, a new tool that can semi-autonomously complete complex tasks on behalf of users. Conceptually it’s similar to the more experimental Operator tool launched earlier this year for Pro subscribers, but the new Agent tool appears to be more advanced, and will be available to most paying users across various subscription plans. It’s another sign of the rise of agentic AI, and OpenAI has itself been keen to flag the potential safety risks it entails.
The Pentagon’s Chief Digital & Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) has awarded up to $200 million worth of contracts to AI companies including OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, and Google, with an eye to developing “agentic AI workflows” that can plan, reason, and act across defence use‑cases ranging from logistics to intelligence analysis. Models will be applied in the Army‑hosted Enterprise LLM Workspace (Ask Sage) and be embedded in DoD data platforms such as Advana, Maven Smart System and Edge Data Mesh.
The chatbot’s take: We subtly tried to get some prognostication with this one, but Chat didn’t take the bait.
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By Alex Perala
