News/China
Smart home competition goes global as Chinese AI models power smart TVs, vacuum cleaners
China's rapid adoption of domestic AI technology has taken a new turn as major home appliance manufacturers announce integration of DeepSeek's AI models. DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup, has gained prominence in 2025 for developing large language models that match Western capabilities at lower costs. Market momentum: DeepSeek's expansion into consumer appliances marks a significant shift in how AI is being incorporated into everyday Chinese households. Leading manufacturers Haier, Hisense, and TCL Electronics have joined tech giants Huawei and Tencent in adopting DeepSeek's AI models The integration extends to smart TVs, refrigerators, and robot vacuum cleaners that already feature voice command...
read Feb 26, 2025Alibaba just made its AI video and image generation models free to use globally
Key Development: Alibaba has open-sourced four models from its Wan2.1 series, allowing users to generate both images and videos from text and image inputs through Alibaba Cloud's Model Scope and Hugging Face platforms. The models will be accessible to academics, researchers, and commercial institutions globally This release represents the latest version of Alibaba's foundational AI model Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares responded positively, closing nearly 5% higher following the announcement Market Context: The open-source AI landscape has gained significant attention following Chinese firm DeepSeek's market-disrupting announcement in January 2025. DeepSeek claimed to have trained its AI model at a fraction of...
read Feb 26, 2025RAND: What DeepSeek means for AI competition
The emergence of DeepSeek's R1 model has marked a significant shift in the global AI landscape, challenging the dominance of American tech giants in large language model development. This Chinese firm's achievement demonstrates how innovative approaches to model optimization and training can overcome resource constraints and international competition barriers. The breakthrough impact: DeepSeek's R1 model has quickly risen to prominence in the AI industry, becoming the top-ranked app in Apple's App Store and surpassing OpenAI's offering. The model achieved competitive performance while requiring fewer resources for development and operation compared to its American counterparts DeepSeek's success effectively circumvented U.S. efforts...
read Feb 26, 2025Power, hardware and skills: Strategic imperatives in the US-China AI race
The United States and China are engaged in an intensifying technological competition, with artificial intelligence emerging as a critical battleground. Recent developments, including the emergence of DeepSeek and TikTok controversies, have highlighted the need for strategic technology policies to maintain U.S. technological leadership. Core infrastructure challenges: America's aging power infrastructure and limited domestic hardware production capabilities are creating bottlenecks that could impede technological advancement. The U.S. power grid is significantly outdated, with over 70% of transmission lines exceeding 25 years of age Grid congestion issues are already hampering technological progress, while the growing demands of AI systems threaten to further...
read Feb 24, 2025Alibaba plans $52B AI investment push over next 3 years
The rapid development of artificial intelligence in China has prompted major tech companies to make substantial infrastructure investments. Against this backdrop, Alibaba has announced its largest-ever commitment to AI and cloud computing, signaling an aggressive push to maintain its competitive edge in the Chinese tech sector. Investment Details: Alibaba plans to invest 380 billion yuan ($52.44 billion) in AI and cloud computing infrastructure over the next three years, marking the company's largest technology investment to date. The planned investment surpasses Alibaba's total spending on AI and cloud computing from the previous decade The announcement follows strong financial performance, with revenue...
read Feb 21, 2025AI search startup Genspark secures $100M to challenge Google
The rapid evolution of AI-powered search engines has sparked intense competition in a market long dominated by Google. Genspark, a Palo Alto-based startup led by former Baidu executive Eric Jing, is the latest contender to secure significant funding in this space. The funding details: Genspark has secured $100 million in Series A funding, achieving a valuation of $530 million as it aims to challenge Google's search engine dominance. The funding round was led by investors from the United States and Singapore This follows a $60 million seed round raised in June 2024 The company has already attracted over 2 million...
read Feb 20, 2025Latin America intrigued by China’s DeepSeek, shifting the AI landscape in the Global South
DeepSeek's emergence in early 2025 as a cost-effective Chinese large language model has sparked significant interest in Latin America's technology sector. The AI system's ability to operate on modest computing infrastructure while supporting regional languages presents both opportunities and challenges for Latin American countries seeking to develop their own AI capabilities. The big picture: DeepSeek's introduction represents a potential turning point for Latin American nations looking to reduce their dependence on Western technology giants while developing local AI ecosystems. The Chinese chatbot operates at a fraction of the cost of competitors like GPT-4 and Google's Gemini, making it accessible to...
read Feb 20, 2025Jack Ma returns, a new man, as Beijing tightens grip on tech giants
Jack Ma has had a change of heart. Tech magnate Jack Ma's re-emergence into public life comes after years of regulatory pressure on Alibaba, the e-commerce empire he founded. His return coincides with significant changes in both Alibaba's strategic direction and China's approach to its tech sector. The shifting landscape: Alibaba has undergone a dramatic transformation from its roots as China's leading e-commerce platform to become a critical player in the nation's artificial intelligence and cloud computing aspirations. The company's cloud division has emerged as a cornerstone of China's technological ambitions, particularly in scaling AI capabilities across the country A...
