Chinese e-commerce and AI giant Alibaba Group Holding has set up a high-level technology committee led by CEO Eddie Wu Yongming, as part of a broader restructuring to sharpen its focus on artificial intelligence amid intensifying competition. The Hangzhou-based company formed the Alibaba Group Technology Committee as part of its efforts to accelerate AI development, according to an internal letter from Wu to staff on Wednesday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The committee brings...
Chinese artificial intelligence company Zhipu AI open-sourced its latest flagship model, GLM-5.1, on Wednesday while raising application programming interface prices by 10 per cent, signalling a shift towards monetising advanced AI capabilities as competition with US rivals intensifies. The move marked Zhipu’s second price increase this year, following a broader overhaul in February that lifted rates for its coding subscription plans by more than 30 per cent. While the latest adjustment was more...
The latest bill proposed by US lawmakers to further restrict China’s access to advanced chipmaking equipment marks a fresh escalation in Washington’s efforts to throttle the country’s semiconductor ambitions, as it seeks to bring allies such as the Netherlands and Japan into closer alignment on export controls, analysts said. Introduced last week by Republican Representative Michael Baumgartner, the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls in Hardware (Match) Act aims to close “critical...
DeepSeek has introduced new “instant” and “expert” modes to its chatbot, the most significant update to its user interface since the Hangzhou-based start-up gained global recognition. The changes come ahead of the much-anticipated release of DeepSeek’s next-generation flagship model V4 this month, more than a year after its R1 version made it a household name. On Tuesday, the company added the two modes to its website and mobile app, giving users the choice of settings. Instant mode was designed...
China is ramping up efforts in the AI race, as tech giants Alibaba Group Holding and Huawei Technologies deploy massive computing clusters in the push to develop home-grown infrastructure. E-commerce giant Alibaba has announced the deployment of a 10,000-card intelligent computing cluster powered by the Zhenwu AI chips developed by its T-Head semiconductor design arm. Launched in collaboration with China Telecom in the Shaoguan data centre in Guangdong province, the “fully domestic” cluster was...
ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, has seen its valuation surge to a record high of more than US$600 billion after a proposed equity sale from one of the founding shareholders, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The deal aimed to transfer US$900 million worth of ByteDance shares, one of the sources said. The seller originally had the company’s valuation at US$550 billion, in line with an earlier proposal by General Atlantic, one of the firm’s earliest institutional...
China is looking to the ocean to power its artificial intelligence computing ambitions, as it seeks new ways to meet soaring demand for computing power through underwater data centres in eastern and southern China. Shanghai’s Lingang Special Area, a government-designated free-trade zone designed to attract advanced manufacturing and hi-tech industries, recently saw an underwater data centre (UDC) begin operation, marking the first such facility in the world to be directly linked to an offshore...
As the global memory industry rides an unprecedented “super cycle” fuelled by AI demand, China’s leading memory chipmakers are leveraging lower pricing and expanding production to capture a bigger market share, according to analysts. “Chinese manufacturers often enjoy a price advantage of more than 15 per cent for products of the same specifications, which is highly attractive to the price-sensitive general-purpose server and consumer markets,” said Arisa Liu, chief director and research fellow...
Rokid, a Hangzhou-based maker of smart glasses, is preparing to file for a Hong Kong listing as early as the end of April, according to sources familiar with the matter, as artificial intelligence-powered eyewear gains traction in the mainstream market. The planned listing comes as global and domestic technology groups including Meta Platforms and Apple, as well as China’s Alibaba Group Holding – through the brand name Quark – Baidu, Xiaomi and Huawei Technologies, all rush into the market....
US dollar-denominated funds could face more hurdles when investing in Chinese tech and biotech companies as Beijing adopts a stricter approach to companies seeking listings via offshore incorporated vehicles. Indicative of Chinese regulators’ caution in overseeing sensitive industries, industry sources say the move ensures that any sale of assets does not escape regulatory scrutiny. And for any offshore incorporated structures that are approved, the stock regulator requires listing applicants to...
