Can tech companies learn to love cheaper AI models?
On Wednesday, Chinese cybersecurity firm 360 reportedly unveiled Tulongfeng, an AI tool it says can go head-to-head with Anthropic’s Mythos. That’s the cybersecurity-focused AI model that is reportedly so powerful, the Trump Administration has currently banned it and its more restricted version, Fable 5, from the hands of non-Americans. Earlier the same week Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based AI startup launched Fugu, a model named after the Japanese word for blowfish. The company says this frontier AI model “stands shoulder-to-shoulder with leading models like Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos Preview.” It is also designed for agents, with an ability to orchestrate access to other models though their APIs. The two new Asian model products come as the U.S. government’s ban drags on. It’s order that prevents Anthropic from global access to Mythos and Fable occurred two weeks ago. A spokesperson at Sakana AI told TechCrunch that release of its new model was “entirely coincidental,” yet that hasn’t stopped it from capitalizing on the moment. It’s website advertises “delivering frontier capability without the risk of export controls.” “Sakana Fugu is something we have been building since last year — the research behind it was presented at ICLR this spring, and it reflects an approach that is central to how we deliver frontier-level value at Sakana AI. We were confident in the product on its own merits; the timing simply happened to coincide with a moment that brought it more attention than we expected,” the spokesperson said about launching during the Mythos/Fable export ban. Sakana, co-founded in 2023 by former Google researchers Ren Ito, Llion Jones and David Ha, makes affordable generative AI models that work well with small datasets and are optimized for the Japanese language and culture. While the company is targeting Fugu at Japanese businesses and government agencies looking to reduce their exposure to tightening export controls, it isn’t yet proclaiming a lasting shift away from U.S. AI in Asia. “U.S. models remain important to Asia,” the spokesperson said, a view consistent with remarks co-founder Ren Ito made at the G7 summit in Evian last week, where AI access and export controls were one of the central topics. “We’d characterize the current moment in those terms rather than as a permanent realignment toward any one set of players.” Sakana co-founder Ren Ito elaborated on that view in an op-ed published in the Project Syndicate last week. He urged the US federal government, that consider that its “first priority should be to preserve access,” for America’s closest allies, and argued that “AI should not become a technology that is hoarded; it should be one that is developed together.” David Ha, co-founder and CEO of Sakana, described Fugu as more than just a land grab during a vulnerable moment for a US competitors. It is designed to coordinate agent usage among many models. “Orchestration Models are the next frontier, beyond bigger models,” he wrote on X. Relying on a single provider for national infrastructure, he argued, is a risk the recent export controls made impossible to ignore. “Access to top models can disappear overnight,” he wrote. “Collective intelligence is the practical hedge against this concentration of power.” While Tokyo-based Sakana positioned Fugu as a hedge strategy, a way to preserve access to frontier AI, not replace it, China’s 360 wasn’t hedging. The Chinese firm reportedly unveiled two AI security tools. Tulongfeng is designed to automatically discover software vulnerabilities, and Yitianzhen is built to automate cyber defence and incident response. The product launch, however, came with a message. According to Reuters, 360’s founder Zhou Hongyi described vulnerability-finding AI as a national strategic asset, and flagged what he called the risk of “one-way transparency”, a situation in which some actors could access advanced vulnerability-detection capabilities while others could not. Anth