read Feb 18, 2025Tiger Brokers embraces DeepSeek as Chinese brokerages pounce on AI
Online broker Tiger Brokers has integrated DeepSeek's AI model into its chatbot platform, marking a significant development in the Chinese financial sector's adoption of artificial intelligence. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has gained attention for developing its R1 model at a fraction of the cost of Western competitors, prompting widespread adoption among Chinese financial institutions. The big picture: The integration of DeepSeek-R1 into Tiger Brokers' TigerGPT platform represents a broader trend of Chinese financial institutions racing to implement AI solutions. At least 20 Chinese brokers and fund managers, including Sinolink Securities and CICC Wealth Management, have begun integrating DeepSeek models...
read Feb 18, 2025Baidu revenue drops, though mildly, amid intensifying Chinese AI competition
The online search and AI market in China has become increasingly competitive, with traditional tech giant Baidu facing new challengers in both sectors. Baidu's latest financial results for Q4 2024 reveal the company's resilience amid mounting pressure from rivals. The big picture: Baidu's performance exceeded market expectations despite showing modest revenue decline, suggesting the company is maintaining its market position in China's evolving tech landscape. Revenue decreased 2% to 34.1 billion yuan ($4.7 billion), surpassing analyst predictions of 33.4 billion yuan Net income reached 5.2 billion yuan, significantly higher than the projected 3.92 billion yuan The results demonstrate Baidu's ability...
read Feb 18, 2025DeepSeek AI app raises privacy concerns in South Korea, triggering ban and removal
The rise of Chinese AI company DeepSeek has been marked by both technological achievements and regulatory challenges, particularly regarding data privacy concerns. In early 2025, South Korea became the latest country to take action against the company's mobile app, following Italy's earlier ban. Key Development: South Korea's data protection authority has ordered Apple and Google to block downloads of the DeepSeek app, citing non-compliance with local data protection laws. The ban specifically targets the mobile app while leaving web browser access temporarily available DeepSeek has appointed legal representatives in South Korea and acknowledged partial neglect of the country's data protection...
read Feb 14, 2025Apple to use Alibaba AI in Chinese iPhones, says Chairman Joe Tsai
Apple and Alibaba's strategic partnership marks a significant development in China's AI landscape, representing the first collaboration between Apple's iPhone and a Chinese tech giant's AI technology. The announcement comes as both companies seek to strengthen their positions in the world's largest smartphone market while navigating complex regulatory requirements. The partnership details: Alibaba Group Chairman Joseph Tsai confirmed that Apple's iPhones will integrate Alibaba's artificial intelligence technology specifically for the Chinese market. The confirmation follows a surge in Alibaba's stock price to a 2022 high on the Hong Kong stock exchange The partnership represents a strategic move by Apple to...
read Feb 13, 2025AI chips race heats up as DeepSeek gives Chinese chipmakers a boost
The development of AI models by Chinese company DeepSeek marks a significant shift in China's artificial intelligence chip landscape, particularly in relation to inference-based computing tasks. As U.S. export restrictions limit access to advanced chips, Chinese manufacturers are seeking alternative paths to AI development. The big picture: DeepSeek's focus on inference-based AI processing provides Chinese chipmakers an opportunity to compete more effectively in their domestic market, despite lagging behind U.S. competitors in raw processing power. DeepSeek's models prioritize computational efficiency over pure processing capability, allowing Chinese manufacturers to partially bridge the performance gap with U.S. chips Major Chinese tech companies...
read Feb 13, 2025Flagship freebie: Baidu’s top AI model Ernie free to use come April
No fooling, Baidu's LLM rival is gratis on April 1st. In 2023, Chinese tech giant Baidu launched Ernie, its large language model designed to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Baidu has now announced a significant shift in its AI strategy by making Ernie freely available to users. Key announcement: Baidu, China's leading search engine company, will offer its artificial intelligence model Ernie at no cost beginning April 1, 2025, marking a major change in accessibility to the company's AI technology. The decision to make Ernie free represents a strategic move in China's competitive AI landscape, where multiple companies are vying for...
read Feb 13, 2025Young Chinese are increasingly turning to AI for emotional support
The rise of AI-powered emotional support in China has gained significant attention, particularly through DeepSeek, a chatbot launched in January 2025. Young Chinese users are increasingly turning to this AI platform for mental health support and emotional guidance, marking a unique intersection of technology and psychological wellbeing in a society where mental health services remain limited and stigmatized. The technology behind DeepSeek: DeepSeek operates as a generative AI tool similar to ChatGPT and Gemini, but with a distinctive feature that displays its "thought process" before delivering responses. The platform processes vast amounts of information to recognize patterns and predict responses...
read Feb 12, 2025West urged to open mind, prioritize open-source AI to compete with China
The development of artificial intelligence has created a competitive landscape between Western nations and China, with particular focus on open-source versus closed-source AI models. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has emerged as a vocal advocate for increased Western investment in open-source AI development, pointing to recent advances by Chinese companies like DeepSeek. Key dynamics in AI development: The artificial intelligence landscape is currently dominated by closed-source models from major U.S. companies, with Meta's Llama being a notable exception among Western tech giants. DeepSeek, a Chinese startup, recently launched R1, an efficient open-source large language model that has demonstrated impressive capabilities...
