Alibaba Group Holding has slashed prices for its flagship Qwen AI models by up to 80 per cent on its Qoder agentic coding platform, offering an aggressive discount to hook global developers to compete with US and Chinese rivals like Anthropic and Zhipu AI.
The e-commerce and cloud giant said on X on Tuesday that it was cutting the price of its flagship Qwen3.7-Max model by 80 per cent and its smaller Qwen3.7-Plus model by 60 per cent for international users from 10pm to 8am Beijing time. The...

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China’s telecoms giants are pushing for “air-space-ground-sea” networks amid Beijing’s push to expand artificial intelligence infrastructure, as SpaceX’s market debut has ignited the industry’s focus beyond the Earth.
At the opening of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai on Wednesday, telecommunications executives framed the next phase of infrastructure as one that needs to encompass both the skies and oceans to meet skyrocketing demand for AI computing.
Wang Tao, rotating chairman of...

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Morgan Stanley has again raised its forecast for China’s humanoid robot shipments this year, lifting its estimate to 50,000 units from 28,000 as commercial validation, policy support and supply-chain momentum accelerate adoption.
The investment bank had already doubled its projection to 28,000 units in January. In a report published on Tuesday, it said the latest upgrade reflected a growing number of Chinese companies, including electric-vehicle maker Xpeng, announcing plans for mass production...

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China Telecom has named the winners of a multibillion-dollar high-performance server procurement programme, handing a major victory to domestic CPU chip companies like Huawei Technologies as state firms rapidly replace US technology with domestic hardware.
The deal, which covers China Telecom’s needs for 2026 and 2027, called for 40,000 high-performance servers split into two packages, according to notices on its procurement platform on Tuesday. While the final price tag was not made public,...

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Luxshare Precision Industry, a key player in Apple’s AirPods and iPhone supply chains, passed a listing hearing for Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), joining a wave of mainland Chinese technology manufacturing giants seeking diversified capital in the city.
The Shenzhen-listed firm cleared the regulatory hurdle for a Hong Kong listing on Tuesday, days after receiving the green light from the China Securities Regulatory Commission for the offshore plan.
The deal counts Citic Securities,...

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For anyone closely watching the semiconductor industry, the recent saga around ASML’s denial of possible EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography shipments to China, in an apparent response to US concern, may sound almost absurd at first.
The machine at the centre of the discussion is not a laptop-sized piece of equipment that can be easily packed into a shipping carton. ASML’s EUV lithography systems weigh about 180 tonnes, contain a vast number of precision components, are shipped to customers in...

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Medical AI from China has reached new milestones, with a teleoperated surgical robot gaining access to the European Union market and a clinical-grade model topping a major healthcare benchmark developed by OpenAI.
Shanghai MicroPort MedBot said its Toumai Remote robot, which allowed surgeons to remotely conduct laparoscopic surgeries, had received the “CE mark” from the European Union, a mandatory requirement to enter the market, according to its Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Monday.
The...

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Bankers working for JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong must have been miffed when they were shut off from using artificial intelligence (AI) models from Anthropic, a pioneering American firm in the field.
Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase pulled the plug in April and last week respectively, based on a strict interpretation of Anthropic’s terms of use, which reflect Washington’s stringent restrictions on China’s access to frontier American AI models.
The banks’ decisions are seen as a...

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Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek is rapidly expanding its new Harness team as it pushes itself into the booming AI agent market, joining the high-stakes global race to transform foundational language models into fully autonomous products.
Cui Tianyi, the former Jane Street quantitative trading expert who joined DeepSeek in March to head the Harness team, said on social media platform X on Saturday that the newly formed group was facing an acute shortage of talent despite its...

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A global suspension of Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 – triggered by Washington’s decision to block foreign access to what is widely regarded as the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence model – has prompted developers and businesses around the world to reassess their dependence on US technology, creating an opportunity for increasingly capable Chinese rivals.
Fable 5, unveiled on June 9 as the public-facing version of Anthropic’s powerful Claude Mythos model, remains unavailable worldwide...

