News/China
Chinese brainiac AI runs 100x faster without Nvidia chips
Chinese scientists claim to have developed SpikingBrain1.0, the world's first "brain-like" AI large language model that mimics human neural firing patterns to reduce power consumption and operate without Nvidia chips. The breakthrough could challenge the dominance of traditional AI architectures like ChatGPT while offering China a path around U.S. semiconductor restrictions. How it works: SpikingBrain1.0 abandons the traditional "attention" mechanism used by models like ChatGPT and Meta's Llama, which processes all words in a sentence simultaneously. Instead of comparing every word to every other word, the model selectively focuses on nearby words, similar to how the human brain concentrates on...
read Sep 8, 2025Chinese AI startup Tripo hits $12M revenue with hopeful “3D TikTok” tool
Tripo, a Chinese 3D AI company, has reached $12 million in annual recurring revenue and secured tens of millions in pre-A+ funding just two and a half years after its founding. The startup's latest release, Tripo Studio 3.0, represents what CEO Simon Song calls the first "product-ready" 3D generation technology, potentially enabling a future consumer platform he describes as "3D TikTok." What you should know: Tripo has built a substantial professional user base while developing technology that could democratize 3D content creation. The company serves more than three million professional users globally and has signed over 40,000 studios and corporate...
read Sep 5, 2025Anthropic blocks Chinese firms from AI services over military concerns
Anthropic has become the first US AI company to block sales to Chinese firms, announcing it will stop selling its artificial intelligence services to companies with majority Chinese ownership. The decision reflects growing concerns about Beijing's military and intelligence applications of AI technology, with a company executive estimating the revenue impact at "the low hundreds of millions of dollars." Why this matters: This marks a significant escalation in US-China tech tensions, as American AI companies voluntarily restrict access to their most advanced capabilities amid national security concerns. The big picture: China is increasingly integrating AI into military operations, with The...
read Sep 3, 2025China showcases AI-powered military arsenal in “cognitive era” Victory Day parade
China showcased its most advanced military capabilities during yesterday's Victory Day parade in Beijing, revealing unprecedented integration of artificial intelligence across its arsenal. The display confirmed China's transition into what experts call the "cognitive era" of warfare, where AI-driven systems operate at machine speed across air, sea, and land domains. The big picture: China's military modernization has reached a tipping point where autonomous systems and AI integration define operational capabilities rather than supplement them. Many parade systems were overtly autonomous, including loyal wingmen drones and reconnaissance platforms with AI-driven flight control, mission planning, and sensor interpretation. The breadth of AI...
read Sep 3, 2025Huawei unveils 245TB AI SSDs to bypass costly HBM restrictions
Huawei has unveiled three new AI SSDs designed to reduce reliance on expensive high-bandwidth memory (HBM), addressing supply restrictions that Chinese firms face in accessing advanced memory chips. The OceanDisk series includes the industry's largest SSD at 245TB capacity, positioning solid-state storage as a partial alternative to costly HBM in AI workloads. What you should know: Huawei's new OceanDisk series targets the "memory wall" and "capacity wall" problems that currently bottleneck AI training and inference performance. The OceanDisk EX 560 delivers extreme performance with 1,500K IOPS write speeds, sub-7µs latency, and can increase fine-tunable model parameters on a single machine...
read Sep 2, 2025Self, yes, but sufficient? Alibaba builds AI chip entirely in China amid US export controls
Alibaba has developed a new AI chip designed to handle a broader range of inference tasks, marking a significant shift toward domestic semiconductor production as the chip is being manufactured entirely in China. This development represents a strategic pivot away from foreign suppliers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produced Alibaba's earlier AI processors, and aligns with Beijing's broader push for technological self-sufficiency amid ongoing U.S. export restrictions. What you should know: The new chip is currently undergoing testing and represents Alibaba's latest effort to reduce dependence on foreign AI semiconductor suppliers. Unlike previous generations of Alibaba's AI processors...
read Sep 2, 2025Chinese AI chip maker Cambricon hits $81B valuation despite revenue risks
Cambricon Technologies, a Beijing-based AI chip designer, has seen its stock price soar to a market valuation of approximately $81.2 billion, surpassing established companies like MediaTek and SMIC despite generating significantly lower annual revenue. The meteoric rise reflects investor enthusiasm for China's domestic AI hardware ecosystem, though questions remain about the sustainability of its growth amid heavy client concentration and geopolitical pressures. The big picture: Cambricon's financial turnaround has been dramatic, generating RMB28.81 billion (approximately $4.03 billion) in revenue during the first half of 2025—more than 40 times the figure from a year earlier. The company also achieved profitability with...
read Sep 1, 2025Alibaba shares surge 19% as cloud growth and AI chip development fuel rally
Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares surged more than 19% on Monday following strong quarterly results driven by its cloud computing division and reports of new AI chip development. The rally represents the stock's highest level since March, as investors respond positively to the company's accelerating cloud growth and strategic AI investments that position it to compete with tech giants like Microsoft and Google. What you should know: Alibaba's cloud computing unit delivered impressive growth that exceeded previous quarters and fueled investor confidence. Cloud revenue jumped 26% annually, marking an acceleration from the previous quarter's growth rate. AI-related product revenue "maintained triple-digit...
