Alibaba and Honor plan to deepen their partnership on an operating system for AI-powered devices at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, according to people familiar with the matter.

Shenzhen-based Honor, spun off from Huawei in 2020, described Agentic OS as an operating system for devices centered on user intent, with an AI-agent-native core and a system linking multiple devices.

Public materials have not specified whether it would replace Android or sit on top of it.

The move would deepen a March 2025 collaboration in which Alibaba Cloud integrated Qwen Max, Qwen-VL, and Wan into Honor’s Magic7 smartphones and YOYO assistant.

That tie-up focused on multimodal AI and cloud-edge integration, rather than a co-developed operating system.

The partnership comes as Chinese companies push AI-centric phones.

StepFun, a Shanghai-based AI startup, said its StepX Neo runs Step AOS, which it said was rebuilt from Android, Linux, and real-time operating system (RTOS) software.

Public-facing device assistants in China also remain subject to 2023 rules on data handling, security, and labeling AI-generated content.

🔗 Source: South China Morning Post

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