This week saw major moves in AI agent startups worldwide. Alibaba released Qwen2, an open-source AI model for building cost-effective agents that work in multiple languages. Meanwhile, Chinese startup DeepSeek upgraded its DeepSeek-VL model to compete with OpenAI, improving how it understands both text and images.

In Europe, Belgian startup Conveo raised $5.3 million for its AI research assistant that helps scientists analyze data and write reports. Norway’s 1X plans to test its Neo Gamma humanoid robot in homes later this year, showing how robots are becoming more useful helpers.

OpenAI made headlines by raising $40 billion from SoftBank, the biggest funding round ever for a tech company. They’re also working on a new open-weight language model with better reasoning skills. In storage tech, MinIO launched tools to help AI agents manage data through simple chat commands.

Some startups faced challenges. China’s Butterfly Effect claimed its Manus AI agent outperforms rivals, but users found bugs during testing. Alibaba also claimed its new QwQ-32B model beats others at reasoning tasks, adding fuel to the global AI race.