read Sep 1, 2025China invests $84B in SCO countries as Xi pushes against “Cold War” attitudes
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for strengthened artificial intelligence cooperation among Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members while rejecting "Cold War mentality" at the largest SCO summit to date in Tianjin. The gathering, featuring over 20 foreign leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, represents China's broader effort to position itself as a global peacemaker amid ongoing tensions with the United States and various international conflicts. Key financial commitments: Xi announced that China has invested $84 billion in other SCO countries and pledged support for 10,000 students to participate in Beijing's "Luban" vocational education program. The...
read Sep 1, 2025China mandates AI content labels across social platforms WeChat, Weibo and more
Major Chinese social media platforms including WeChat, Douyin, Weibo, and RedNote have begun implementing mandatory AI-generated content labels to comply with new legislation that took effect Monday. The law, drafted by four government agencies including China's main internet regulator, aims to help users identify AI-generated material across text, images, audio, video, and other content types amid concerns about misinformation and "AI slop." What you should know: The labeling requirements are now being enforced across China's largest social platforms, with each implementing slightly different approaches. WeChat requires users to proactively apply labels to their AI-generated content and prohibits removing, tampering with,...
read Sep 1, 2025Chinese AI startups match US giants with fewer resources
Chinese AI companies have rapidly closed the gap with U.S. rivals, developing cost-efficient models that perform comparably to leading Western systems like OpenAI's GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet. This strategic pivot represents a distinct approach to generative AI, emphasizing resource optimization and targeted applications over the compute-intensive methods favored by American firms. What you should know: DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup founded in 2023, has emerged as the most notable competitor, achieving competitive performance with significantly fewer computing and data resources than U.S. models. The company's DeepSeek-R1 model now performs comparably to established Western systems despite operating under resource...
read Aug 28, 2025“Intelligent economy, intelligent society”: China unveils 10-year plan to become fully AI-powered
China's State Council has unveiled a comprehensive ten-year plan to transform the country into a fully AI-powered economy by 2035, declaring artificial intelligence will become a "key growth engine" for national development. The ambitious roadmap aims to integrate AI across six major societal pillars by 2027 and achieve a 90% AI usage rate by 2030, positioning China to compete directly with Western nations despite current technological gaps. What you should know: China's plan targets comprehensive AI integration across society within the next decade. By 2027, AI will be deeply embedded in science and technology, citizen wellbeing, industrial development, consumer goods,...
read Aug 27, 2025China halts Nvidia H20 orders after U.S. “addiction” comments discovered
China has suspended new orders for Nvidia's H20 chips following inflammatory comments by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who publicly stated that America's strategy was to get Chinese developers "addicted" to weaker U.S. technology. The move threatens Nvidia's revenue stream from a market that represents at least 15% of the company's total sales and accelerates the tech decoupling between the world's two largest economies. What triggered the restrictions: Lutnick's mid-July 2025 televised remarks proved to be the catalyst for China's swift regulatory response. "We don't sell them our best stuff, not our second-best stuff, not even our third-best," Lutnick told...
read Aug 21, 2025China deploys first AI chatbot on space station, inspired by the Monkey King
China has deployed Wukong AI, an artificial intelligence chatbot designed specifically for space operations, aboard its Tiangong space station in mid-July. Named after the legendary Monkey King from Chinese mythology, the system represents the first time China's space station has utilized a large language model during orbital missions, marking a significant step in integrating AI technology into human spaceflight operations. What you should know: Wukong AI successfully completed its inaugural mission by supporting three taikonauts during a complex six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk in August. The AI assisted crew members with installing space debris protection devices and conducting routine station inspections. Taikonauts described...
read Aug 20, 2025ByteDance releases Seed-OSS-36B with 512K token context window
ByteDance has released Seed-OSS-36B, a new family of open-source large language models featuring a 512,000-token context window—twice the length of OpenAI's GPT-5. The release continues a trend of Chinese companies shipping powerful open-source AI models under permissive Apache-2.0 licensing, allowing free commercial use without API fees or licensing costs. What you should know: The Seed-OSS-36B collection includes three variants designed for different use cases and research applications. Seed-OSS-36B-Base with synthetic data delivers stronger benchmark performance for general-purpose applications Seed-OSS-36B-Base without synthetic data provides a cleaner research baseline free from potential synthetic data bias Seed-OSS-36B-Instruct is post-trained for instruction following and...
read Aug 20, 2025AI avatars outperform human salespeople in China’s $7.7M livestream market
Chinese AI-powered "virtual human" salespeople are outperforming their human counterparts on major Chinese ecommerce platforms, working 24/7 to sell everything from printers to wet wipes. Built using technology from Baidu, one of China's largest tech companies, and DeepSeek, these AI avatars are demonstrating the potential for artificial intelligence to fundamentally reshape digital commerce and potentially displace human influencers and salespeople. What you should know: PLTFRM, a Shanghai-based marketing company, has deployed around 30 AI avatar salespeople across Chinese ecommerce sites like Taobao and Pinduoduo, with measurable success rates. Brother's AI avatar sold $2,500 worth of printers in its first two...
