SSPAI Morning Brief: “Rules on Pricing Behavior of Internet Platforms” Released

Morning Brief

“Rules on Pricing Behavior of Internet Platforms” Released
TikTok signs agreements with investors to establish a new U.S. joint venture
Airbus plans to migrate core business to Europe-based cloud services to avoid U.S. jurisdiction risks
Tesla wins final ruling; Musk’s record-breaking 2018 compensation package reinstated
Anna’s Archive announces completion of a large-scale backup of Spotify’s music catalog
Sam Altman explains the “red alert,” infrastructure plans, and hardware strategy in an interview
Rumors You Can Just Glance At

“Rules on Pricing Behavior of Internet Platforms” Released

On December 20, the National Development and Reform Commission, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the Cyberspace Administration of China jointly issued and released the Rules on Pricing Behavior of Internet Platforms. The Rules were previously open for public consultation from August 23 to September 22, 2025.

The main points of the Rules include—

Protecting operators’ autonomy in pricing. Platforms must not use technical means or their dominant position to impose unreasonable restrictions on operators within the platform, such as forcing “choose one of two,” mandating promotions, or restricting pricing on other channels. Platform fee standards must be open and transparent, and any adjustments to fees must solicit opinions in advance;
Regulating price labeling practices. Operators must clearly disclose product prices, service content, and additional fees (such as shipping). Where dynamic pricing or promotional activities are involved, pricing rules and promotion conditions must be prominently disclosed. Products ranked through bidding must be clearly labeled as advertisements;
Restraining price competition behaviors. Practices such as selling below cost, using algorithms to implement discriminatory pricing (“big data price discrimination”), price gouging, and price fraud are prohibited;
Protecting consumers’ price-related rights. Automatic renewals must provide a convenient cancellation option and issue prominent reminders before charges are made; bundled products must not be pre-selected by default.

Compared with the earlier draft for public comment, the final version expands the scope of protection for pricing autonomy by extending the prohibition on price comparison bans from other platforms to all sales channels, and further banning intervention measures such as search result demotion and algorithmic downgrading. The criteria for identifying price gouging have been relaxed: in non-emergency situations, price increases that do not match cost increases will no longer be automatically deemed price gouging. Requirements for informing users about automatic renewals are made stricter—beyond specifying the deduction time, amount, and any price changes, platforms must also clearly and prominently notify users of the cancellation method. For price labeling, the Rules further require prominent disclosure on service pages.

The Rules will take effect on April 10, 2026, with the aim of allowing operators sufficient time to make necessary compliance adjustments.

TikTok signs agreements with investors to establish a new U.S. joint venture

According to Caixin, on the afternoon of December 18 (U.S. time), TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew announced in an internal memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed agreements with three investors to establish a new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new entity will be named TikTok US Data Security Joint Venture LLC (TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC) and will be responsible for data protection, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurance in the United States. Matters related to the agreement are expected to be completed no later than January 22, 2026. Reaching this deal also means that TikTok will avoid being banned in the U.S.

Under the agreement, ByteDance and TikTok will continue to own the intellectual property rights to the core algorithms and will license them to TikTok USDS for use within the United States. Other TikTok entities in the U.S. (wholly owned by ByteDance) will continue to handle commercial activities such as e-commerce, advertising, and marketing operations, as well as maintaining global interoperability of TikTok products.

TikTok USDS will be 19.9% owned by ByteDance, making it the largest single shareholder in the new joint venture. ByteDance’s current U.S. and global shareholders will collectively hold 30.1%, while the new investors will hold 50%. Among them, Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund MGX will each hold a 15% stake. The company will have a seven-member board of directors: ByteDance will occupy one seat, ByteDance’s existing U.S. and global shareholders will hold two seats, the new investors will hold three seats, and the remaining seat will be filled by an independent director appointed by the board.

Previously, on September 25, Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office approving the transaction that allows TikTok to continue operating in the United States. The executive order also granted TikTok a 120-day exemption period during which it would not face penalties. At the same time, Trump retained the authority to issue further orders on the matter if necessary to safeguard national security.

