Digital Intelligence Weekly: security scares, token boom and regulatory reminders

AI ecosystem under strain — leaks, layoffs and blocks

A volatile week for the global AI industry saw reports of major operational shocks alongside a runaway surge in model usage. It has been reported that Oracle cut some 30,000 employees overnight and that source code for Anthropic’s Claude — the so‑called "Claude Code" — was leaked online, claims that if true raise fresh questions about corporate security and intellectual‑property risk. Separately, it has been reported that Anthropic moved to block content tied to "OpenClaw" as platforms race to contain malware and poisoned inputs; such moves underscore how quickly model safety incidents can become both a security and a commercial problem.

China: outages, malware warnings and compensation

Domestically, Chinese cloud and enterprise services faced their own turbulence. Tencent WorkBuddy briefly crashed on April 2; Tencent Cloud apologized and announced compensation of 1,000 credits to affected domestic users after service instability was resolved. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s NVDB (网络安全威胁和漏洞信息共享平台) warned that attackers are spoofing OpenClaw download sites and bundling installers with remote‑control trojans, a reminder that "hot" tools can be repackaged into supply‑chain attacks. DeepSeek (深度求索) also suffered a string of outages late March, reigniting industry debate over infrastructure resilience as providers roll out heavier models and hidden A/B tests.

Token frenzy and commercial traction

On the commercialization front, usage metrics keep climbing. Doubao (豆包), hosted on Volcano Engine (火山引擎), reportedly averages more than 120 trillion tokens per day — a tenfold jump versus its May 2024 launch and a doubling in the last three months — while Volcano Engine has opened Seedance 2.0 API public beta with built‑in copyright and deepfake defenses. Xiaomi’s (小米) MiMo model logged over 4 trillion tokens in a week on OpenRouter, and Moon’s Dark Side (月之暗面) said Kimi K2.5 achieved annual recurring revenue above $100 million within one month of release. High token volumes mean higher revenue, but also greater operational and moderation burdens. Who pays for that scale — provider, customer or cloud host?

Trade policy backdrop: Ministry of Commerce weighs in

The Ministry of Commerce responded to questions about Meta’s acquisition of Manus and the broader topic of multinational corporate operations by emphasizing that China supports outbound and inbound business cooperation so long as companies follow Chinese laws and required procedures. For Western readers: think export controls, data‑localization and review procedures — Beijing’s message was pragmatic but firm. As cross‑border M&A and tech transfers continue under heightened geopolitics, firms must balance global expansion with compliance at every jurisdictional touchpoint. Can companies move fast and still keep regulators and users reassured? That is this week’s core dilemma.