Chinese tech companies are engaged in a public war of words as they compete to capitalise on US start-up Anthropic’s decision to pull its industry-leading Claude models from open-source AI agent tool OpenClaw. The development comes as AI agents have triggered a huge increase in demand for AI tokens – the core metric of AI usage – raising questions about the long-term ability of industry players to meet this demand amid a growing global crunch in computational power. On Sunday, Anthropic...
China’s hunt for semiconductor talent has intensified as Beijing aims to achieve artificial intelligence breakthroughs amid deepening tech rivalry with the US, but the plans have triggered fresh probes by Taiwanese authorities into talent poaching by mainland Chinese firms in what analysts describe as a “quiet tech war” over the human capital. A total of 11 new mainland Chinese firms were put under investigation for allegedly poaching semiconductor and other hi-tech talent, according to Taiwan’s...
Traditional corporate culture and hierarchies are slowing down artificial intelligence adoption in Chinese enterprises, leaving them trailing their US peers, even as China’s savvy consumers embrace AI agents at a breakneck pace, says Zack Kass, former head of go-to-market at OpenAI. China has a very “techno-centric consumer”, while the US has a very “techno-centric enterprise”, Kass told the South China Morning Post in a recent interview. Highlighting this contrast, Kass said typical Chinese...
Facebook owner Meta Platforms has recruited a Chinese industry veteran with experience across artificial intelligence, humanoid robots and extended reality to lead a new hardware team in its superintelligence unit. Xu Rui, a former product manager at Tencent Holdings and TikTok owner ByteDance, would lead a team developing AI devices separately from Meta’s Reality Labs division, which was responsible for the company’s popular smart glasses and virtual reality headsets, US outlet Business Insider...
Chinese ride-hailing company CaoCao, backed by Geely, is betting on a heavy-asset strategy to emerge as a leading robotaxi operator, with plans to deploy 100,000 autonomous vehicles by 2030 as competition intensifies and self-driving technology matures. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, CEO Gong Xin said the future of robotaxis hinged on an asset-management model built around a closed-loop “trinity” of vehicle manufacturing, autonomous driving technology and fleet...
Chinese ride-hailing company CaoCao, backed by Geely, is betting on a heavy-asset strategy to emerge as a leading robotaxi operator, with plans to deploy 100,000 autonomous vehicles by 2030 as competition intensifies and self-driving technology matures. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, CEO Gong Xin said the future of robotaxis hinged on an asset-management model built around a closed-loop “trinity” of vehicle manufacturing, autonomous driving technology and fleet...
There was a surprise guest speaker at Nvidia’s widely watched GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, last month: Yang Zhilin, the founder of Beijing-based Moonshot AI, the developer behind the Kimi family of foundational artificial intelligence models. Amid heated rhetoric about US-China AI competition, which some have likened to an “arms race”, the participation of a Chinese AI start-up’s CEO at the flagship event of American chipmaking giant Nvidia might have struck some as...
Chinese companies engaging in artificial intelligence activities are required to set up internal “AI ethics review committees” under new rules released by Beijing on Thursday, effective immediately. The notice comes as policymakers look to ensure that fast-paced AI progress can continue in a “healthy” manner amid growing consumer and enterprise adoption. Jointly released by 10 government bodies and institutions including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, National Development...
Tencent Holdings has launched a new OpenClaw tool for enterprises that promises easy deployment of the artificial intelligence agent as part of the Chinese internet giant’s efforts to capitalise on the “lobster” frenzy in the country. ClawPro, launched in public beta by Tencent’s cloud unit on Thursday, works as an AI agent management platform for enterprises, allowing them to deploy OpenClaw templates, select models and agents, track token consumption and manage security settings. Tencent said...
Xiaomi has raised prices on several smartphone models, joining a broader wave of increases across China’s handset makers as surging memory chip costs ripple through the global consumer electronics supply chain. The company said on Friday that prices for three models would rise by about 200 yuan (US$29), with the adjustments taking effect next Saturday. The move follows similar increases by domestic peers including Oppo, Vivo and Honor in March. Xiaomi attributed the hike to “continued sharp...