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A former Google engineer, Yang approached entrepreneurship by asking what genuine value could be created for consumers. Creating real value for customers has long been one of the main drivers behind his entrepreneurial journey.
From a modest beginning as a laptop batteries maker, the company has since grown into a global smart hardware business serving consumers in more than 180 countries and regions.
Today, Anker...

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Alibaba Group Holding’s chip design unit T-Head has more than tripled its capital base, as the tech giant doubles down on efforts to become a domestic semiconductor powerhouse amid the artificial intelligence boom and China’s chip self-sufficiency drive.
Shanghai-headquartered T-Head last week increased its registered capital to 1 billion yuan (US$148 million) from 300 million yuan, according to information released by Chinese corporate registry data provider Qichacha.
The capital injection, the...

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A group of Chinese developers has filed a complaint against Apple over its allegedly “unfair” App Store commission rates to China’s market watchdog, in a fresh challenge to the US tech giant’s lucrative smartphone ecosystem.
The 48 iOS developers claimed that Apple failed to fulfil its promise to offer the lowest commission rate to the Chinese market, according to an open letter to China’s State Administration for Market Regulation.
The developers asked the antitrust regulator to investigate and...

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The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in our daily lives has become a constant topic of worldwide conversation. Its most proclaimed everyday benefits of the technology include boosting efficiency, productivity and decision-making, but developing and deploying it is a much more complicated matter.
The next phase of its adoption will be defined not by access to the technology, but by the ability to translate AI capabilities into real-world outcomes. In education and healthcare,...

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By 2029, there will be more than 1 billion agentic artificial intelligence (AI) agents in use around the world — a bold prediction made by IT market intelligence giant International Data Corporation. The number is astonishing, as it not only represents a 40-fold increase compared to 2025 but also accounts for roughly one-eighth of the global population. Yet despite widespread curiosity about agentic AI — where machines...

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An Alibaba Group Holding executive has urged hard work and endurance in an internal blog post after founder Jack Ma Yun and top executives gathered for a rice-planting team-building event, as the Chinese tech giant sharpens its artificial intelligence strategies.
“The laws of the fields are very simple: when the season arrives, you must plant when it’s time to plant, and endure when it’s time to endure,” Liu Zhenfei, Alibaba partner and chairman of mapping service Amap, wrote in an article...

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A Chinese AI model capable of matching Anthropic’s flagship Claude Fable 5 could arrive before the end of this year, according to the founder of Zhipu AI, escalating the global frontier model race after the release of Zhipu’s GLM-5.2.
The prediction emerged from a rare online exchange between Zhipu founder and chief scientist Tang Jie and US tech trillionaire Elon Musk, sparking fresh debate over the narrowing artificial intelligence gap between the US and China.
On social media platform X last...

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The fierce battle among China’s food delivery giants has moved beyond aggressive discounting, with market leader Meituan accused of paying merchants to provide negative information about a major rival, according to an investigative report by state-owned newspaper Shanghai Securities News.
The controversy dates back to October 2025, when Beijing’s market regulator launched a campaign to curb unhealthy competition and price wars in the food delivery sector. The newspaper reported that Meituan paid...

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Two major players in China’s multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) supply chain are seeking Hong Kong listings, betting that a global surge in demand for the tiny electronic components powering artificial intelligence infrastructure will continue to fuel growth.
Chaozhou Three-Circle, one of China’s largest MLCC manufacturers and already listed in Shenzhen, passed its listing hearing at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) last week ahead of an initial public offering sponsored by China Galaxy...

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The market capitalisation of Hong Kong-listed artificial intelligence pioneer Zhipu AI surpassed HK$1 trillion (US$128 billion) on Monday, fuelled by investor optimism as the company goes head-to-head with its American rivals.
Shares of Zhipu, which trades under the name Knowledge Atlas Technology, skyrocketed as much as 42 per cent on Monday morning to a peak of HK$2,980.
They subsequently retreated to a gain of 15.1 per cent, ending the day at HK$2,410. The stock has now surged more than 1,700...

