NIO on July 26 gave updates on some of its most important technological developments, including the world’s first five-nanometer chip for automated driving, its in-house developed operating system for vehicles, and a voice assistant powered by its large language model.

Why it matters: NIO’s fullest disclosure yet of its technological roadmap reflects how the Chinese electric vehicle maker spends its research and development money, and how it has made a strategic bet on artificial intelligence, hoping to redesign all aspects of its vehicles including self-driving and the so-called digital cockpit.

Details: Speaking at the firm’s annual Tech Day event in Shanghai, NIO founder and chief executive William Li unveiled new details of what he called the world’s first five-nanometer (5nm) processor for autonomous driving, said to offer cameras with top-notch image signal processing (ISP) functions.

• The Shenji NX9031 system on chip (SoC) delivers high pixel throughputs of 6.25 Gigapixels per second, which NIO said makes it capable of capturing pictures with higher quality resolution in minimally lit environments, compared with flagship offerings from leading chipmakers.
• Li confirmed that the company had completed the tape-out for its self-designed autonomous driving semiconductor, which marks the end of the design phase and the beginning of production, without revealing which company has been contracted to produce it. 
• Meanwhile, NIO is on track to release its advanced driver assistance system, the Navigate on Pilot Plus (NOP+) 2.0, in the second half of the year. The Shanghai-headquartered EV maker is one of the Chinese players looking to harness the power of AI to provide cars with point-to-point navigation on Chinese highways, city streets, and parking spaces in a race led by Tesla.
• NIO also announced the launch of its proprietary operating system, the Sky OS, with which the company said it would have central control of all vehicle domains, allowing it to provide more advanced user experiences. An alternative to the open-sourced Linux OS and Blackberry’s QNX, the Sky OS forms the basis of the entire car all the way from vehicle control through to intelligent driving and infotainment, NIO said.
• This will enable a NIO vehicle to have a used battery pack exchanged for a new one fully automatically at one of the company’s nationwide recharging facilities, allowing the user to leave the car to get a coffee, according to vice president Wang Qiyan.
• The Chinese EV maker will also release its Banyan 3.0 in-car user interface through over-the-air updates in late August, featuring an enhanced version of its NOMI conversational assistant, powered by generative AI large language models (LLMs), for more human-like voice interactions. NIO owners will be able to request a chauffeur to drive them via voice commands, the company said.

Context: Only a few global chip powerhouses, such as Qualcomm and Ambarella, have announced the production of their chips using a 5nm process node with manufacturing partners such as Samsung. Tesla reportedly plans to produce its next-generation full self-driving (FSD) computer on 4/5nm processes with TSMC.

• NIO previously implied that its sophisticated chip could handle more than 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS), comparable to the combined total of four NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips on 7nm, and is scheduled for mass delivery with the company’s ET9 executive sedan in early 2025.
• NIO’s research and development expenditures grew 23.9% annually to RMB 13.4 billion ($1.89 billion) last year. CEO Li told the event that the company has more than 11,000 R&D personnel, adding that its years-long efforts on in-house chip development will be “of great significance” to the industry of self-driving cars (our translation).

READ MORE: Chinese EV makers Nio, Xpeng, and Li Auto expand bets on self-produced chips: report

Taobao said it would relax the half-year in operation “refund-only” policy that allows shoppers to get a refund without returning the product, citing as a reason “optimizing the business environment while ensuring consumer rights.” The policy, perceived as being preferential to customers over e-commerce platforms, was a lesson both Taobao and http://JD.comJD.com> learned from the policy’s inventor Pinduoduo. Taobao merchants with good operating records will henceforth have more autonomy to deal with shoppers’ refund requests, according to Alibaba. Tmall, the Alibaba-owned retail platform that boasts the most brand merchants, announced it is set to erase its annual seller service fee beginning on Sept. 1, a fee that comes to between RMB 30,000 ($4134.7) and RMB 60,000 a year. [TechNode reporting]

American video game company Blizzard announced on July 28 that the turn-based collectible card game Hearthstone will return to the Chinese market on Sept. 25. All Chinese server players, including new registrations, who log in will receive all the cards missed in 2023 for free, totaling 2,154 game cards. Last January, all Blizzard games on the Chinese server ceased operations due to failed agreement negotiations with Chinese game publisher NetEase. As a result, Hearthstone, which had been shortlisted for the esports event at the Hangzhou Asian Games 2023, was also removed in September 2023. In April of this year, NetEase and Blizzard announced their reunion by reaching a new game publishing agreement based on over 15 years of cooperation. [TechNode reporting; Hearthstone Weibo]

High-profile Chinese influencer Dong Yuhui has left East Buy, the e-commerce unit of private tutoring giant New Oriental, due to his “career aspirations, commitment to his other endeavors and personal arrangements,” according to a filing by the Hong Kong-listed company on Thursday. The move highlights the complexity that livestreaming companies face when dealing with their top influencers. The filing said East Buy agreed to sell Dong’s venture “Time with Yuhui” to the livestreamer for RMB 76.58 million ($10.56 million). “Time with Yuhui” was founded last December following the company’s firing of CEO Sun Dongxu, which came after Dong’s fans expressed their dissatisfaction with Sun’s management of the star. Michael Yu, the current CEO of East Buy, noted later in a public letter he would pay for the deal for Dong and that, “the company was given to Yuhui [for free].” [Jiemian, in Chinese]

Individuals may be using the guise of selling second-hand air conditioners to buy and sell sexual services on the Alibaba-operated  second-hand goods and services platform Xianyu, according to app users who posted about an alternative use of the keyword “second-hand air conditioners” on Chinese X-like platform Weibo.

Chinese internet users have dubbed  Xianyu “yellow fish” since the case came to light, because “yellow” in Chinese can refer to pornography; users have also made fun of  Xianyu’s meaning,  “leisurely fish.” Xianyu’s customer service department responded on Wednesday that the team will enhance their review procedures to weed out such  transactions, according to a Sina News post on Weibo.

Why it matters: In China, the buying and selling of sexual services is illegal, prohibited under the country’s public morality and social order laws. This issue may reflect a misuse of online platforms, where individuals exploit legitimate categories to facilitate illicit activities.

Details: Terms such as “second-hand air conditioners,” “coins,” “Apple SIM card ejector,” and “Giant bike” have allegedly become code words suspected for selling sex on the online trading platform, according to comments posted on social media.

• A screenshot posted by a netizen shows a page from a seller on Xianyu purportedly listing a second-hand air conditioner in 90%-new condition, with a promise of home installation. In the background of the image is an air conditioner mounted on the wall, while the bottom left-hand corner features small photos of different women. The price displayed ranges from RMB 50 to RMB 600 ($7 to $83), though sellers can edit prices after transactions.
• According to a video posted on Weibo, a one-cent coin priced at over a thousand yuan actually relates to a sexual service, where the production year on the coin indicates the age of the sex worker. For instance, a coin from the year 2000 signifies that the sex worker was born in 2000.
• “Don’t ask why a pin tool is so expensive. Some things are not measured by value,” states the Apple SIM card ejector product description page in another example.
• Some Xianyu users looking to buy a second-hand Giant bicycle came across a local seller on the platform. However, the two sides engaged in a confusing conversation, according to screenshots shared on social media. The bike could be ridden for 90 minutes, the seller allegedly said, implying the duration of a sex service.

Context: Xianyu said its daily GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) on the platform has exceeded one billion RMB ($138 million), local media outlet 36Kr reported in March. In the past year, over 100 million people posted items for sale on the platform, the company claimed.

• Digital products, ACG (anime, comic, game) products, tickets, vouchers, transportation tools, sports and outdoor equipment, and clothing have been among the top categories.

China- and US-based self-driving car startups Pony.ai and WeRide are ready for initial public offerings in the US, multiple media outlets have reported. The IPOs, which the firms have been eyeing for over two years, could happen as early as within the next two months.

Why it matters: Autonomous vehicle (AV) startups are generally facing pressure to lower their valuation targets as public stock markets have rapidly decelerated their interest in the space over the past few years.

• A group of 14 self-driving tech companies have seen their combined valuation decline more than 80% since their public debuts, according to an analysis by Crunchbase in 2022. Chinese car tech firm iMotion and lidar maker Robosense have lost roughly 75% and 90% in stock market valuation in the six months since their listings in Hong Kong.
• The potential listings of PonyAV.ai and WeRide, two of the highest-valued AV startups in China, will set the tone for many other companies trying to go public with their future-shaping technology, even as it takes longer than expected to become widely available.

