On Wednesday, Chinese cybersecurity firm 360 according to information unveiled Tulongfeng, an AI tool it says can go head-to-head with Anthropic’s Mythos. This is the AI model that focuses on cybersecurity and is reportedly so powerful, the Trump administration has currently banned it and its more limited editionMyth 5, from non-American hands.
Earlier in the week, Sakana AI, an artificial intelligence startup based in Tokyo launched the Fugua model named after the Japanese word for fish. The company says this frontier AI model “stands shoulder-to-shoulder with flagships like Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos Preview.” It is also designed for agents, with the ability to orchestrate access to other models through their APIs.
The two new Asian models come as the US government ban is delayed. Of class that prevents Anthropic from global access to Mythos and Fable happened two weeks ago.
A spokesperson for Sakana AI told TechCrunch that the launch of its new model was “completely coincidental,” but that didn’t stop it from seizing the moment. Its website advertises “providing border capacity without the risk of export controls”.
“Sakana Fugu is something we’ve been building since last year — the research behind it was presented at ICLR this spring, and it reflects an approach that’s central to how we deliver frontier value at Sakana AI. We were confident in the product on its own merits. The timing just happened to bring it more attention than we expected.”
Founded in 2023 by ex-Google researchers Ren Ito, Llion Jones and David Ha, Sakana builds cost-effective AI production 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 tighter export controls, it is not yet heralding a permanent shift away from American AI to Asia.
“The US models remain important for Asia,” the spokesman said, a view consistent with comments made by co-founder Ren Ito in the G7 summit in Evian last week, where access to artificial intelligence and export controls were one of the central issues. “We would characterize the current moment in those terms rather than a permanent realignment towards any set of players.”
Co-founder of Sakana Ren Ito elaborated on this view in an article published on Project Syndicate last week. He urged the US federal government to consider that “the first priority should be to maintain access,For America’s closest allies, and argued that “artificial intelligence should not become a hoarded technology. it should be one that grows together.”
David Ha, co-founder and CEO of Sakana, described Fugu as more than just a land grab at a vulnerable time for US competitors. It is designed to coordinate the use of agents across multiple models.
“Orchestration models are the next frontier, beyond larger models,” wrote to X. Relying on a single provider for national infrastructure, he argued, is a risk that recent export controls have 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 hedging strategy, a way to maintain access to frontier AI rather than replace it, China’s 360 did not hedge.
The Chinese company according to information unveiled two AI security tools. Tulongfeng is designed to automatically discover software vulnerabilities and Yitianzhen is designed to automate cyber defense and incident response.
The product launch, however, came with a message. According to Reuters, 360 founder Zhou Hongyi described vulnerability-finding AI as a national strategic asset and pointed to the risk of “one-way transparency,” a situation in which some actors could access advanced vulnerability detection capabilities while others could not.
Anthropic was on a historic growth trajectory. The US artificial intelligence lab said run rate revenue topped $47 billion in May 2026. How much of that is down to Asian enterprise customers is not publicly known.
But in the weeks since the export order took effect, at least two companies, one in Tokyo and one in Beijing, have moved into the space it left behind. Even if American companies could regain trust should this ban ever end, local alternatives, trained to better understand local language and nuances, are already filling the void.
360 did not respond to a request for comment.
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