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Apple supplier Lingyi iTech is looking beyond smartphones, seeking to raise up to HK$8.3 billion (US$1.1 billion) in a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) to fund an ambitious expansion into artificial intelligence hardware and humanoid robotics.
The Shenzhen-listed electronic components maker is expected to debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday after offering 811.8 million shares at a maximum price of HK$10.18 each, according to a company filing.
The subscription period opened...

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For decades, fusion energy has sat at the edge of humanity’s clean-energy imagination – a promise of virtually limitless power that always seems just out of reach. But for Xie Huasheng, a fusion theorist and plasma simulation scientist, the industry finally has a tangible way to shorten its costly trial-and-error cycle: better software.
“Fusion simulation software has long faced an ‘impossible triangle’,” Xie said. Existing tools, he argued, tend to be either accurate but computationally...

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Cross-border biotech deals between China and the United States are becoming more complicated and could face a modest slowdown as Washington steps up efforts to restrict investment and technology transfers, according to industry analysts.
“There will be more geopolitical scrutiny going forward. This scrutiny may lead to slightly fewer deals than without it,” said Diederik Stadig, senior healthcare economist at ING Research.
Despite the growing regulatory hurdles, Stadig said the broader trend of...

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Recent reports highlighting labour abuses aboard vessels operating in fisheries certified under internationally recognised sustainability standards have reignited debate about a critical blind spot in seafood governance.
In April, the International Transport Workers’ Federation identified 80 cases of labour abuse involving 72 vessels linked to 25 fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council across the world, casting doubt on whether seafood sustainability efforts are paying sufficient...

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Last year, it was memory chips. This year, the hottest commodity in Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei electronics market is a component no larger than a postage stamp.
Chinese vendors of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) are riding a massive wave of soaring prices driven by the global artificial intelligence boom.
Because these minuscule components are vital for regulating electric currents, global manufacturing lines are scrambling to keep up with skyrocketing demand from AI server clusters and...

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Alibaba Group delivered its strongest defence yet of an “all in” artificial intelligence strategy on Thursday, with chairman Joe Tsai arguing that AI could ultimately represent a US$50 trillion market and vowing to invest across the industry’s entire value chain rather than bet on a single winner.
Speaking at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris, Tsai said Alibaba was pursuing a “full-stack” strategy spanning chips, cloud infrastructure, foundation models and consumer applications,...

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Chinese authorities will promote the further integration of AI and consumption, according to a plan released by the Ministry of Commerce and seven other ministries.
It includes 17 new measures that aim to create new drivers of consumption growth by embedding artificial intelligence in consumer goods, services and the retail and commerce sectors through new smart products, robots, subsidies, infrastructure and standards.
“Accelerating the development of ‘AI Plus Consumption’ helps create new...

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It seems that not a day passes without fevered headlines about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on future jobs. Alarm and confusion are everywhere – from young people trying to enter the job market to AI specialists worried their role is about to be usurped by AI itself to accountants and lawyers watching AI gobble up roles that until recently justified high fees and salaries.
Panic is warranted, not just over the increasingly rapid encroachment of AI into every part of our personal...

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Chinese artificial intelligence developers are accelerating their push into massive foundation models with more than a trillion parameters, just as Washington moves to block foreign access to leading US software through unprecedented export controls.
Parameters serve as a primary measure of an AI’s capabilities. Chinese companies have been looking to narrow the gap with leading US rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, which continue to aggressively expand the size of their top models.
The depth of...

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An artificial intelligence model recently deployed at the Hong Kong Observatory and mainland China’s National Meteorological Centre can solve one of the toughest challenges in weather forecasting: predicting when a typhoon will rapidly intensify.
Li Qinglan, a professor at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) who is leading the project, said the system was installed around three weeks ago and had provided “real-time updates on the progression of Typhoon Jangmi”.
Jangmi, which...