Airbus plans to migrate core business to Europe-based cloud services to avoid U.S. jurisdiction risks

According to The Register, Airbus is preparing to launch a major tender to migrate its core mission-critical operations to Europe-based cloud platforms with “digital sovereignty,” in a bid to reduce its reliance on U.S. cloud service providers. The contract is expected to be worth more than €50 million and span a period of up to 10 years. The migration will cover systems such as ERP, manufacturing execution systems (MES), and lifecycle management systems involving sensitive aircraft design secrets. The tender is scheduled to open in January next year, with a final supplier expected to be selected before the summer.

Catherine Jestin, Executive Vice President of Digital at Airbus, emphasized that the move is intended to ensure that extremely sensitive information related to national and European security remains fully under European control. Beyond market factors—such as software vendors like SAP shifting their technological focus to the cloud—geopolitical risks are the primary driver. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House unsettling transatlantic trade relations, and the U.S. CLOUD Act allowing American law enforcement to access overseas data held by U.S. companies, concerns over data sovereignty among European enterprises have been intensifying.

Although U.S. giants such as Microsoft and AWS offer compliance solutions, Microsoft has previously acknowledged in a French court that it cannot fully guarantee exemption from U.S. law. Additionally, reports that the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Chief Prosecutor once had services cut off by Microsoft due to U.S. sanctions have further heightened Airbus’s concerns about business continuity. At present, Airbus is awaiting clarification from European regulators on whether it can truly obtain protection from the extraterritorial reach of foreign laws.

Finding a suitable European provider, however, remains a challenge. Jestin noted that, given the relatively limited scale and technological maturity of European cloud service providers, there is only about an 80% chance of finding a satisfactory solution. These stringent requirements will not only test the technical capacity of Europe’s cloud vendors but also push them to accelerate industry collaboration in order to meet Airbus’s timeline.

Tesla wins final ruling; Musk’s record-breaking 2018 compensation package reinstated

On December 19, the Delaware Supreme Court issued a ruling overturning a lower court decision that had previously voided Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 compensation plan. The record-setting equity incentive plan was valued at approximately $56 billion at the time of vesting. The Supreme Court held that the Delaware Court of Chancery’s remedy—outright cancellation of the plan—was “overly extreme” and failed to give Tesla an opportunity to propose a reasonable alternative form of compensation. The court therefore reinstated the plan and awarded only $1 in nominal damages.

Back in 2018, Tesla’s board approved a ten-year equity incentive plan under which Musk, upon achieving a series of market-capitalization and operational milestones, would be entitled to purchase roughly 304 million Tesla shares at a deeply discounted price of $23.33 per share. During the plan’s term, Musk would receive no other compensation. A minority shareholder later filed suit, alleging that Musk and Tesla’s board breached their fiduciary duties. In January 2024, the lower court ruled that the compensation-setting process suffered from “serious defects,” finding that the board lacked independence, was controlled by Musk, and failed to adequately disclose key information to shareholders—ordering the plan’s rescission.

Although the compensation plan has now been reinstated, experts note that the Supreme Court’s ruling primarily addressed the proportionality of the punishment—namely, rescinding the plan—rather than overturning the lower court’s factual findings that Musk was a controlling shareholder and that the compensation process was unfair. As such, the court preserved the negative assessment of Tesla’s corporate governance and merely corrected the remedial approach.

Following the earlier loss, Musk moved Tesla’s corporate domicile from Delaware to Texas and pushed shareholders to reapprove the plan in subsequent votes. With the 2018 plan reinstated, Tesla’s contingency compensation plan—prepared to mitigate the risk of an adverse outcome—immediately became void. Notably, Tesla shareholders also approved an even larger 2025 compensation incentive plan this November; if its targets are met over the next decade, the new plan’s total value could reach as high as $1 trillion.

Anna’s Archive announces completion of a large-scale backup of Spotify’s music catalog

On December 20, the well-known piracy archive Anna’s Archive announced that it has successfully completed a large-scale backup of streaming giant Spotify’s music library. The site claims the project to be the world’s first “fully open” music preservation archive, aiming to ensure the permanent survival of musical culture through distributed storage. The release totals roughly 300 TB of data, including metadata for 256 million tracks and 86 million audio files, covering approximately 99.6% of Spotify’s total user listening volume. Anna’s Archive did not disclose the source of the files.

