Chinese Startup StepFun Launches a Phone Built Around an AI Agent, Not Apps

StepFun, a Chinese language AI startup backed by Tencent, launched the STEPX Neo, a cellphone whose AI agent is constructed into the working system itself as a substitute of sitting in an app.

The working system is the core software program that runs a cellphone, like iOS or Android. Pre-orders opened that night at 3,999 yuan, about $560, with a primary gross sales occasion on Oct. 16.

As an alternative of opening a ride-hailing app, typing an handle and selecting a automotive, you inform the cellphone the place you wish to go, and its agent—software program that takes a purpose and carries it out by itself—handles the remaining steps.

StepFun informed the launch viewers that within the agent period AI is not an add-on to a smartphone however the product itself.

StepFun first confirmed the agent, the working system, and the STEPX model in Shanghai on July 13, with out a value or gross sales date. The corporate mentioned on the time that standard smartphone software program was by no means constructed for autonomous job execution.

Siri and Gemini are assistants that dwell inside iOS and Android. StepFun says its Step AOS 1.0 was as a substitute constructed from scratch for the agent, with long-term reminiscence, job scheduling, and safety controls within the base layer. The corporate describes the system as a mixture of Android, Linux, and real-time working system parts.

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Step AOS breaks cellphone capabilities corresponding to messaging, apps, recordsdata and settings into small blocks the agent can name straight, utilizing Mannequin Context Protocol, or MCP, a shared commonplace that lets AI packages plug into different software program. Customers get two entrances: the acquainted app grid and a separate house for the agent.

The agent, referred to as Amoo, retains one reminiscence for the person’s information, habits, and preferences and one other for what it has discovered about finishing up duties. Easy instructions like setting an alarm run on a small mannequin contained in the cellphone, a few of them offline, whereas more durable requests that span a number of apps go to a bigger mannequin within the cloud. A second MiniLED display screen on the again exhibits what Amoo is doing.

Almost 100 firms and merchandise, together with Alipay, Tencent, Ctrip, Didi and Meituan, have signed on to Amoo, and funds, journey bookings and content material creation are nonetheless accomplished by their very own platforms. That’s StepFun’s various to the screen-reading and simulated-click strategy Doubao used.

StepFun, based in 2023 by former Microsoft vice chairman Jiang Daxin, builds its personal giant language mannequin, or LLM, the form of AI system behind ChatGPT. Its flagship, Step 5 Preview, arrived in September with 600 billion parameters, the interior numbers a mannequin adjusts whereas coaching, of which 27 billion are lively at a time.

Step 5 Preview can soak up as much as 1 million tokens, the chunks of textual content AI providers depend and invoice by, without delay. The smaller Step 3.5 Flash, launched earlier this 12 months, is open-source below an Apache 2.0 license.

The three,999-yuan value contains 12 months of the STEPX Token Plan, which supplies 100 billion tokens a month, and StepFun has not mentioned what the AI prices after the primary 12 months.