Details: Fremont- and Guangzhou-based Pony.ai will go public as early as September, as some institutional investors have committed to purchasing shares in the looming IPO, financial media outlet Jiemian reported on Tuesday, without giving further details (in Chinese). WeRide is planning to sell its shares publicly in the US by the end of August, according to IFR, a Reuters publication.

• WeRide, with its China headquarters in the southern city of Guangzhou, last August received approval for an overseas listing from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which requires applicants to complete the share sale within 12 months of the date of filing. Pony.ai gained a similar regulatory greenlight in April, Bloomberg reported. Pony.ai and WeRide declined to comment when contacted by TechNode on Thursday.

Context: Pony.ai reportedly suspended a public listing plan in New York at a target valuation of $12 billion in mid-2021 due to regulatory uncertainties. The Toyota-backed company said early the next year that it was valued at $8.5 billion after closing its first round of Series D financing, TechCrunch reported.

• WeRide, backed by the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, filed confidentially for a US IPO aimed at raising as much as $500 million, Bloomberg reported last March. The company was valued at about $5.1 billion in a November 2022 fundraising round, according to its official website.
• Some other Chinese self-driving technology companies, including Horizon Robotics, Momenta, and Black Sesame, are rushing to sell shares publicly either in the US or Hong Kong as early investors are eager to earn money after incubating the companies for years, TechNode has learned.

The 142nd International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session was held in Paris on Tuesday, during which a proposal was approved for the first edition of the Olympic Esports Games to be held in Saudi Arabia in 2025. The IOC stated on its website, “history was made today.”

Why it matters: The Olympic Esports Games represents a major step in legitimizing and mainstreaming esports within the global sports community. The decision of the IOC acknowledges the increasing popularity and competitive nature of this rapidly evolving field.

Details: To organize the Olympic Esports Games, the IOC has entered into a 12-year partnership with the Saudi Arabian National Olympic Committee (NOC), according to the IOC announcement.

• Following the proposal’s approval, both parties are beginning the process to select the host city and venue for the event and finalizing details regarding the event schedule, disciplines, and qualification processes for the participants.
• At the same time, the IOC will establish a new, separate structure for the Olympic Esports Games, distinct from the Olympic Games’ organizational and financial model.
• “With the confirmation by the IOC Session of the creation of the Olympic Esports Games, we are keeping up with the pace of the digital revolution. The esports community, represented in our Esports Commission, has enthusiastically engaged with this initiative. This is further proof of the attractivity of the Olympic brand and the values it stands for among young people,” said the IOC President Thomas Bach.
• IOC member Reema Bandar Al-Saud, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Saudi Arabian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and as President of the Women’s Committee, stated that Saudi Arabia has over 23.5 million gamers, nearly half of whom are female. She said she views hosting the 2025 Olympic Esports Games as a natural progression in opening Saudi Arabia to the world.

Context: Last September, esports made its debut as an official competition event at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. The competition included seven esports titles: League of Legends, Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, DOTA 2, Dream Three Kingdoms 2, Street Fighter V, and FIFA Online 4.

• On July 3, the first edition of the Esports World Cup kicked off in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Running until August 25, the event features 1,500 athletes from 425 clubs competing in 21 esports events for the honor of being crowned the first group of world champions.

Temu surpassed its 2023 total sales in the first half of this year to reach around $20 billion, according to a 36Kr report, underscoring the Pinduoduo sister app’s surging momentum as it pursues global expansion. Fast fashion retailer Shein, which is also largely rooted in China-based manufacturing, reported generating over $20 billion for the first time in 2022. The report mentioned Brazil was second in terms of downloads for the Temu app in the last 30 days, with more than 5 million downloads, just after the US. However, the eye-catching sales figure still lags behind Temu’s goal to triple its sales to $60 billion globally in 2024. [36Kr, in Chinese]

Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sibling, has recently shifted its e-commerce strategy to re-prioritize GMV growth over price competitiveness in an attempt to return to the GMV growth rate of over 50% it enjoyed last year. The move has been triggered by its previous low-price approach hurting sales growth, according to a report in local media outlet LatePost. The report said the growth rate of Douyin’s in-app shopping was down to less than 30% per month in the second quarter despite a more than 60% growth rate in the first two months of 2024. To compete with rival Pinduoduo, since the beginning of the year Douyin has given more traffic to merchants who agree to set lower prices, according to LatePost, but that tactic “may gradually ease” as the short video app now turns its attention back to GMV, the report cited a source close to Douyin as saying. [LatePost, in Chinese]

Tesla will be seeking regulatory approvals in China, Europe, and other markets after the upcoming versions of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software (v12.5 or v12.6) are released “pretty soon,” chief executive Elon Musk told investors during the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “I think we are likely to receive that before the end of the year, which could be helpful to drive demand in those regions,” Musk added, without revealing further details.

The comments come after a Reuters report in May saying that the US automaker hopes to allow Chinese owners to access the advanced driver assistance system at about $98 per month this year, preparing for the software registration process with China’s top industry regulator. Tesla’s FSD software will be going after a number of similar offerings from Chinese rivals such as Huawei, Xpeng Motors, and Li Auto, which have been trying to improve the availability of their technologies with sophisticated AI algorithms and affordable sensors, TechNode has reported. Tesla’s total revenue increased slightly 2% to $25.5 billion from a year earlier, while automotive sales and total profit dropped for a second straight quarter, as the company is facing more competition both at home and in China. [TechNode reporting]

Alibaba’s China-focused marketplace Taobao has joined the wave of Chinese e-commerce platforms launching cross-border operations with a plan to ship clothing globally for free. The platform will look to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Temu with an initial move to cover Asian territories including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea.

Why it matters: The move illustrates Taobao’s efforts to tap into a broader global market while also engaging in competition with Pinduoduo at home.

Details: Taobao aims to reach Australian shoppers as early as the end of this year before expanding further afield. The program will look to attract Taobao merchants selling not only men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel, but also sports and outdoor clothing, as well as shoes and bags.

• Under the model, Taobao will heavily subsidize shipping fees, a strategy that Chinese companies frequently use when expanding overseas to challenge existing platforms embedded in local markets.
• Apparel merchants on Taobao can directly sell items to “billions of consumers worldwide” by joining the plan without the need for complex procedures, according to Taobao and Tmall Group.
• The program is set to adopt a so-called “half-fulfillment” model, which is also used by AliExpress and its counterparts Temu and Shein, supposedly liberating sellers from concerns about international logistics and delivery. 
• On the official application page, Taobao highlights “zero returns and zero refunds” as the biggest feature of the plan, sending signals to sellers that the platform will deal with any returns and further costs beyond the expense that merchants incur in sending items to Taobao’s China-based warehouses.

Context: Taobao sells items from numerous local clothing brands that its domestic rivals have no access to. Previously, people living outside China needed third-party transit resources to get items they bought from Taobao.

The National Press and Publication Administration of China (NPPA) on Monday approved 105 domestic games for July, including titles such as Star Valley Project (direct translation) by miHoYo and a mobile version of Tale of Immortal by Lightning Games. Star Valley Project appears to be a simulation management game in development for several years, due for public beta testing in 2025, online sources suggest, though official details have not yet been released. Tale of Immortal is an open-world sandbox game immersed in Chinese mythology and cultivation, where players evolve into immortals and battle mythical beasts from the Classic of Mountains and Seas (a book of China’s mythical geography and beasts). Released in 2021, the PC version of Tale of Immortal sold 3.9 million copies, making it the second best-selling Steam game from Chinese developers that year. [NPPA, in Chinese]

To comply with US export control policies, NVIDIA is developing a modified version of its AI chip based on the new Blackwell GPU architecture for the Chinese market, with the model potentially named B20, according to an exclusive report from Reuters. In March, the US chip giant unveiled its Blackwell chip series, which is set for mass production later this year. The B200 chip in this series is 30 times faster than its predecessor at tasks such as providing answers from chatbots. NVIDIA will partner with Inspur, a major Chinese distributor, to launch and distribute the new chip B20, with shipments starting in the second quarter of 2025, sources said. Currently, NVIDIA has not yet made a public announcement, and its spokesperson declined to comment. [Reuters]

Volkswagen and Xpeng Motors on Monday announced moves that will expand their partnership to develop a highly modern electrical/electronic architecture not only for VW’s locally focused electric vehicle platform, the China Main Platform (CMP), but also for the global Modular Electric Drive Matrix (MEB) platform. All battery EVs of the Volkswagen brand in China will be equipped with the so-called China Electronic Architecture (CEA) from 2026, and a master agreement signed Monday “paves the way for potential expansion of collaboration on E/E architecture,” the companies said. This comes a year after Volkswagen revealed plans to launch two VW brand models featuring Xpeng’s autonomous driving technology in 2026 as part of a $700 million deal to buy a 4.99% stake in the Guangzhou-headquartered EV maker, TechNode reported. Xpeng’s revenues from services and others jumped 93.1% year-on-year to RMB 1 billion ($140 million) in the first three months of this year, which the company said was buoyed by its collaboration with the German giant. [Xpeng announcement, TechNode reporting]

Chinese electric vehicle maker Zeekr on July 19 introduced a new iteration of its 009 multi-purpose vehicle (MPV), including a new variant that significantly lowers the starting price of the luxury minivan and aims to capture a growing customer base of affluent Chinese families.