The released metadata database contains 186 million unique ISRCs (International Standard Recording Codes). By comparison, the mainstream open database MusicBrainz currently holds only about 5 million unique ISRCs. This means Anna’s Archive has built the largest publicly accessible music metadata index in the world.

Previously, Anna’s Archive focused primarily on the preservation of books and academic papers. The team stated that this effort was intended to fill gaps in existing archiving practices—namely, the tendency of audiophile-driven archives to prioritize lossless audio quality (resulting in massive file sizes that are difficult to mirror), as well as an overemphasis on popular works at the expense of “long-tail” music. Anna’s Archive emphasized that many niche tracks on Spotify have extremely small audiences and lack dedicated enthusiast maintenance; once streaming platforms remove them or data loss occurs, these “cultural artifacts” risk disappearing permanently.

According to the release plan, the metadata is already online, while the audio files, album artwork, and differential patches used to reconstruct original files will be released in stages based on popularity. At present, the project is intended primarily for archival purposes and does not yet support online searching or downloading of individual tracks.

Sam Altman explains the “red alert,” infrastructure plans, and hardware strategy in an interview

Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared on the Big Technology Podcast, confirming that Google’s recent release of the Gemini 3 model did indeed trigger an internal “Code Red” at OpenAI. This marked the company’s second time entering such an emergency state this year—the first being in response to competitive pressure from the Chinese AI company DeepSeek. Despite the intense competition, Altman revealed that ChatGPT’s weekly active users have surged from 400 million at the beginning of the year to 800 million. He stressed that OpenAI’s approach is not purely defensive, but rather focused on maintaining leadership through rapid iteration. The recently released GPT-5.2 model is widely regarded as the strongest reasoning model to date, excelling in scientific research and enterprise-level tasks.

On the product ecosystem, Altman said OpenAI is working to move beyond the single chatbot paradigm. He expressed reservations about Google’s strategy of embedding AI into existing search and office suites, arguing that the future lies in “native AI” products. As for the much-discussed hardware plans, Altman disclosed that OpenAI is developing a family of devices centered on proactive perception and environmental understanding, aiming to break free from the interaction limits imposed by traditional screens and keyboards.

To support its massive computing needs, Altman confirmed infrastructure investment commitments totaling as much as $14 trillion. This enormous sum will be allocated over the long term across chips, data centers, and energy infrastructure. Although OpenAI currently expects annual revenue to reach $20 billion, the company remains unprofitable in the short term due to high training costs. Regarding financial sustainability, Altman said that as inference costs account for a larger share and enterprise business scales up, revenue will eventually cover expenses. On the question of going public, he admitted that while he is not particularly eager to become the CEO of a public company, constraints related to shareholder limits and capital requirements mean that an IPO will be an unavoidable option.

Altman defined the core of the next generation of AI as “scientific discovery capability,” and previewed the release of a significantly improved model built on this foundation in the first quarter of 2026. As for the definition of artificial general intelligence (AGI), he proposed a new benchmark—“superintelligence”—where AI systems must surpass human capabilities when taking on complex roles such as serving as a company CEO or a national leader.

Rumors You Can Just Glance At

According to Weibo user @i冰宇宙, Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series is confirmed to be announced in February, with an expected release in March. This would be later than the launch schedule of recent years.
Some users have noticed that the official WeChat account of Computer Fan magazine has recently been deactivated, and its official website is no longer accessible. Computer Fan was first founded in 1993.
On December 20, Xiaomi Brand General Manager Lu Weibing said during a livestream that “the Xiaomi 17 Ultra will definitely see a price increase—and I think it will be a fairly significant one. But compared with the rise in memory costs, I still think it’s relatively modest.” When the Xiaomi 15 Ultra was released, the company had previously stated that it would be the “last time at 6,499 yuan.” Lu explained that this assessment did not fully take memory costs into account, and was based only on increases in processor and camera costs. The 17 Ultra, however, also factors in rising memory prices, with increases far exceeding those of processors and cameras. He added that since the end of 2022, AI has experienced explosive growth, and based on overall projections, memory costs are expected to continue rising through 2025, 2026, and 2027.

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