China is rolling out a campaign to sharply cut artificial intelligence computing costs for small businesses, as demand for processing power surges alongside a fresh round of price increases by domestic providers. The country plans to build an “inclusive computing service network” – offering broad coverage, lower costs and improved service quality – to reduce barriers for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking access to computing resources, according to a notice published by the...
Tesla has regained the global pure electric vehicle (EV) crown for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2024, after its deliveries rose 6.5 per cent year on year in the three months ending March. The modest increase was enough for the US carmaker to beat China’s EV king BYD, which posted a 25.5 per cent drop in sales during the first quarter of 2026. Tesla’s deliveries worldwide between January and March hit 358,023 units, it said in a statement on Thursday. Tesla builds only pure electric...
Chinese companies including Alibaba Cloud and Zhipu AI have opted not to open-source some of their latest artificial intelligence models as they look to capture the full value of their usage through official revenue generating channels. While none of the companies have said that they are moving away from their open-source strategies, the development reflects an industry trend where the most powerful models are growing in size, making them increasingly difficult to host on local hardware. This...
Less than a year after US artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic called out China as an “adversarial nation” and vowed to restrict the country’s access to its technologies, the company inadvertently released coding secrets, triggering a frenzy among Chinese developers. The leak occured after an Anthropic employee accidentally included the modified source code of Claude Code, the company’s sensational AI coding tool popular among developers worldwide, in a file within a software package...
OpenClaw, the open-source autonomous artificial intelligence agent, is stepping up efforts to tap into China’s user base as it works more closely with Chinese tech giants including Tencent Holdings and ByteDance. A version update of OpenClaw released on Tuesday included Tencent’s QQ, making the long-standing messaging app the first Chinese social media platform to be natively integrated with OpenClaw’s official platform. QQ bot, a versatile bridging service that connects the popular messaging...
CAS Space, a leading Chinese commercial rocket maker, has filed for a listing on Shanghai’s tech-focused Star Market, joining a growing queue of private space companies seeking capital as Beijing steps up support for the sector. Founded in 2018 and incubated by the Institute of Mechanics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the start-up plans to raise 4.18 billion yuan (US$600 million) to fund research and development of reusable heavy-lift rockets, spacecraft and liquid-fuel engines,...
As global supply volatility intensifies, Premier Li Qiang has called for faster development of a “new-type power system” to accelerate the green transition and expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the sector. During a three-day visit to the southwestern province of Sichuan, Li stressed the need to expand green electricity supply and optimise the energy mix to bolster security and support economic growth. He urged market players to explore new grid architectures, improve system-wide...
Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups Zhipu AI and MiniMax have shown early signs of sustainable commercialisation of their AI models, analysts said, as investors continue to pump up their Hong Kong stocks despite widening losses. That assessment comes as the companies reported their first earnings since their respective initial public offerings in early January, providing a glimpse into the business models of an industry still in its infancy globally. The South China Morning Post takes a...
China’s third-largest chip foundry, Nexchip Semiconductor, filed for a Hong Kong listing on Tuesday as domestic wafer fabs race to expand production capacity amid surging artificial intelligence demand and Beijing’s push for greater chip self-sufficiency. Nexchip, a smaller rival to SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor, is seeking a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, signalling the state-backed foundry’s latest effort to strengthen its position in China’s mature-node chipmaking sector. The move...
The breakdown of Chinese tech giant Baidu’s autonomous driving vehicles in Wuhan on Tuesday evening affected services and left many passengers stranded on highways with heavy traffic for hours, hurting the company’s autonomous driving ambitions as it moves to expand its robotaxi business globally. Phone calls for help from affected customers to the traffic police line in Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province, surged from 8.57pm, after many Apollo Go robotaxis stopped in the middle of the...
China’s Ganfeng Lithium, the world’s largest producer of lithium metal, is envisioning an “explosive growth” in the global energy storage system (ESS) market in 2026, spurred by higher prices of the key battery material and buoyant demand for renewable energy infrastructure. Executives including president Wang Xiaoshen told an investors’ conference on Tuesday that the global decarbonisation drive had created a strong and sustainable trajectory for Ganfeng, which swung from loss to profit last...