read Feb 11, 2025Apple teams with Alibaba on AI for Chinese iPhones
Apple's partnership with Chinese tech giant Alibaba aims to deliver artificial intelligence features to iPhone users in China, marking a strategic shift after previous attempts to collaborate with Baidu fell short. This development comes as Apple faces declining market share in China, particularly against competitors like Huawei who have already integrated AI tools into their smartphones. The strategic pivot: Apple's decision to partner with Alibaba represents a crucial move to maintain competitiveness in the Chinese market, where AI features have become increasingly important to consumers. Apple initially selected Baidu as its primary AI partner, but the company's AI models failed...
read Feb 11, 2025ByteDance unveils OmniHuman-1 AI video generator
TikTok parent company ByteDance has unveiled two groundbreaking AI video generation models - OmniHuman-1 and Goku - marking a significant advancement in AI-powered video creation technology. These models represent ByteDance's first major entry into the AI video generation space, leveraging the company's vast video dataset from TikTok. Key Technology Capabilities: OmniHuman-1 demonstrates sophisticated video generation abilities by creating high-quality video content from a single image input combined with audio. The model excels at producing photorealistic videos with precise lip-syncing and minimal visual artifacts It can generate both realistic human figures and animated content, including cartoons, objects, and animals in various...
read Feb 11, 2025Baidu CEO thinks more AI investment is needed, despite success of DeepSeek
The rise of artificial intelligence has sparked intense competition among tech companies in China and globally to develop powerful language models. Chinese tech giant Baidu has been at the forefront of this race, despite facing challenges from emerging competitors and U.S. chip sanctions. Current landscape: Baidu CEO Robin Li emphasizes the continued importance of investing in cloud infrastructure and computing power for developing advanced AI models, even as new approaches challenge traditional assumptions. Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Li stressed that superior AI models still require substantial computing resources Computing power in this context refers to the...
read Feb 11, 2025Chinese AI model Goku challenges OpenAI dominance with natural-looking image, video creation
Artificial intelligence model development has entered a new phase of global competition with ByteDance's release of Goku, an open-source AI system for generating images and videos. This development comes at a challenging time for OpenAI, which faces both competition from Elon Musk and emerging Chinese AI capabilities. Technical breakthrough: Goku represents a significant advancement in AI image and video generation through its use of rectified flow transformers, which create more natural-looking digital content with fewer distortions. The model processes text prompts to produce high-quality visuals, similar to a digital artist that continuously refines its output Rectified flow transformers improve information...
read Feb 10, 2025Not worried: Google DeepMind CEO downplays hype around DeepSeek’s AI model
The rapid development of artificial intelligence models in China has caught the attention of industry leaders, with Google DeepMind's CEO offering a measured assessment of recent advances. DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, recently claimed breakthrough efficiency in training its AI model, prompting both praise and skepticism from industry experts. Key developments: Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has acknowledged DeepSeek's AI model as China's most impressive achievement in the field while questioning its revolutionary nature. Hassabis praised DeepSeek's work as "an impressive piece of work" and "the best work" from China The CEO emphasized that while the engineering is excellent, the...
read Feb 10, 2025AI and Trump enthusiasm cools as markets reassess hype, anticipate trade wars
The global economic landscape is being shaped by two key factors in early 2025: Donald Trump's trade policies and the evolving artificial intelligence sector. What began as market optimism around these factors in late 2024 has transformed into growing investor uncertainty. Market sentiment shift: Trump's recent trade rhetoric and cooling AI enthusiasm are creating new headwinds for financial markets in 2025. Trump's threat of reciprocal tariffs triggered a stock market decline, with additional steel and aluminum tariffs expected to further pressure markets The AI sector faces fresh scrutiny after Chinese startup DeepSeek claimed its training costs were significantly lower than...
read Feb 10, 2025AI pioneer spars with China’s ex-UK envoy over the virtues of open-source
China's place in global AI development has become increasingly prominent, with former diplomat Fu Ying engaging in notable discussions with leading AI researchers at a pre-summit panel in Paris. The exchange highlighted growing tensions between Western and Chinese approaches to AI development, occurring against the backdrop of DeepSeek's recent challenge to US AI dominance. Key panel dynamics: A significant exchange between Fu Ying, China's former UK ambassador, and a prominent AI researcher highlighted fundamental differences in approaches to AI development and safety. Fu Ying, now at Tsinghua University, emphasized China's rapid AI development since 2017, acknowledging both the speed and...
read Feb 9, 2025Chinese businesses are clamoring to ride the DeepSeek wave
The rapid deployment of DeepSeek's AI model in China has attracted significant attention as major Chinese companies integrate this technology into their products and services. This development marks a significant shift in China's AI landscape, with both state-owned enterprises and private companies moving quickly to adopt DeepSeek's technology. Major adoption momentum: China's leading companies are rapidly incorporating DeepSeek's AI model across various sectors, from automotive to telecommunications. Great Wall Motor, China's first listed automaker, has integrated DeepSeek into its "Coffee Intelligence" connected vehicle system China's three largest telecom providers - China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom - are working...
read