The refreshed 009 is the latest example of how Chinese automakers are attempting to build their luxury credentials and change the perception of premium cars both domestically and globally. The Geely-affiliated company expects to set “a new benchmark” for MPVs after the Toyota Alphard, it said. The revamped 009 boasts improved performance and range, as well as a number of intriguing features with Chinese characteristics, such as a series of in-car guided meditations.

“Chinese middle- to upper-class customers are replacing their large SUVs [sports utility vehicles] with MPVs that are becoming easier to maneuver and steer,” Jason Lin, a Zeekr vice president, said in an interview with TechNode (our translation). Like peers Xpeng Motors and Li Auto, New York-listed Zeekr sees big growth potential for the booming segment thanks to innovations in vehicle capabilities.

China’s MPV sales grew 16% to roughly 1.09 million last year and accounted for 5% of total passenger car sales, figures from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) showed. Jefferies forecast the segment to grow 20% year-on-year to 1.3 million units this year, of which 32% could be electric, up by 10% from last year. The Zeekr 009 competes with other all-electrics including the Xpeng X9 and Li Auto’s Mega, more popular plug-in hybrid models such as the Denza D9, and the gas-powered Toyota Alphard and General Motors’ GL8 Century.

An expanded lineup

The redesigned 009 comes to market with more variants in the hope of meeting a diverse range of customer needs, as both six- and seven-seat configurations are now available in different drivetrain and battery options with a price range of RMB 439,000-469,000 ($60,363-$64,488). The six-seat, dual-motor versions help to distance the revamped 009 from its predecessors, offering the fastest acceleration to 100km/h (62 mph) among MPVs – in 3.9 seconds – and a charging speed from 10% to 80% in as little as 11.5 minutes, making it suited for business travel.

And yet, Zeekr expects the new single-motor, seven-seat variants, with a center aisle to facilitate easy entry and exit from the van’s rear, to extend its reach to cover wealthy Chinese families, especially multi-generational households, at a more affordable price tag. Around 55% of existing 009 sales come from business clients, although private owners could ultimately provide a larger market, according to Lin.

While CATL’s Qilin battery enables the same charging speed as the higher-end variants, the new entry-level 009 has a longer driving range of 740 kilometers (460 miles) between charges. That range could be further improved to 900 km with a larger battery pack to ease consumer anxiety over charging infrastructure at an additional cost of RMB 50,000, although it takes 30 minutes for the battery to charge from 10% to 80%. It has a slower sprint time of 0 to 100 km/h in 7.9 seconds compared with its siblings, but is still comparable to the Toyota Alphard, which costs RMB 890,000 in China.

Chinese-oriented features

Although the remodeled Zeekr 009 claims to present a prestigious option for Chinese families using a range of high-quality interior materials and top-notch components, the company is also pushing hard to offer customized features with local characteristics to differentiate its vehicles from competitors. For instance, it offers a special chill mode with the car’s seats, lights, and music tailored to create an in-car environment for guided meditation, allowing owners to take a basic course with a series of video classes.

Other special modes include “Baby Sleeping”, for when younger family members take a nap, which automatically adjusts the air-conditioning and lights and turns down the volume of voice prompts. Some of the more traditional, upscale features that come standard with the car are air suspension that eliminates bumps for superior handling and ride quality, as well as Qualcomm’s latest-gen Snapdragon 8295 chips that enable the infotainment system with silky smooth transitions and fast responsiveness.

The all-new 009, set to be delivered on Monday, comes less than two years after the initial launch of Zeekr’s second model and follows an update in January, when two 2024 versions went on sale at a starting price of RMB 500,000. Zeekr is also selling the right-hand drive version of the luxury van in Hong Kong at HK$ 755,000 ($96,716) and aiming for delivery in the city in the fourth quarter of this year. The company launched a special Grand edition, targeting competition with the Rolls-Royce Cullinan in April.

Meituan is reportedly set to officially launch in Riyadh in September or October, according to Chinese media outlet NBD, as the food delivery giant looks to replicate its growth in Hong Kong and mainland China in Saudi Arabia. Meituan is in the process of persuading international restaurant operators, local Chinese restaurants, and local cuisine-focused restaurants to join the takeaway service ahead of its launch, the report noted, with the company already sending dozens of staff to the Middle East to support its expansion. Tony Qiu, Meituan’s international business leader, has since earlier this year reported directly to CEO Wang Xing, who took over the running of company’s overseas operations at the beginning of 2024. [NBD, in Chinese]

On July 19, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun unveiled the company’s first small foldable phone, the MIX Flip, at a product launch event in Beijing. At the same time, he also introduced a portable camera kit that pairs with the flip phone to enable instant photo prints. The portable camera kit includes the Mijia pocket photo printer 1S, an interconnectable leather bag with a strap, and a pack of ZINK photo papers (five sheets). When combined with the portable camera kit, the MIX Flip transforms into a retro Polaroid-style camera, allowing users to quickly print captured images as physical photos using the phone’s Snap mode. Before printing, users are able to enhance their photos by applying filters and making edits, the company said. The phone is priced at RMB 5,999 ($825), while the instant photo kit costs RMB 499 ($69). [TechNode reporting; Xiaomi Weibo]

Uniqlo’s chief executive officer in Greater China said the Japanese clothing brand’s “relative competitiveness is growing” in mainland China due to Chinese consumers’ mindset shifting to finding affordable alternatives to branded products after COVID-19. He saw Uniqlo’s potential to become the preferred brand in China. Pan Ning, the Uniqlo executive in Greater China, briefed the above at a time when Fast Retailing, the Japanese owner of Uniqlo, reported declining revenue and sharply falling profit in the region for the three months that ended in May. The company attributed the financial changes to stronger sales performance in the previous year and a slowdown in consumer appetite, especially in mainland China. According to Pan, the Japanese brand is planning to adjust its store opening strategy to be more quality-centered in the future and deepen the integration of physical stores and e-commerce. [Uniqlo; NBD, in Chinese]

Note: The article was first published on TechNode China written by Evan Huang and translated by Zinan Zhang.

In the dynamic AI era, venture capital is increasingly attuned to the transformative potential of this technology. As generative AI advances in creating text, images, and videos, a plethora of opportunities and challenges are emerging. This article explores the pivotal role of the Scaling Law, the emergence of super apps, and the promising future of AI-driven innovations. Highlighting insights from industry leaders, it underscores the potential for AI to revolutionize various sectors and entrepreneurial ventures, providing valuable directions for future venture capital investments.

The utility of the Scaling Law

The training and inference stages of large models demand substantial computational resources. The Scaling Law suggests that significant advancements in intelligence are achieved through consistent investment in vast amounts of data and powerful computing, provided the algorithmic architecture remains stable.

OpenAI, a strong proponent of the Scaling Law, has showcased the potential of generative AI across various fields by leveraging transformer architecture, extensive training data, and considerable computational resources.

Recently, Kevin Scott, Microsoft CTO, mentioned in an interview with Pat Grady and Bill Coughran of Sequoia Capital that they have yet to observe diminishing returns from scaling. He announced that the next generation of OpenAI models would soon be available, offering cheaper, more powerful solutions capable of tackling more complex problems. “This is the story with each generation of models as we scale up,” he remarked.

