AI Agent · iOS · China · Android · Gemini · Decrypt
Chinese Startup StepFun Debuts a Phone Built Around an AI Agent, Not Apps
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StepFun, a Chinese AI startup backed by Tencent, launched the STEPX Neo, a phone whose AI agent is built into the operating system itself instead of sitting in an app.
Key facts
- The 3,999-yuan price includes 12 months of the STEPX Token Plan, which provides 100 billion tokens a month, and StepFun has not said what the AI costs after the first year
- Step 5 Preview can take in up to 1 million tokens, the chunks of text AI services count and bill by, at once
- StepFun, founded in 2023 by former Microsoft vice president Jiang Daxin, builds its own large language model, or LLM, the kind of AI system behind ChatGPT
- StepFun first showed the agent, the operating system, and the STEPX brand in Shanghai on July 13, without a price or sales date
Summary
StepFun launched the STEPX Neo on Oct. 13, a 3,999-yuan phone, about $560, running its Step AOS 1.0 operating system with a built-in AI agent called Amoo. Pre-orders opened on JD.com, Tmall and Douyin, and the price includes 12 months of AI access at 100 billion tokens a month. Nearly 100 partners including Alipay and Tencent have signed on, after ByteDance's Doubao phone agent drew blocks from major Chinese apps in December. The operating system is the core software that runs a phone, like iOS or Android.