Shares of Hong Kong-listed UBTech jumped after the robotics firm reported a surge in 2025 revenue, driven by an explosive 23-fold rise in humanoid robot sales as China’s robotics sector moves into large-scale production. Revenue from full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots and related services reached 820 million yuan (US$119 million) last year, making it UBTech’s largest business line. That marked a 2,203 per cent increase from a low base of 35.6 million yuan in 2024, according to...
Hong Kong’s highly anticipated first batch of stablecoin licences did not materialise as expected by the end of March. Industry players said the delay may be caused by a slower-than-expected review process, adding that it could also be due to the regulators’ cautious stance towards launching the first batch of regulated stablecoin licences as the city seeks to cement its status as a digital-asset hub. “I don’t think [the delay] is caused by the market,” said Jack Poon, a member of the task force...
Huawei Technologies maintained “steady” recovery momentum in 2025, with its profit rising 8.6 per cent, as the Chinese telecommunications gear maker doubled down on chip development and smartphones in defiance of US sanctions. Net profit came in at 68 billion yuan (US$9.8 billion) last year, compared with 62.6 billion yuan a year earlier, according to the Shenzhen-based company’s annual report released on Tuesday. Total revenue in 2025 reached 880.9 billion yuan, up 2.2 per cent from 862.1...
China’s southern tech hub Shenzhen began operations of the country’s first 10,000-card intelligent computing cluster, built with advanced chips made by Huawei Technologies, in the latest sign of how the country is deepening its push for home-grown computing capabilities. Featuring a computing capacity of 11,000 petaflops, the new cluster, activated last week, is the country’s first 10,000-card intelligent computing cluster built with Huawei’s Ascend 910C AI chips, according to Shenzhen Special...
China’s southern tech hub Shenzhen began operations of the country’s first 10,000-card intelligent computing cluster, built with advanced chips made by Huawei Technologies, in the latest sign of how the country is deepening its push for home-grown computing capabilities. Featuring a computing capacity of 11,000 petaflops, the new cluster, activated last week, is the country’s first 10,000-card intelligent computing cluster built with Huawei’s Ascend 910C AI chips, according to Shenzhen Special...
Chinese artificial intelligence company Zhipu AI posted worse-than-expected annual revenue growth in its first earnings report since its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong in January. Revenue rose 131.9 per cent year on year to 724.33 million yuan (US$104.8 million) for the year ended December 2025, the Beijing-based company said on Tuesday, lagging an estimate of 756 million yuan by analysts polled by Bloomberg. Zhipu, the first foundational AI model start-up in the world to launch an...
Apple’s accidental roll-out on Tuesday of its highly anticipated Apple Intelligence feature in mainland China – which has yet to receive regulatory approval – before swiftly pulling it could raise the ire of regulators and expose the US tech giant to potential penalties, an industry expert warned. The brief release could have violated local rules on artificial intelligence security evaluations, algorithm filings and data protection, according to You Yunting, a Shanghai-based intellectual...
South Korea has become a focal point of Asia’s petrochemical crisis, a frontline economy suddenly forced to navigate the fallout from the Middle East turmoil while scrambling for alternatives. Its semiconductor and industrial sectors, already heavily dependent on imported naphtha, are now exposed to geopolitical shocks that are rippling across the region. South Korea relies on imports for about 45 per cent of its naphtha demand. About 77 per cent of those come from the Middle East. On Monday,...
Nasdaq-listed iQiyi, a Chinese online entertainment video provider backed by Baidu, has submitted a confidential application for a listing in Hong Kong, the company said on Monday. Details of the proposed listing have yet to be finalised, the company said, pending regulatory approvals from the Hong Kong stock exchange and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, as well as the company’s own final decision. “There is no assurance that the proposed listing will take place or when it may take...