On May 18, Yang Zhilin, founder of Moonshot AI, discussed the computational aspects of the Scaling Law. He noted that initial improvements in model performance are driven by enhanced computational power and efficiency. However, further advancements require increased computational investment and ensuring that this investment effectively translates into intelligence. “This involves two issues: sustaining computational investment and maximizing the intelligence output of each computation unit,” he explained.

In an interview with TechNode, Wu Yunsheng, vice-president of Tencent Cloud, shared his perspective. “Currently, there are different viewpoints, including realistic and idealistic views. Some believe the Scaling Law has reached a plateau, where continued investment yields diminishing returns. Others argue it is still in a phase of rapid development.” He emphasized that the Scaling Law remains significant, citing rapid progress in multimodal research over the past year. “In this field, various capabilities improve significantly with added data or computing power. We will continue to explore and observe its development and changes across different scenarios and technologies,” he added.

The super app is on the way

As of March 28, 2024, there are 117 large models registered with the Cyberspace Administration of China, including Baidu’s ERNIE Bot, Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen, and the open-source ChatGLM. The rapid development of AI large models is becoming a key driver of innovation and breakthroughs in super applications. 

As these large model technologies mature and improve, they are gradually permeating various industries, sparking a range of entrepreneurial opportunities. From healthcare to fintech, from smart manufacturing to cultural creativity, the application potential of AI is limitless. 

Zhou Zhifeng, Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners, pointed out at the  World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai that compared to the timeline of application deployment during the internet wave, he predicts that the explosion of applications in the current AI wave will occur significantly earlier. Currently, generative AI is gaining substantial user favor in three “C fields” — Copilot, Creativity, and Companionship — showing a development trajectory similar to internet applications and transitioning from efficiency-enhancing applications to those aimed at providing enjoyment. He noted that the internet reduced the marginal cost of information distribution to almost zero, while the core of generative AI is to reduce the marginal cost of digital content creation to nearly zero, indicating that AI technology is bound to release enormous value.

When discussing the future of AI-driven super apps, Zhang Fan, COO of Zhipu AI, expressed optimism, arguing that although creating super apps is not easy, the AI era will see many unimaginable applications emerge. This process requires advancements in computing power, networks, hardware levels, and user habits, following the principle of gradual development from small-scale applications. Zhang emphasizes that by embracing and utilizing existing AI technologies to gradually transform current applications and products, the future will undoubtedly usher in super apps in the AI era.

Regarding the challenges of implementing generative AI applications, Zhou Zhifeng believes that reducing the cost of model usage necessary for the widespread adoption of generative AI, improving the effectiveness of large models, and enhancing user retention rates of generative AI applications are crucial. Since the growth period from zero to one for generative AI application companies is longer than in other fields, they need to overcome both TPF (Technology-Product Fit) and PMF (Product-Market Fit) challenges simultaneously. Therefore, the founding team needs greater patience, determination, and understanding of the technology, the product, and the world.

Embodied intelligence, infinite imagination

There were 45 intelligent robots, including 25 humanoid robots, showcased at WAIC this year. A video of a humanoid robot walking on the Great Wall was repeatedly played at the event. The humanoid robot L2 in the video has successfully conquered the steep slopes of the famous structure, achieving steady walking on it.

At the recent Huawei Developer Conference 2024, Zhang Ping’an, Executive Director and CEO of Huawei Cloud, unveiled the Pangu Model 5.0. During the introduction of the Pangu model for embodied AI, he showcased the broad potential of the KUAVO humanoid robot, equipped with the Pangu model, in both industrial and household scenarios, attracting widespread attention.

Chen Jianyu, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University and founder of the humanoid robot company Robot Era, believes that humanoid robots will be the ultimate form of general-purpose robots. This is not only because the pure humanoid form with two legs and two arms is more compatible with existing environments, but also because it’s easier to transfer training data from the human world. Technically, an end-to-end integration of the brain and cerebellum will be a crucial research direction in the future. Using human language as the interface between the brain and cerebellum is limited, and it is better to borrow from the end-to-end joint training process of autonomous driving, where physical layer data is directly fed back to the text and image models, significantly enhancing overall model performance.

Last week, Tencent, in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, released the Top Ten Trends of Large Models 2024: Entering the Era of ‘Machine External Brain’ report, which pointed out that the combination of robot technology and large models provides a “body” for the machine’s external brain. In the future, humanoid robots will not only be able to perform physical tasks but also interact with humans more naturally and intuitively, endowing physical products with intelligent “brains”.

The report states that the development of humanoid robots relies on two major technical pillars: motion control and task training. The application of large models has greatly improved the robots’ learning efficiency and ability to execute complex tasks. The integration of these technologies not only drives technological innovation in humanoid robots but also opens possibilities for their widespread deployment in practical applications. This also heralds a future of human-machine symbiosis, where humanoid robots will play increasingly important roles in various industries, from household services to high-risk industrial operations, showcasing their efficiency and safety. Through continuous technological innovation and application expansion, humanoid robots will play a key role in improving the quality of life and work efficiency, further integrating into human daily life as indispensable assistants and the ultimate carriers of artificial intelligence.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the era of AI is not just a technological revolution but a transformative force that is redefining the landscape of innovation and investment. As we look to the future, the challenges of implementing generative AI applications remain significant.      The need to reduce costs, improve effectiveness, and enhance user retention rates is crucial for the widespread adoption of these technologies. However, the potential rewards are immense, offering a glimpse into a world where AI is not just a tool but an integral part of our daily lives, from household services to high-risk industrial operations.

In summary, the dynamic AI era presents a wealth of opportunities for venture capital and entrepreneurial ventures. As we continue to explore and invest in AI-driven innovations, the future holds huge promise for transforming industries, enhancing human-machine interactions, and ultimately, improving the quality of life for all.

Chinese tech giant Huawei has filed a lawsuit in a local Chinese court accusing Taiwan-based chip firm MediaTek of patent infringement, seemingly after negotiations around patent fees broke down. In response, MediaTek stated on July 19 that the lawsuit has no significant impact on the company and they will not comment further about the details. “Differences over patent fees with Huawei began two or three years ago, but MediaTek considered the price was too high,” people familiar with the matter told local media outlet YiCai. According to the outlet’s sources, Huawei is suing MediaTek for patents related to cellular technologies, including 5G, 4G, and 3G, which indicates that Huawei is exploring the possibility of charging both smart device manufacturers and chipmakers for patent licenses in these fields. [YiCai, in Chinese]

TSMC on Thursday announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2024, reporting a 40.1% year-on-year revenue increase. The Taiwan-based chip foundry also stated that it has raised its full-year revenue and capital expenditure targets for 2024. The firm’s earnings call was also remarkable for TSMC CEO C.C. Wei introducing the new concept of “Wafer Foundry 2.0” for the first time during his comments to investors.

Why it matters: TSMC’s introduction of Wafer Foundry 2.0 signifies a strategic expansion beyond traditional wafer manufacturing. The move aims to capitalize on emerging market opportunities and meet the growing complexity of semiconductor production.

Details: TSMC said the idea of Wafer Foundry 2.0 is intended to better leverage its advanced packaging capabilities for market expansion by encompassing a wider range of activities compared to the traditional wafer manufacturing industry.

• As chip manufacturing becomes increasingly complex, wafer foundries have evolved beyond simple wafer manufacturing services. Wafer Foundry 2.0 was unveiled during TSMC’s second quarter earnings call, during which Wei redefined the foundry industry to include packaging, testing, mask-making, and IDM (Integrated Device Manufacturer) operations.
• Wei also noted that demand for TSMC’s 3nm and 5nm process technologies remains strong. As the company enters the third quarter, the demand for advanced processes driven by smartphones and AI opportunities has slightly raised its full-year revenue forecast for 2024, increasing the expected growth range from 21%-26% to 24%-26% year-on-year, he said.
• TSMC has also raised its 2024 capital expenditure budget from $28 billion-$32 billion to $30 billion-$32 billion. Of this, 70% to 80% will be allocated to advanced process technologies, 10% to 20% to special process technologies, and 10% to advanced packaging, testing, and mask-making, the company said.
• In the second quarter, TSMC reported revenue of NT$673.51 billion ($20.56 billion), a 40.1% increase year-on-year and a 13.6% rise quarter-on-quarter. Net profit was NT$247.85 billion ($7.57 billion), up 36.3% from the previous year and 9.9% from the previous quarter.
• In terms of revenue distribution by process technology, TSMC’s revenue from advanced processes of 7nm and below reached 67% in the second quarter. The firm’s 3nm process revenue accounted for 15% of this total, largely due to the launch of Apple’s A17 Pro series processors last year, as well as its M4 series processors and the upcoming A18 series processors this year.
• By end-use application, the revenue breakdown is as follows: high-performance computing accounted for 52%, smartphones for 33%, IoT for 6%, automotive electronics for 5%, consumer electronics for 2%, and others for 2%.

