AI news, 20 August: Unitree Robotics soars on Shanghai debut

Unitree Robotics surges on Shanghai IPO. Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree Robotics saw its shares jump sharply on their Shanghai STAR Market debut on 19 August, rising as much as about 629% intraday before closing more than 460% higher, according to CNBC and other reports. The company raised roughly 6.1 billion yuan (about $905 million). The strong reception briefly pushed its valuation toward the $60–66 billion range and underscores heavy investor interest in humanoid robotics, a field where Unitree’s agile, backflipping machines have drawn global attention. Backers include Tencent and DeepSeek; the listing marks a milestone as the first major onshore-listed humanoid robot company in mainland China.

UK chip startup Fractile nears $6.5 billion valuation. British AI-chip firm Fractile is in advanced talks to raise about $600 million at a $6.5 billion pre-money valuation, more than six times its level from a May round, Bloomberg reported. The jump follows an initial agreement to supply roughly $250 million of its specialized chips to Anthropic, with potential to expand later. The deal highlights how custom silicon for AI inference is attracting fast capital even before products fully ship to customers.

Update: OpenAI details 20% security monitoring overhead. In a fresh development tied to its recent security pause, OpenAI said monitoring safeguards now add roughly 20% compute overhead on covered workloads. According to the company and reporting by The Register, this applies to tool-using reinforcement learning and evaluations for advanced models plus all inference on its upcoming Astra model, which it has flagged for possible critical cyber capabilities. OpenAI has said the extra cost is internal research spend and will not be passed to customers for now, while some related training remains paced for security upgrades.

Public unease over AI and data centers grows. A Pew Research survey released this week found 52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about increased AI use in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, with particular wariness among younger adults about jobs. TechCrunch, citing Axios and The Wall Street Journal, noted political pushback including a Republican memo warning that data-center projects could hurt election chances, plus tech firms offering local perks such as job guarantees and community investments to ease opposition. Industry leaders have begun publicly acknowledging a crisis of trust.

Samsung raises advanced chipmaking prices on AI demand. Samsung Electronics has increased prices for some advanced foundry services by up to 15% on recent orders, sources told Reuters, as AI-related demand tightens capacity. Hikes hit its 4-nanometre and 5-nanometre processes hardest; the move reflects broader pressure on the chip supply chain that underpins large AI models and systems.