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While the US holds the crown for cutting-edge chips, China’s advantages in energy and industrial applications could ultimately erode America’s artificial intelligence “moat”, according to a leading Chinese scholar.
Li Cheng, founding director of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World (CCCW) at the University of Hong Kong, said in a co-authored paper on Wednesday that Beijing could dismantle Washington’s AI dominance within the next 10 to 20 years.
“The US AI moat still has a strategic...

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As Chinese technology giant ByteDance accelerates its shift towards domestic chips for artificial intelligence workloads, a few smaller domestic suppliers stand to benefit – if they can deliver at scale amid a void left by Nvidia due to regulatory hurdles.
The Beijing-based owner of TikTok is considering turning to a handful of so-called tier-two chipmakers in China – smaller rivals to Huawei Technologies and Cambricon Technologies – for its cloud infrastructure, according to sources and...

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Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek closed its first-ever external fundraising in an unusual and high-stakes deal that could not only reshape the country’s AI landscape but also offer a rare glimpse into how one of China’s most valuable AI start-ups will navigate its next phase of growth, sources and analysts said.
Hangzhou-based DeepSeek now has a post-investment value of about 400 billion yuan (US$59.2 billion) after raising around 50 billion yuan in a Series A round, one source...

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The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) has clarified rules for unprofitable artificial intelligence model developers wanting to go public, as China’s large language model (LLM) firms scramble for fresh capital in an intense race with US labs.
LLM developers can go public on the Shanghai bourse’s Star Market under a set of listing standards that require them to have an anticipated market cap of at least 4 billion yuan (US$591 million), as well as meeting certain criteria in terms of market potential,...

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Alibaba Cloud announced on Wednesday that it has launched its first data centres in France, as it continues to expand its footprint in Europe amid growing calls on the continent for data sovereignty.
The move came as a response to increasing demand from customers in the region, the cloud computing services unit of Alibaba Group Holding said in a statement.
“The expansion of our cloud infrastructure into France reinforces our ongoing commitment to empowering European businesses with sovereign,...

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Chinese lithography and integrated circuit manufacturer Circuit Fabology Microelectronics Equipment (CFMEE) is set to launch a Hong Kong listing next week, as China continues its drive for semiconductor self-sufficiency amid US sanctions.
The company, based in Hefei, Anhui province, said on Wednesday that it would offer more than 12.8 million H shares globally at a price range of HK$240.09 to HK$252.73 apiece, raising up to HK$3.2 billion (US$410 million).
The offer period will run until next...

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Chinese authorities introduced draft regulations on Wednesday to crack down on the misuse of subsidies by food-delivery platforms, as Beijing seeks to rein in the sector’s intense competition.
The proposed rules, open for public comment until July 17, identify several practices that would be banned, including using subsidies to disrupt the market and selling goods at a loss, according to a statement from the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR).
“China’s food-delivery platforms...

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Europe should welcome more Chinese investment and deepen industrial partnerships with China as it seeks to reduce its dependence on US technology and finance the industries of the future, according to one of the architects of the euro.
Christian Noyer, a founding vice-president of the European Central Bank, former governor of the Bank of France and lead author of a landmark proposal to integrate the continent’s capital markets, said Europe should remain open to Chinese investment as it sought...

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Riding on a buoyant stock market for artificial intelligence hardware components, Kingboard Holdings plans to raise HK$11.77 billion (US$1.5 billion) by selling a stake in its listed subsidiary, Kingboard Laminates Holdings, one of the world’s biggest makers of laminate materials used in circuit boards for AI servers.
The company said the proceeds would be used to expand business and production capacity to meet surging demand.
The fundraising comes as AI server backlogs hit record highs at major...

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Saudi Arabia signed housing and construction agreements worth 1.9 billion riyals (US$507 million) with Chinese partners including China State Construction Engineering during a visit to China by its housing minister, as Riyadh deepens cooperation with Beijing on urban development projects.
Speaking at a signing ceremony on Monday evening in Shenzhen, Minister of Municipalities and Housing Majid Al-Hogail said Saudi Arabia was accelerating housing and urban-development projects under its Vision...

