🟠 StepFun is at #WAIC2026# #StepFun# 🚗 ZEEKR 8X × Super EvaStep into StepFun Amoo World — a treasure-hunt map across 7 stops: 🤖 robots building the Great Wall 🎮 arcade penalty shootout w/ Amoo 📱 STEPX agent phone live demos 🗓️ Jul 17–20 📍 Shanghai World Expo Center · Hall H1 C107 Follow the route. Unlock every stop. 👇

Introducing the StepFun Startup Program. We’re supporting early-stage AI teams building real products with StepFun models — from multimodal applications to agentic systems. Selected startups may receive API credits, dedicated ecosystem support, co-marketing opportunities, showcase placement, and warm introductions to selected partners. We’d love to hear what you’re building. Apply now 👇

🎙️ Voice AI Night is coming to Mountain View on July 30. StepFun is teaming up with SEAMATE, PLAUD, Firework, and Cresta to bring together builders across foundation models, AI hardware, video commerce, and enterprise AI. We’ll dive into what it really takes to build Voice AI—from architecture, latency, barge-in, and memory to the challenges of turning great technology into products people actually use. 📍 Mountain View 📅 July 30 🔗 RSVP Link:

East & Southeast Asia 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 🇻🇳 ➤ Cartesia's Sonic 3.6 leads Japanese and Vietnamese, while Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 ranks #1# in Mandarin. ➤ StepFun's StepAudio 2.5 TTS ranks #3# in Mandarin at 1,130 Elo, just 16 points behind Sonic 3.6. ➤ In Japanese, Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 ranks #2# at 1,123 Elo, ahead of ElevenLabs' v3 Conversational and Sonic 3.5. Japanese: Cartesia's Sonic 3.6 ranks #1# at 1,153 Elo, followed by Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 at 1,123 and ElevenLabs' v3 Conversational at 1,095. Sonic 3.5 and Eleven v3 round out the top 5 at 1,093 and 1,085. Mandarin: Inworld's Realtime TTS-2 ranks #1# at 1,185 Elo, followed by Sonic 3.6 at 1,146 and StepFun's StepAudio 2.5 TTS at 1,130. Alibaba's Qwen-Audio-3.0-TTS-Plus and MiniMax's Speech 2.8 Turbo round out the top 5. Vietnamese: Sonic 3.6 ranks #1# at 1,721 Elo, followed by ElevenLabs' v3 Conversational at 1,677 and Eleven v3 at 1,676. Sonic 3.5 ranks #4# at 1,650, followed by Realtime TTS-2 at 1,600.

This evening I'll have the honor of a real shanghainese meal with the mythical @wey_gu and other AI top players, including a person from StepFun! Can't wait to try the cuisine and enjoy the AI dinner! Shanghai: what a city!

That’s a wrap on AGNTCon + MCPCon Japan. Two days of meeting AI builders, exchanging ideas on agent infrastructure, and seeing what people are building across the ecosystem. We are especially excited to see several great agent infrastructure projects joining the StepFun Startup Program. Building with AI? We’d love to support what you’re working on: Next stop: San Jose for AGNTCon + MCPCon North America with @AgenticAIFdn (AAIF). More updates from StepFun are coming soon. Stay tuned!

A great first day at AGNTCon+MCPCon Japan. @AgenticAIFdn (AAIF) We enjoyed meeting builders, exchanging ideas, and sharing what we’ve been working on at StepFun. Missed us today? We’ll be back tomorrow for Day 2. Come find us at Booth T6 and say hi! #AGNTCon# #MCPCon# #AgenticAI#

CHINA HITS BACK AT US OVER AI CLAIMS China rejected US claims that six Chinese AI companies systematically used American models to develop their technology. US agencies accused DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and of mining models from leading US developers. Beijing called the allegations “unfounded” and urged Washington to pursue greater AI cooperation instead.