Context: Apple has secured the first batch of TSMC’s 2nm production capacity, expected to start trial production soon. The new chips, debuting in the iPhone 17 series, may boost performance by up to 15% and cut power consumption by 30% compared with the 3nm process.

On Wednesday, ASML released its financial report for the second quarter and stated that the period’s sales of 6.24 billion euros ($6.82 billion) exceeded the company’s expectations, even though overall net sales declined compared to the same period last year. 

Despite geopolitical uncertainties and restrictions on chip-related exports from the Netherlands to China, demand for ASML equipment in the Chinese mainland market remained strong, accounting for 49% of the Dutch company’s net system sales in the second quarter.

Why it matters: ASML’s revenue was impacted in the previous two quarters after the Dutch government’s chip-making equipment export restrictions took effect last September, and ASML’s export license expired at the end of 2023. Demand in the Chinese mainland market has now primarily shifted to unrestricted DUV (deep ultraviolet lithography) equipment.

Details: ASML reported mixed financial results for the second quarter, with a 7.6% year-on-year decline in net sales but an 18% increase from the previous quarter. On the same day, their US-listed shares dropped 13% due to reports that the US is considering even stricter rules around chip-related exports to China.

• In the second quarter of 2024, ASML achieved net sales of 6.24 billion euros ($6.82 billion), a decrease of around 7.6% from the 6.75 billion euros ($7.38 billion) it reported for the same period last year, though the figure marked an increase of around 18% compared to the first quarter of 2024’s 5.29 billion euros ($5.78 billion), according to the report.
• In terms of regional breakdowns, mainland China continues to be ASML’s largest market, with mainland Chinese net system sales accounting for 49% (2.33 billion euros, equivalent to 2.55 billion dollars) of the company’s total. This proportion remains consistent with the first quarter, reflecting a 20% increase from China’s 1.94 billion euros ($2.12 billion) in the first quarter of this year.
• “Gross margin for the quarter came in at 51.5%, which was above our guidance, primarily driven by more immersion systems than planned,” CFO Roger Dassen said on an ASML investor call. Dassen added that the company expects total net sales for the next quarter to hit between 6.7 billion euros ($7.32 billion) and 7.3 billion euros ($7.98 billion), with R&D expenses estimated at around 1.1 billion euros.
• “Although macro uncertainty remains, overall semiconductor inventory levels continue to improve, trending towards more healthy levels,” ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said during the same investor call. The company’s outlook for the full year is unchanged with revenue expected to be similar to last year, he added.
• US-listed shares of ASML slumped 13% following a Bloomberg report on Wednesday that the Biden administration is considering tougher restrictions to limit companies exporting critical chip-making equipment to China.

Context: On June 30, 2023, the Netherlands announced new export controls on the sale of advanced chip-making equipment to China, which took effect on September 1 that year. The rules require Dutch manufacturer ASML to apply for a license to ship some of its deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) systems to China.

• In the first quarter, ASML sales revenue was 5.29 billion euros ($5.78 billion), down from 6.7 billion euros ($7.32 billion) during the same period last year.

Volkswagen on Wednesday launched its first coupe-styled sports utility vehicle, the ID.UNYX, boasting high-tech features such as more diversified choices for infotainment content and a “worry-free” autonomous parking function at a price range between RMB 209,900 and RMB 249,900 ($28,918-$34,429). The actual selling price for early buyers will be reduced to RMB 199,900, as the carmaker knocks the standard RMB 5,000 deposit off of the final price in addition to discounts totaling RMB 10,000 on the original ticket price of the car. The latest member of VW’s electric vehicle ID. series has a driving range of 621 kilometers (386 miles) between charges; Tesla’s rear-wheel-drive Model Y, its main competitor in China priced from RMB 249,900, travels 554 km on a single charge. Volkswagen Anhui, the third joint venture by the German automaker with a Chinese partner, is set to enter 20 cities in the country this year and will expand its sales network to 70 cities by the end of 2025, according to a recent announcement. VW operated two joint subsidiaries with SAIC and FAW for years in China before partnering with Anhui-headquartered JAC Motors in 2017. [VW announcement, in Chinese]

More than 500 million active users play games in China’s super app WeChat on a monthly basis, the company has said, an eye-catching figure that demonstrates the channel’s potential as a driver of advertising revenue for parent firm Tencent. According to WeChat, half of these users live in third-tier cities and the majority are female. Mini-program games, which can be quickly launched within WeChat, now account for 15% of the messaging app’s total advertising revenue, the company revealed on Tuesday. WeChat also noted that more than 80% of mini-game developers are small-scale teams of below 30 staff. At least 240 in-app games have generated over RMB 10 million ($1.38 million) in quarterly revenue in the past 12 months, according to WeChat’s figures. [Caixin, in Chinese]

Huawei’s revenue from its car business unit more than doubled to almost RMB 10 billion ($1.38 billion) in the first half of 2024 from last year’s total of RMB 4.7 billion, thanks to strong demand for partners’ electric vehicles. The growth was mainly attributed to a surge in deliveries of Aito-branded EVs, co-developed with its manufacturing partner Seres, 36Kr reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Little-known automaker Seres reported sales of new energy vehicles, which refers to all-electrics and plug-in hybrids, of roughly 194,200 units in the first six month of this year, compared with 151,798 units for all of 2023. Aito on June 26 announced that it received more than 100,000 non-refundable RMB 5000 ($688) deposits for the M9, a $65,725 luxury sports utility vehicle launched in December. The joint brand achieved the same milestone for its M7 crossover last November, two months after the launch, TechNode has reported. [36Kr, in Chinese]

“9.11 and 9.9, which one is bigger?” Questions as simple as this confuse large language models including OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Moonshot-created Kimi, and ByteDance’s Doubao, according to a post by local media Yicai. Chatbots from China’s Baidu and Tencent generate the correct answer despite using different methods, the former comparing fractional parts after concluding the integer parts are the same and the latter, Tencent’s Hunyuan, concluding that 9.9 is the bigger number by computing that 9.11 minus 9.9 is negative. ChatGPT and Kimi, which both gave a wrong answer to the first prompt, were correct after users clarified: “in terms of numerical value.” AI-powered chatbots are fed by internet data and trained to chat with humans in a natural way so that they can perform text-based knowledge-based tasks. [Yicai, in Chinese]

In 2024, BEYOND Expo centered on the theme “Embracing the Uncertainties,” guiding attendees to explore unknown territories in technology and other areas. BEYOND Expo encouraged participants to take proactive actions, through continuous innovation, creative thinking, and exploration of new paths to face unknown challenges and turn potential risks into opportunities for progress and growth.

Building on this concept, the BEYOND Expo Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that BEYOND Expo 2025 will be held from May 21 to 24, 2025, at the Venetian Macao Cotai Expo in Macao, under the theme “Unveiling Possibilities”. The event aims to transform uncertainties into infinite possibilities and opportunities, offering participants an unprecedented experience:

• Three Major Independent Exhibition Areas: ConsumerTech, ClimateTech, and Healthcare
• Opening/Closing Ceremonies and Industry Summits: Key events include the ConsumerTech Summit, ClimateTech Summit, Healthcare Summit, and Global Investment Summit. Additionally, the event will expand its global perspective by providing opportunities for international market exploration, with forums such as the Asia-Latam Tech Forum, Asia-Euro Tech Forum, and Middle East Tech Forum, as well as specialized summits such as the BEYOND Wealth Summit, SheTech Summit, and Founder Forum.
• FUND AT FIRST PITCH: A platform for efficient connection between global capital and outstanding startups.
• BEYOND Awards: Prestigious technology awards across four categories, highlighting future-leading innovations.
• TFC (The Fun Continues) Series Activities: A blend of technology, culture, and sports for a celebratory experience.

BEYOND Expo will provide a venue for participants to exchange ideas, build connections, and discover new opportunities. BEYOND Expo 2025 anticipates attracting over 1,200 exhibiting companies, more than 30,000 technology innovation enthusiasts, 300 global top innovation leaders, 300 global media representatives, and numerous international innovators. BEYOND Expo encourages participants to go beyond tradition, explore the unknown, and use technological innovation to address global challenges, promoting sustainable social and economic development.

