HKIC Portfolio Company StepFun Launches STEPX, the World's First LLM-Native AI Terminal Brand, Completing a Full-Stack AI Ecosystem

In July 2026, StepFun, a portfolio company of the Hong Kong Investment Corporation Limited ("HKIC"), officially launched STEPX in Shanghai. STEPX is the world's first large language model (LLM)-native AI terminal brand designed for the agentic era. The event also marked the debut of the world's first LLM-native agent smartphone, STEPX Neo, alongside the world's first agentic-native operating system, Step AOS (Step Agentic-native OS), and StepFun's next-generation personal agent, Amoo. This milestone represents the first time a domestic enterprise has successfully integrated the "trinity" full-stack AI ecosystem encompassing the "foundation model, system, and hardware."

Reconstructing the Operating System from Scratch to Define a New Interactive Paradigm for the Agentic Era

While AI terminals are rapidly proliferating, the industry has long been constrained by bottlenecks in memory, decision-making, and action. Unlike the prevailing industry approach of bolting LLM plugins onto existing operating systems, StepFun has rebuilt the underlying architecture from scratch with the introduction of Step AOS, which is natively adapted for agent operations.

Step AOS achieves three layers of innovation centered around new infrastructure, new capabilities, and new interactions, supported by StepFun's Step "1+N" model matrix. Notably, the Step Edge foundation model, tailor-made for on-device hardware, ranked first among peer on-device models across 29 authoritative benchmark evaluations. The system converts all hardware and legacy system capabilities into computing power that agents can directly invoke, data they can understand, and functions they can execute. Users simply express their task intent, and the entire workflow is completed autonomously by the agent. Test data indicates that the AI agent smartphone requires only 15 milliseconds for memory recall during daily Q&A, and completes simple tasks—such as setting an alarm—in under 100 milliseconds.

STEPX Neo Achieves Highest L3 Certification as Ecological Collaborations Roll Out Comprehensively

Powered by the Step AOS system and the Amoo personal agent, the STEPX Neo agent smartphone has passed the initial batch of "AI Terminal Intelligence Grading" tests, achieving the current highest L3 certification. On the security front, StepFun partnered with the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to release the White Paper on Security Technologies for Next-Generation Agent Systems. This paper systematically proposed a "trustworthy, visible, controllable, and reversible" agent security framework for the first time and participated in the drafting of relevant national standards.

In terms of commercial application, STEPX has established deep AI ecological partnerships with top-tier applications—including Alipay, Meituan, JD.com, Amap, DiDi, Trip.com, and Baidu—covering high-frequency scenarios such as mobility, local lifestyle services, office productivity, and content creation. StepFun's Step AOS has been fully opened to the public, offering its underlying agent technical capabilities to manufacturers across the entire industry.

Long-Term Support from HKIC's Patient Capital Accelerates the Transition from Technological Breakthroughs to Commercial Closed Loops

StepFun is a strategically backed LLM enterprise within HKIC's portfolio. HKIC's latest annual report reveals that it has invested in multiple leading enterprises in the LLM sector, including Moonshot AI and StepFun. In April 2026, StepFun completed its shareholding restructuring and dismantled its red-chip architecture, accelerating its progress toward a Hong Kong IPO.

Backed by the long-term support of HKIC's patient capital, StepFun is rapidly advancing the full-chain integration from foundation model R&D to the commercialization of systems and terminal products, accelerating the transition from technological breakthroughs to a commercial closed loop. With the debut and subsequent mass production of STEPX Neo, StepFun is poised to set a new benchmark for the global AI terminal industry.

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