Biren Technology and Iluvatar CoreX, two Chinese graphics processing unit (GPU) champions that are seen as potential alternatives to Nvidia, saw their revenues surge in 2025 amid China’s accelerated push for chip self-sufficiency, according to their first earnings reports since listing in January. Biren’s annual revenue surged 207.2 per cent from a year ago to 1.03 billion yuan (US$149 million), beating the consensus estimate of 954.5 million yuan, while its crosstown rival Iluvatar CoreX posted...
Chinese tech giants Xiaomi and Alibaba Group Holding have launched spring recruitment drives amid fierce competition for the talent driving the global artificial intelligence boom. The campaigns come as the smartphone and e-commerce giants, respectively, look to increasingly position themselves as AI-first firms, amid growing commercial pressures in their traditional businesses. In a Weibo post on Monday, Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun said the company’s global recruitment campaign would target...
Manycore Tech, a Hangzhou-based developer of spatial design software, has passed its listing hearing in Hong Kong, moving a step closer to an initial public offering (IPO) as it pushes deeper into what it calls “spatial intelligence” – the integration of artificial intelligence with the physical world. The company is one of Hangzhou’s “Six Little Dragons” – a group of rising start-ups that includes AI developer DeepSeek, robotics firms Unitree Robotics and Deep Robotics, Black Myth creator Game...
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek suffered a prolonged outage overnight that extended into early Monday morning, disrupting service for hundreds of millions of users, according to a company notice and user feedback. The Hangzhou-based AI lab’s namesake chatbot website and app were offline from Sunday evening, with the company continuing to investigate while issuing fixes from between 1am and 9am on Monday, according to service maintenance records the company published online. The...
Yuanjie Semiconductor Technology, a Chinese maker of laser chips for optical communications, has emerged as one of the mainland exchanges’ biggest beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom – with its shares rising nearly ninefold over the past year as it pursues a Hong Kong listing. The Shaanxi-based integrated device manufacturer, whose shares closed at 1,100 yuan on Friday, now ranks second by share price among mainland-listed companies, trailing only Kweichow Moutai at...
A string of Chinese analogue chipmakers have announced price increases in step with their international peers, as a broader pricing wave sweeps across the semiconductor supply chain – a shift that analysts say could hand China’s mature-node producers a rare window to gain ground. Novosense Microelectronics, SG Micro, Fortior Technology, Halo Microelectronics, Silan Micro and Kiwi Instruments are among the domestic firms recently raising prices, in line with global leaders including Texas...
ByteDance has bolstered its controversial video-generation model Seedance 2.0 with “advanced” watermarking and intellectual property (IP) protection guardrails ahead of its global roll-out, the TikTok owner has said. The much-anticipated international release comes amid intense scrutiny from Hollywood studios over alleged IP theft after numerous Seedance-generated videos featuring famous Hollywood actors and characters went viral in February. On Wednesday, ByteDance said its global safety and...
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are stepping up investments in their China wafer fabs as they race to boost supply amid a tightening memory chip market driven by demand for artificial intelligence computing, underscoring China’s continued role in semiconductor production despite US restrictions. Samsung Electronics invested 465.4 billion won (US$308.8 million) in its Xian chip plant in 2025, a 67.5 per cent increase from a year earlier, according to an annual report filed with South Korea’s...
On March 1, after Israel and the United States initiated attacks against Iran, Amazon Web Services reported drone strikes against data centre facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The strikes caused structural damage to the company’s infrastructure, impairing cloud services for those countries. Iran warned that US tech companies with Israeli links, including Google, Microsoft, Palantir, Nvidia and Oracle, were on Tehran’s list of “legitimate targets” for countermeasures. Strikes on...
Alibaba Group Holding is set to launch a new service that provides AI agents for millions of merchants on its Taobao and Tmall platforms, as the tech giant capitalises on the recent frenzy fuelled by OpenClaw to secure its lead in e-commerce. The new feature, slated for release by the end of March, will provide agentic AI services based on its merchant tool Business Advisor, aiming to give them a 24/7 autonomous “digital workforce” that can automate operation processes including offering...