Alibaba and Honor deepen tie-up to build AI agentic devices

Alibaba Group and Honor, the smartphone maker spun off from Huawei, are deepening their partnership on an operating system for AI-powered agentic devices. The tie-up is expected to be formally announced at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference opening in Shanghai, alongside demonstrations of new agent capabilities built by both companies. The deal reflects intensifying competition among Chinese tech giants to embed agentic AI directly into hardware, following rival StepFun's claimed "first AI smartphone" launch and Chinese firms' broader push into the agentic web era ahead of WAIC.

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