read Aug 20, 2025AI Winter upon us? Baidu revenue falls 4% as AI investments fail to offset ad decline
Chinese search giant Baidu reported a 4% drop in second-quarter revenue to 32.71 billion yuan ($4.56 billion), missing analyst expectations as its core advertising business declined 15% amid China's economic slowdown. Despite heavy investments in artificial intelligence, including a major search interface overhaul, AI returns have yet to offset the advertising revenue decline that typically represents 60% of the company's total income. Key financial results: Baidu's Q2 performance reflected broader challenges facing China's tech sector during economic uncertainty. Total revenue of 32.71 billion yuan fell short of the 32.76 billion yuan analyst forecast, marking a 4% year-over-year decline. Online advertising...
read Aug 19, 2025DeepSeek’s open-source AI model matches GPT-4 at 68x lower cost
DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, has released V3.1, a 685-billion parameter AI model that matches the performance of leading proprietary systems from OpenAI and Anthropic while remaining completely open source. The model scored 71.6% on the prestigious Aider coding benchmark—rivaling Claude Opus 4's performance at a fraction of the cost—potentially disrupting the traditional AI business model that relies on expensive API access and usage restrictions. What you should know: DeepSeek V3.1 delivers frontier-level AI capabilities through an innovative hybrid architecture that seamlessly combines chat, reasoning, and coding functions. The model processes up to 128,000 tokens...
read Aug 19, 2025Nvidia develops new B30A chip for China with half the flagship’s power
Nvidia is developing a new AI chip for China based on its latest Blackwell architecture that will outperform the H20 model currently sold there, according to sources familiar with the matter. The move comes as President Trump recently opened the door to allowing more advanced Nvidia chips in China, though regulatory approval remains uncertain amid ongoing tensions over AI technology access. What you should know: The new chip, tentatively called the B30A, will use a single-die design delivering roughly half the computing power of Nvidia's flagship B300 accelerator. A single-die design places all main integrated circuit components on one continuous...
read Aug 18, 20256 Senate Democrats challenge Trump’s AI chip deal with China
Six Senate Democrats have warned President Donald Trump to reconsider his decision allowing Nvidia and AMD to sell advanced AI chips to China in exchange for a 15% revenue cut to the U.S. government. The bipartisan pushback highlights growing concerns that the arrangement could compromise America's technological edge and national security while potentially strengthening China's military capabilities. What you should know: The letter from prominent Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren, directly challenges Trump's August 11 announcement regarding export licenses for AI semiconductors. The senators argue that "negotiating away America's competitive edge" in exchange for...
read Aug 18, 2025On your marks, get set, bleep! China hosts World Humanoid Robot Games with 280 teams from 16 countries
China launched the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Friday, featuring 280 teams from 16 countries competing in sports and practical challenges. The three-day event showcases China's growing investment in robotics and AI as the nation positions itself as a leader in humanoid technology while collecting valuable data for real-world applications. What you should know: The competition included both traditional sports adaptations and robot-specific challenges designed to test practical capabilities. Teams competed in track and field, table tennis, and football, alongside tasks like sorting medicines, handling materials, and cleaning services. 192 teams represented universities while 88 came from private...
read Aug 15, 2025Chinese brand debuts 16-core AMD laptop with 99.9Wh battery under 1.8kg
Sixunited, a Shanghai-based laptop manufacturer, has launched the XN77-160M-CS featuring AMD's latest Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 APU, beating major brands like Dell and Lenovo to market with the high-end processor. The laptop combines the rare 16-core Strix Halo chip with a massive 99.9Wh battery in an under-1.8kg aluminum chassis, targeting users who need both power and extended battery life. What you should know: The XN77-160M-CS is one of only a handful of laptops to feature AMD's Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 APU, also known as Strix Halo. The 16-core processor includes integrated Navi 3.5 graphics and a 50 TOPS NPU (neural...
read Aug 15, 20256 Democratic senators challenge Trump’s 15% AI chip export fee as illegal
Democratic senators have formally challenged President Trump's plan to collect a 15% fee from Nvidia and AMD's AI chip exports to China, arguing the arrangement violates federal law and potentially the Constitution. The bipartisan pushback highlights growing tensions over balancing national security concerns with commercial interests in the lucrative AI semiconductor market. What you should know: Six Democratic senators sent a letter to Trump on Friday demanding he reverse his decision to allow the chip exports with the fee structure. The lawmakers include Mark Warner of Virginia, Chuck Schumer of New York, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Jeanne Shaheen of...
read Aug 15, 2025AI experts visit China, get shook by its energy advantage
American AI experts recently returned from China with sobering observations about the country's energy infrastructure, concluding that China's abundant electricity supply gives it a decisive advantage in the AI race. The stark contrast highlights how U.S. grid limitations could severely constrain American AI development while China operates from a position of energy abundance. What you should know: China has solved the power problem that's becoming a critical bottleneck for U.S. AI development. "Everywhere we went, people treated energy availability as a given," wrote Rui Ma, founder of Tech Buzz China, after touring China's AI hubs. In contrast, surging AI demand...
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