Chinese artificial-intelligence startup StepFun has launched a smartphone designed around an operating-system-level AI agent rather than apps, adding to a growing effort in China to make autonomous software a central part of the mobile experience.
The STEPX Neo went on sale for pre-orders on Oct. 13 at 3,999 yuan, or about $560. Pre-orders opened through JD.com, Tmall and Douyin, with the first sales event scheduled for Oct. 16. The price includes one year of access to StepFun’s STEPX Token Plan, offering 100 billion tokens per month. StepFun has not disclosed the cost of the AI service after that first year.
According to Decrypt, the phone runs Step AOS 1.0, an operating system developed around StepFun’s built-in agent, Amoo. The company’s pitch is that users should be able to give the phone a goal and let the agent complete the necessary steps, instead of opening several applications and operating each one manually.
A phone designed for autonomous tasks
For example, a user could tell the device where they want to go and allow Amoo to handle the process of arranging a ride. On a conventional smartphone, that task would normally involve opening a ride-hailing service, entering an address and selecting a vehicle.
StepFun says Step AOS was built from the ground up for this type of interaction. The system includes long-term memory, task scheduling and security controls at its base layer. The company describes it as a combination of Android, Linux and real-time operating-system components.
The phone still offers a conventional app grid, but users also receive a separate interface for Amoo. Step AOS divides functions such as messaging, files, settings and applications into smaller components that the agent can call directly. It uses Model Context Protocol, or MCP, a shared standard intended to allow AI systems to connect with other software.
Amoo maintains two types of memory: one for user information, habits and preferences, and another for knowledge gained while performing tasks. Basic requests, such as setting an alarm, can be handled by a smaller model on the device, including in some cases when the phone is offline. More complicated requests involving several applications are sent to a larger cloud-based model.
A second MiniLED display on the rear of the phone shows the actions Amoo is taking. StepFun presented the device as a shift in the role of AI, arguing that the agent should be the core product of the smartphone rather than an additional feature inside an existing mobile operating system.
App partnerships are central to the approach
Nearly 100 companies and products have signed on to support Amoo, including Alipay, Tencent, Ctrip, Didi and Meituan. Payments, travel bookings and content creation remain completed by those companies’ own platforms, while Amoo is intended to coordinate the steps required to use them.
That model differs from an approach in which an agent views a phone screen and imitates a user’s taps and clicks. The distinction is significant because an operating-system-level agent needs reliable connections to the services it controls. StepFun’s partnerships are designed to provide those connections directly through the participating platforms.
The launch also comes after ByteDance’s Doubao phone agent encountered blocks from major Chinese applications in December. The source material does not specify which applications imposed those blocks, but the episode highlights the practical challenge of allowing an AI system to act across services that it does not operate itself.
StepFun first showed Amoo, Step AOS and the STEPX brand in Shanghai on July 13, without announcing a price or sales date. The company said conventional smartphone software had not been designed for autonomous task execution.
StepFun’s AI model background and market picture
StepFun was founded in 2023 by former Microsoft vice president Jiang Daxin. The company develops its own large language models, the type of AI systems used for generating and understanding language.
Its flagship Step 5 Preview was released in September with 600 billion parameters, the internal values adjusted during training, with 27 billion active at any one time. The model can process up to 1 million tokens in a single input. StepFun also released the smaller Step 3.5 Flash earlier this year under the open-source Apache 2.0 license.
The STEPX Neo’s bundled AI allowance is therefore a notable part of the purchase package: buyers receive 12 months of access to 100 billion tokens each month, although the company has not said how much continued access will cost once the included period ends.
Moneyiar market data at the stated times shows the following broader digital-asset picture:
- Neo (NEO) was priced at $2.2246737436 at 21:48 on Oct. 17, 2026, down 4.66% over 24 hours and 13.89% over seven days.
- OpenLedger (OPEN) stood at $0.1014754745 at 00:24 on Oct. 15, down 1.04% over 24 hours and 10.16% over seven days.
- FUNToken (FUN) was $0.0088070173 at 21:49 on Oct. 17, up 0.63% over 24 hours and 0.79% over seven days.
- ONEchain (ONE) traded at $0.099968065 at 21:48 on Oct. 17, down 4.41% over 24 hours and 26.15% over seven days.
These market figures are Moneyiar data and are separate from StepFun’s phone launch.
