Tang Jie built Zhipu with state backing and a mandate to serve national goals. Now he's telling his own staff — and, indirectly, Beijing — that the safest path forward runs through openness, not walls. There's a particular kind of memo that only gets written when someone feels the ground shifting under an entire industry. Tang Jie, the Tsinghua professor who founded Zhipu AI — known internationally as Z.ai — sent his staff exactly that kind of note last week. Its title, "The Giant Wave Has Arrived," reads less like corporate messaging and more like a founder trying to get ahead of a debate he can already see coming. The debate is about who gets to touch the most powerful AI systems being built today, and who decides. As models grow capable enough to find security flaws humans miss, write working exploit code, or operate with minimal supervision, governments on both sides of the Pacific have started asking the same question: does this ge...
Humanoid Robots in 2026: Which Companies Are Actually Shipping Humanoid Robots 2026: The Hype-to-Reality Gap, Company by Company Everyone claims their robot is already working. The filings, partner statements, and earnings calls tell a much narrower story. 📅 July 24, 2026 ⏱️ 6 min read Quick Highlights Tesla Optimus has no public sale, no audited production count, and full production hadn't started as of mid-July 2026. Figure AI has the strongest verified commercial record, having run real production shifts at a BMW plant. China's Unitree ships more humanoid units than any Western rival, at roughly a tenth of the price — but its profits are falling. 1X and Apptronik are pursuing different bets: home robots and logistics partnerships, backed by serious funding. Across the board, most "deployed" robots are still in a learning phase, not full autonomous production. Scroll through humanoid robot headlines this y...