BEYOND Expo cordially invites all innovative companies, startups, and individuals to join BEYOND Expo 2025 to explore the limitless possibilities of technology and create a better future together.

• Reserve Early Bird booth for BEYOND Expo 2025 here
• To register Super Early Bird passes for BEYOND Expo 2025, click here
• For business collaboration, contact: BD@beyondexpo.com

Further Details about BEYOND Expo 2025:

Over the past four years, BEYOND Expo has focused on three sub-brands: ConsumerTech, ClimateTech, and Healthcare. BEYOND Expo 2024 set new records with over 820 participating companies, 40% of which were international exhibitors. The event saw more than 20,000 attendees, with over 35% being international visitors and over 30% being women. More than 160 forums were held, featuring over 250 speakers, half of whom were from overseas. Additionally, 200 media outlets from around the world participated, achieving comprehensive internationalization.

Three Core Exhibition Areas: Experiencing Cutting-Edge Technology and Innovation

BEYOND Expo 2025 will continue to focus on the three sub-brands. The event is expected to attract over 1,200 technology companies from around the globe, with international companies making up 40% of exhibitors. Participants will have the chance to experience the latest technological products up close, from smart wearables and medical health innovations to sustainable energy solutions. The exhibition areas at BEYOND Expo 2025 will serve as a springboard for companies to expand into global markets, seizing globalization opportunities and enhancing their brand influence worldwide.

Opening and Closing Ceremonies, on top of BEYOND’s legendary Summits

The opening ceremony, featuring distinguished guests and deep industry insights, is a major event in the tech world. BEYOND Expo 2025, themed “What’s Next,” will gather influential industry leaders to analyze how technology drives industry transformation and innovation. The closing ceremony, a grand event blending technology, culture, sports, and entertainment, will include the FUND AT FIRST PITCH finals, the BEYOND AWARDS ceremony, and keynote talks. The four major summits include the ConsumerTech Summit, ClimateTech Summit, Healthcare Summit, and Global Investment Summit, designed to provoke insightful discussions and catalyze groundbreaking innovations.

Series of Multidimensional Summit Forums Covering Different Regions and Themes

Within the wider series of forums, the Asia-Latam Tech Forum, Asia-Euro Tech Forum, and ORIGIN: Asia Tech Forum will spotlight regional tech ecosystems. BEYOND SheTech will showcase global female innovation power, while the BEYOND Wealth Summit will delve into cutting-edge trends in global wealth management. The Founder Forum will feature narratives from Asian tech entrepreneurs, offering participants opportunities to broaden their global perspectives and explore international markets.

FUND AT FIRST PITCH: Igniting Innovation Passion, Efficient Capital and Startup Matching

FUND AT FIRST PITCH is a professional platform designed for entrepreneurs and investors, providing an efficient and strategic communication bridge. Entrepreneurs can showcase their business plans, technological advantages, and market potential, while investors can discover emerging market investment opportunities. BEYOND Expo 2024’s FUND AT FIRST PITCH attracted over 150 companies and 100 investment institutions, resulting in over 50 successful matches. BEYOND Expo 2025 aims to expand this platform’s scale and influence, attracting more enterprises and investors.

BEYOND Awards: Pinnacle of Technological Innovation, Leading Future Forces

The BEYOND Awards feature four major honors: ConsumerTech Innovation Award, ClimateTech Innovation Award, Healthcare Innovation Award, and Impact Award. These awards, evaluated by the BEYOND Awards Committee, recognize global innovation technologies and companies across multiple dimensions. The award ceremony will take place at the closing ceremony, celebrating the achievements of the winners and showcasing the unlimited potential of technological innovation.

The Fun Continues: A Symphony of Technology, Culture, and Sports

BEYOND Expo 2025 is not just a tech feast but a celebration of the fusion of technology and culture. In BEYOND Expo 2024, participants enjoyed a variety of activities, including food market, yoga session, gala dinner, charity poker night, pool party, NBA 3V3 tournament, and more. BEYOND Expo 2025 will bring even more innovative parties and activities, allowing participants to experience the unique charm of Macao while enjoying an international carnival.

As a key hub for Asian technological innovation, BEYOND Expo 2025 aims to drive regional cooperation and mutual benefit. Leveraging Macao’s geographical advantages and cultural appeal, BEYOND Expo 2025 will connect innovative forces from different countries and regions, providing a platform to explore the unlimited potential of Asian technological innovation and achieve broader influence.

See you in Macao in May 2025!

For more information about BEYOND Expo 2025, please visit www.beyondexpo.com.

Autotech startup Nullmax said on Tuesday that its latest generation of autonomous driving hardware and software package, allowing cars to navigate complex urban environments autonomously with features such as lane changing, will cost users as little as “several thousand RMB.” 

Why it matters: Shanghai and Fremont-based Nullmax is among the few players in the self-driving vehicle space claiming that cars will be able to function by themselves in urban scenarios without maps and lidar. Instead, the company said artificial intelligence models can be used to enable cars to navigate from points A to B.

• This makes its system even more cost-competitive on the Chinese market compared with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, chief executive Xu Lei told reporters in Shanghai. Tesla has reportedly partnered with Baidu to leverage the latter’s lane-level navigation and standard definition mapping services, as part of its push to localize its most advanced driver-assistance software (ADAS) in the country.

Details: Xu told a press conference that his company is advocating a “pure vision” and “end-to-end” approach, as Tesla has been doing and many are following its lead, which involves deep neural networks, using cameras only to perform autonomous driving functions (our translation).

• The car could complete the highway on-ramp to off-ramp maneuver and drive through a construction zone in Chinese urban areas with affordable hardware of 7-11 cameras and a computing platform that can handle roughly 100 trillion operations per second (or TOPS), according to Nullmax.
• Xu expects some car models equipped with the technology to come to market in 2025, without saying more. Nullmax, with roughly 300 scientists and engineers, has been developing more safety-based ADAS functions for domestic automakers SAIC, and Chery, among others, TechNode has learned.
• Cars powered by Nullmax’s tech have traveled a combined 10 million kilometers (6.2 million miles). Xu added more actual driving data is required to provide cars with point-to-point navigation on city streets, while the company is training the ADAS system via simulation with AI-generated data.

Context: Chinese EV startups led by NIO, Xpeng Motors, and Li Auto have been ramping up efforts to transition from “rule-based” designs to an “end-to-end” autonomous driving method. Meanwhile, traditional car manufacturers are tapping into the power of AI by working with tech giants such as Huawei and NVIDIA, as well as startup unicorns like Horizon Robotics and Momenta.

• “What we see in the future is that the (AI-defined) AV stack will become an end-to-end model and will be trained in the cloud with massive data. More importantly, it will be validated in the cloud with simulation capabilities as well,” said Wu Xinzhou, NVIDIA’s vice president of automotive at its annual developer conference GTC in March.
• The US chipmaker in late 2021 released a system called “Omniverse Replicator” to facilitate the training of autonomous vehicles in the virtual world, Reuters reported. Chinese major EV makers, including BYD and NIO, are building their ADAS upon its DRIVE Orin computers, each of which offers 254 TOPS of performance.
• Nullmax was co-founded in 2016 by Xu Lei and Justin Song, both of whom spent time at Tesla. Xu worked on Tesla’s Autopilot computer vision team in 2015 and 2016, after leaving a senior engineering role at Qualcomm, while Song was responsible for engineering the Tesla Autopilot and car infotainment system from 2012 to 2015, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

READ MORE: Former Tesla engineer shares thoughts on end-to-end autonomous driving at WAIC 2024

Editor’s note: ‘Landing AI’ is a series of special reports focusing on the field of Artificial Intelligence curated by TechNode. By investigating the development of AI landing in China and the behind-the-scenes stories of the industry, we’re going to dive deeper into everything that’s possible under the new wave of AI.