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Chinese artificial intelligence models have become increasingly competitive with their US peers, but the country’s AI hardware still lags significantly behind. While domestic chips are now widely adopted for model inference, none of China’s top models are known to have been pre-trained on homegrown silicon.
To understand this gap, it helps to look at the three stages of AI model development. First is pre-training, the most computationally demanding phase, where a model feeds on massive data sets...

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Many people believe Chinese artificial intelligence models are leading the global tech race – even in countries considered key US allies – according to a new poll by the London-based consultancy Public First.
However, the poll also revealed that China lags in trust regarding its AI models.
The survey, which covered over 18,000 people across 15 countries, found that respondents from 11 nations acknowledged China’s AI leadership. These included Canada, Britain and France, where at least 40 per...

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A new front has opened in China’s electric-vehicle tech war as carmakers design their own smart-driving chips, turning custom silicon into the industry’s weapon of choice in the world’s largest auto market.
The latest salvo came on Monday after Li Auto unveiled the Mach M100, a 5-nanometre artificial-intelligence chip tailored for autonomous driving.
Designed for the carmaker’s new L9 Livis SUV model, the chip displayed single-unit computing power of 1,280 trillion operations per second (TOPS) –...

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Billionaire Li Shufu, owner and chairman of Geely Auto, China’s second-largest carmaker, plans to bring the Superbike World Championship (WSBK) to the country, banking on the success of a home-grown motorcycle brand in competition.
The move marked Geely’s latest step to sharpen its image as an international marque with advanced technologies and new models, according to analysts.
Li and Zhang Xue, owner of ZXMOTO, agreed to jointly promote China’s hosting of the WSBK during their appearance on...

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Ant Group has unveiled the biggest overhaul of Alipay in two decades, transforming its ubiquitous mobile-payment app into a native AI platform with autonomous agents, as it strives to dominate China’s next-generation internet gateway.
A trial version of the flagship app now features an interactive assistant named “Ah Bao”, marking a strategic pivot from a traditional digital wallet into an AI-driven ecosystem.
Accessible via a right swipe on the homepage, the new interface allows users to access...

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A price war is unfolding in China’s crowded artificial intelligence sector as companies cut rates or dangle promotions at a pivotal moment when falling costs and converging model capabilities are ratcheting up the competitive pressure, according to analysts.
TikTok parent ByteDance and Shenzhen-based video gaming giant Tencent Holdings are the latest to launch AI price offensives.
“China’s AI model landscape is vibrant and intensely competitive, with limited capability gaps across incumbents,”...

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Alibaba Group Holding has launched its first suite of artificial intelligence models for robots, joining a global race to move AI out of chatbot windows and into the physical world.
The Hangzhou-based tech giant on Tuesday introduced the Qwen Robot Suite, marking its latest foray into “embodied AI” – machines that can perceive, reason and interact with physical environments.
Developed by Alibaba’s AI research unit, Tongyi Lab, the suite has already entered pilot testing with selected Alibaba...

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They’ve been described as the “next frontier” of artificial intelligence (AI) – world models that go beyond large language models (LLMs) by simulating the physical environment. And in this emerging field, China has an edge over the United States.
World models that understand the physical laws of the universe are already being used to train AI systems with embodied intelligence such as robots and self-driving vehicles. China has deployed such systems far more widely than the US – and this month,...

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Investors will soon need to contend with a side effect of Hong Kong’s initial public offering (IPO) boom over the past year, as an unprecedented number of shares are expected to flood the market once lock-up restrictions expire.
Over the next 12 months, shares worth US$274 billion could potentially be freed, including those from the city’s hottest IPOs such as MiniMax Group and Knowledge Atlas Technology, according to Goldman Sachs.
Investors including SPI Asset Management said the surge in...

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