Chinese Startup StepFun Launches a Phone Built Around an AI Agent, Not Apps

In brief

• StepFun launched the STEPX Neo on Oct. 13, a 3,999-yuan phone, about $560, running its Step AOS 1.0 operating system with a built-in AI agent called Amoo.
• Pre-orders opened on JD.com, Tmall and Douyin, and the price includes 12 months of AI access at 100 billion tokens a month.
• Nearly 100 partners including Alipay and Tencent have signed on, after ByteDance's Doubao phone agent drew blocks from major Chinese apps in December.

StepFun, a Chinese AI startup backed by Tencent, launched the STEPX Neo, a phone whose AI agent is built into the operating system itself instead of sitting in an app.

The operating system is the core software that runs a phone, like iOS or Android. Pre-orders opened that evening at 3,999 yuan, about $560, with a first sales event on Oct. 16.

Instead of opening a ride-hailing app, typing an address and picking a car, you tell the phone where you want to go, and its agent—software that takes a goal and carries it out on its own—handles the remaining steps.

StepFun told the launch audience that in the agent era AI is no longer an add-on to a smartphone but the product itself.

StepFun first showed the agent, the operating system, and the STEPX brand in Shanghai on July 13, without a price or sales date. The company said at the time that conventional smartphone software was never built for autonomous task execution.