China’s long-form video platform iQiyi again faced a user backlash over removing the ad skip option from basic membership, as recent discussion prompted iQiyi to respond that basic membership is for users who find ad watching acceptable as the price for access to members-only content at low cost. The Baidu-backed platform said on its official Weibo account, “Consumers can see the difference in price and service between basic and gold memberships on the subscription page before choosing on-demand and purchasing.” In the first quarter, iQiyi saw subscriber service revenue down 13% to RMB 4.8 billion from last year, attributed by the company to “the high base effect in the same period last year.” [iQiyi, in Chinese]

Oppo’s OnePlus brand on Tuesday released the OnePlus Pad 2 alongside other new electronics at a launch event in Milan, Italy. Its new stylus, the Stylo 2, comes replete with faux leather grip, sophisticated pressure sensitivity, swipe control, and a vibrating tip offering a pen-on-paper feel. The company says its new tablet boasts a larger 12.1-inch screen powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, offering enhanced performance over its predecessor. Its screen resolution has been boosted to 3,000 x 2,120 pixels with increased brightness and support for Dolby Vision HDR, while it retains the original’s 7:5 screen ratio and adaptive refresh rate for better battery life. An optional Smart Keyboard adds the NFC (Near Field Communication) function for file sharing with OnePlus phones. Available from July 30, the OnePlus Pad 2 starts at $549.99 for the 12GB RAM + 256GB storage model, the Stylo 2 costs $99.99 and the Smart Keyboard costs $149.99. [TechNode reporting]

Chinese online retailer JD is launching a monthly promotional campaign that it claims will see branded products worth over RMB 1,000 sell for just RMB 18 ($2.48). The company announced the move on Wednesday, framing it as a way of thanking the e-commerce platform’s customer base. Held on the 18th of every month, the one-day campaign will include high-end items such as alcohol products from Moutai, TCL TVs, and perfume from Bulgari, according to JD. The campaign is JD’s latest move to lure shoppers by slashing prices, though the RMB 18 offers come with a number of conditions, including a tight time window. “The activity organizer has the right to adjust or stop the form of the project based on users’ participation,” the terms and conditions also state. [JD, in Chinese]

A tech blogger, hongxing2020, recently revealed on platform X that NVIDIA is preparing the next-generation RTX 5090D graphics card for the Chinese market, which is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2025. Last December, the California-based chip giant introduced a special edition GeForce RTX 4090D graphics card for the Chinese market to comply with U.S. export regulations. The RTX 4090D offers 11% fewer cores and 10% lower overall performance compared to the original version 4090, as the company must comply with U.S. export control requirements, which mandate that GPUs exported to China have a total processing power below 4,800 points. Based on NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture, the next-generation RTX 5090 graphics card will bring performance improvements, but the modified edition RTX 5090D for the Chinese market is expected to have reduced performance with minimal gains over the RTX 4090D. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

Chinese bubble tea chain Chagee has reportedly hired Li Tao, vice president of Starbucks China, paving the way for the rising brand’s further expansion, according to local media outlet 36Kr. However, the report was quickly denied by the company.

Founded in 2017, the bubble tea maker has found widespread success in China’s crowded ready-to-drink beverage industry through its addition of fresh milk to raw-leaf tea.

Why it matters: The reported move comes as Chagee mulls a US listing to widen its access to financing.

Details: The 36Kr report added that Chagee is also looking at hiring professionals from rivals such as Tims China (Tim Hortons’ China offshoot), while attempting to lure marketing staff from social media platform Xiaohongshu and tech giant Huawei.

• Chagee founder Zhang Junjie has set a goal of surpassing Starbucks China in terms of sales volume in 2024. In the first quarter of this year, Chagee made more than RMB 5.8 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV), slightly exceeding half of its total sales for 2023, Zhang told the public in May.
• For the same three-month period, Starbucks recorded a decline in both revenue and net profit, with earnings landing at $706 million, approximately RMB 5.1 billion. 
• Although Chagee has kept silent on its profit figures, local media outlet LatePost reported in May that the company earned a net profit of between RMB 800 million and RMB 1 billion in 2023, versus a loss around RMB 48 million on RMB 500 million revenue a year prior.
• Beverages are mostly priced at around RMB 20 ($2.75) at Chagee, the fourth-largest Chinese to-go beverage chain. Zhang recently revealed that the brand sold over 230 million cups of one of its flagship products, a jasmine green milk tea, in 2023. Chagee tends to use ancient Chinese idioms to name its beverages; the aforementioned jasmine drink is named with a four-character idiom that translates to “the difficulty of finding a soulmate.” The name alone doesn’t give buyers an immediate idea of the drink’s ingredients.

Context: The past 18 months has been a period of wild expansion for Chagee, which opened more than 3,500 new stores in 2023. It took the chain more than five years to open its first 1,000 stores and it has over 4500 in total as of May.

Apple is reported to have secured the first batch of production capacity for TSMC’s advanced 2nm process technology, which is expected to enter trial production this week, according to Taiwanese media outlet Commercial Times. The equipment for 2nm process chips was installed in TSMC’s new Hsinchu Baoshan fab in the second quarter, with the chips set to feature in the iPhone 17 series in 2025. Sources indicate that TSMC’s 2nm process may offer a 10-15% performance boost over 3nm and reduce power consumption by up to 30%. Additionally, Apple plans to adopt SoIC (System on Integrated Chips) packaging for its M5 chip in 2025, which will involve stacking multiple chips with different functions to form a compact three-dimensional structure. [IThome, in Chinese]

Taiwan-based chipmaker MediaTek is developing server processors using Arm’s CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit), with plans for production with TSMC’s 3nm process. The company aims to start mass production of the new server chip in the second half of 2025, targeting orders from cloud service providers (CSP). The rapidly emerging AI server market demands high-performance chips from companies such as Nvidia and AMD for high-end models, but their excessive power consumption is driving new demand for low-power processors in areas without significant AI requirements, industry analysis has revealed. This shift has led to increased demand in the mid-to-low-end AI server market, where low-power Arm-based processors are now the focus for major cloud service providers. MediaTek will target CSP giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta, positioning its server business as a key priority in its operational strategy. [Economic Daily News, in Chinese]

General Motors’ joint venture with China’s SAIC on Tuesday introduced an Autopilot-style advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), which the company said would enable its Century model, a luxury multi-purpose vehicle, to handle highways. The Navigation on Pilot (NOP) software enables autopilot overtaking, lane switching, and on-ramp/off-ramp driving, making it the “first joint manufacturer” among peers to launch such technology through over-the-air updates in China, according to an announcement.

Developed locally by its Pan-Asia Automotive Technology Center in Shanghai, the Level 2 system still requires the driver to be in full control and relies on a high-definition map. Peer SAIC-Volkswagen in March launched its 2024 Tiguan L with ADAS sourced from Chinese drone maker DJI and featuring more safety-based functions such as collision avoidance. Chinese rivals such as Xpeng Motors and Li Auto are making ADAS technologies for more complex urban environments and without the dependence on precise geolocation information. SAIC-GM reported sales of around 225,600 cars for the first half of the year, an almost 50% plunge from a year earlier. [TechNode reporting, GM announcement, in Chinese]

On July 12, the Bilibili World 2024 event opened at the National Exhibition and Convention Center, attracting ACG (Anime, Comic, Game) fans from across China who traveled to Shanghai to become part of the Chinese streaming platform’s annual celebration. 

The three-day event this year featured over 700 exhibitors and 800 ACG-content creators. The Lenovo booth showcased two new AI products: the YOGA Air 14c AI PC and the Legion Y9000P AI PC.

Why it matters: Bilibili World 2024 draws in ACG fans to celebrate shared interests, which meant the AI-powered Lenovo PCs garnered significant attention.

Details: The Lenovo YOGA Air 14c AI PC is designed for work, while the Lenovo Legion Y9000P AI PC is principally marketed to gamers. 

• “In the current wave of AI development, computers are gradually evolving into personal assistant roles. As a leading enterprise in the PC industry, Lenovo will continue to maintain its leadership in this new era,” said Li Weichang, Vice President and General Manager of Lenovo China’s Consumer PC and Tablet Business, at the booth during the event.
• Li said an advanced AI PC should have five features: an embedded personal intelligent agent for natural interaction, a built-in knowledge base, combined CPU+GPU+NPU AI processing power, an open AI application ecosystem, and protection for personal privacy and data security.
• The Lenovo YOGA Air 14c AI laptop is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, featuring an advanced 6+8+2 core thread configuration, with a maximum frequency of up to 4.8GHz. The AI model offers up to 32GB RAM and 1TB storage.
• The YOGA Air 14c AI PC integrates an intelligent agent, Lenovo Xiaotian, powered by the firm’s self-developed Tianxi large language model. Lenovo Xiaotian is able to learn user habits and preferences at work and while engaged in entertainment. The AI assistant is then able to offer practical functionalities including AI-powered PowerPoint production, document summarizing, voice cloning, and painting.

• The flagship Y9000P AI features Intel’s i9-14900HX processor and Nvidia’s RTX 4090 graphics card, supporting direct GPU connection technology with a maximum power consumption reaching up to 250W. In terms of display, the flagship model provides a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution 240Hz screen for a detailed gaming experience.
• The Legion Y9000P AI laptop is also equipped with Lenovo Xiaotian, which interacts with users in various scenarios including document summarizing, research question answering, and AI performance tuning.

Context: Held since 2017, Bilibili World is a community-focused annual large-scale in-person event organized by Bilibili, a leading Chinese video-sharing website. On June 29, the first round of the ACG event’s ticket sales saw 27,000 VIP tickets sell out within 30 seconds, with 100,000 general admission tickets gone within one minute, according to the company’s own app.

• Intel’s China District Technical Director, Gao Yu, attended the event and introduced the Intel Core Ultra processor, integrating three types of computational engines — CPU, GPU, and NPU (collectively known as XPU) — for various AI tasks. Yu hinted at an upcoming next-generation AI PC processor based on the Lunar Lake architecture, promising even more powerful AI functionalities.

The Chinese government on July 12 announced it had given Xiaomi a production license to independently assemble electric vehicles, meaning the smartphone maker has cleared the official hurdles required to scale up its production independently, without needing its traditional car manufacturer ally BAIC.

Why it matters: The green light from Chinese regulators will pave the way for a smooth production ramp-up for Xiaomi, which has raised its delivery target to 120,000 from 72,000 units for this year and hopes to reach a wider customer group with upcoming models.

Details: Xiaomi is now on the list of “all-electric passenger car manufacturers,” according to the registration filings released for public review by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on July 12 (our translation).

• Xiaomi also updated the filing for registration of its first consumer car, the SU7, to the country’s top industry regulator, with the model carrying the “Xiaomi” name on its rear, rather than “Beijing Xiaomi” as previously shown, the photos revealed by MIIT show.
• The popular sedan has always been manufactured at Xiaomi’s factory in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, but its production application had earlier been filed in the name of a subsidiary of state-owned automaker BAIC, TechNode reported.
• The company had been waiting for final approval from MIIT after getting the nod from China’s state planner to manufacture EVs, Reuters first reported last August, while reportedly looking for a partner to produce its second model. Its Beijing plant can turn out 150,000 cars a year.

Context: Xiaomi reached the 10,000-unit milestone in June, its third delivery month, bringing the year-to-date delivery volume of its answer to Tesla’s Model 3 to nearly 26,000 units.

• President Lu Weibing told investors in May that the company is aiming to deliver 120,000 cars this year. This is far higher than the firm’s original target of 72,000 units revealed by chief executive Lei Jun at Xiaomi’s annual investor day in April, CNBC reported.
• Priced from RMB 215,900 ($29,881) with styling similar to the Porsche Taycan, the all-electric Xiaomi SU7 has become a success in China, securing 88,898 pre-orders in the 24 hours following its launch on March 28. The company has since been under pressure to ensure timely delivery.
• The tech giant is also rushing to introduce its second car, an all-electric sports utility vehicle, in the first half of next year, while a third model is said (in Chinese) to be an extended-range hybrid (EREV) targeting Chinese families, and is scheduled for release in 2026.

READ MORE: “China’s Apple” Xiaomi takes aim at Tesla with debut EV launch, as millions watch online

TikTok is exploring the local life services sector in Southeast Asia as it tries to replicate sister app Douyin’s path in China. According to a recent job posting on the company’s official careers website, its venture into services aims to “make the daily life experience richer, more unique and more innovative.” Chinese media outlet 36Kr quoted a TikTok service provider in Indonesia as saying that some of the short video app’s users are already exposed to discounted meal deals in their TikTok feed as part of an initial beta test in Indonesia and Thailand. In China, Douyin offers group-purchase dining vouchers that users can buy at a discounted price before heading to offline outlets to use them. The Chinese service has now expanded to include a wide spread of vendors covering everything from sightseeing tickets to leisure activities. [36Kr, in Chinese]

Ant Group’s insurance arm said on Monday its partner insurers reported $1.93 billion in claims via its platform in the first half of this year, a 30% year-on-year increase, as users increasingly choose the online insurance brokerage platform thanks to its convenience. With more than 1 billion users on the platform, Alipay’s in-app tool has expanded from e-commerce-related shopping rebates when launched in 2013 to providing a range of insurance offerings including health and travel coverage. It has partnered with 90 insurance companies in China to offer more than 1,000 products, Ant Insurance said in a press release. The Alibaba-affiliated fintech company is also using ChatGPT-like tech to power its insurance services, with AI assisting users in choosing insurance products and streamlining the claims process. “No personal privacy-related data is involved when fine-tuning the insurance-centered model, as the model only needs to understand general patterns in claims processing,” according to Fang Yong, head of claims technology at Ant Insurance. [TechNode reporting]

Chinese automakers will over time become a dominant force worldwide despite the US and Europe imposing extra duties on their electric vehicles, consultants AlixPartners said on Wednesday, highlighting that China’s vehicle makers are on track to grab over 30% of the global market by 2030.

Chinese brands’ market share in Europe is unlikely to reach the previously anticipated percentage of 15% by 2030, as forecasted a year ago, instead doubling from 6% to 12%, but stronger growth is expected in other regions. Chinese brands could claim market shares 31% and 28% in Southeast Asia and Latin America respectively by the end of the decade, up from the 19% in each estimated last year, figures from the consultancy’s annual Global Automotive Outlook showed.

Many Chinese auto majors have pivoted their focus to overseas markets beyond the EU in recent months, taking advantage of fewer regulatory barriers in, for example, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Geely subsidiary Zeekr plans to expand its footprint from 25 to more than 50 global markets by the end of this year, despite retaining “very big ambitions” for Europe, executives told investors last month. Great Wall Motor is shutting down its European headquarters in Munich, Germany, but says it still has plans to set up a factory in the region.

“Chinese automakers will definitely lose some competitive edge in EVs as they move to implement localized manufacturing and sales operations in Europe,” Stephen Dyer, a co-leader for AlixPartners’s Greater China business and head of its Asia automotive practice, told reporters on Wednesday in Shanghai. “However, they still have cost advantages over foreign competitors thanks to a shortened vehicle development time, a much lower labor cost, along with an intense corporate culture,” Dyer added, speaking in Mandarin Chinese (our translation).

An employee from a Chinese EV maker works as many as 140 hours in a month when a new car is launched, compared with only 20 hours worked by a counterpart at a global auto major, AlixPartners told clients in its latest outlook. Meanwhile, the average vehicle development time for a Chinese EV model has been cut in half to 20 months compared with legacy brands, mainly by reducing the number of physical tests and sending out software updates to fix problems.

The European Union’s additional tariffs on Chinese-made EVs are forcing Chinese majors to set up their own assembly operations on the continent. BYD on July 4 opened its first overseas passenger car factory in Thailand while planning to invest $1 billion in another one in Turkey and to establish a $30 million battery plant in Hungary. Chery in April reached a joint venture deal with Spain’s EV Motors to produce cars at a former Nissan plant in Barcelona later this year, Reuters reported. At least 12 new regional plants are being planned by Chinese car manufacturers, Dyer said.

“What we see is we’ve had a brand premium that is comparable to or even slightly more than global automakers in some overseas markets, such as Southeast Asia,” Wang Hui, a vice president of Changan Automobile, told this year’s China Auto Forum in Shanghai on Friday (our translation). The state-controlled automaker last October announced plans to build a $241.7 million plant in Rayong, Thailand, aiming to commence operations later this year with a capacity of 100,000 EVs annually. 

Wang added that Chinese firms should take a long-term mindset of “being humble and cautious” while making efforts to increase tax revenue and boost job growth for the local economies in where they operate.

READ MORE: EU anti-subsidy EV probe: What Chinese automakers have done in Europe and what’s next

Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social platform that is increasingly seen as a real-time search engine favored by younger generations, has received financial injections from venture capital firm DST Global in a recent sale of existing shares to current and new investors. The Financial Times first reported the news on Thursday, saying the deal valued Xiaohongshu at $17 billion. Investors that already held stakes in the company, including Hongshan (previously Sequoia China), Hillhouse, Boyu, and Citic Capital, also participated in the new round of funding. Boosted by rising e-commerce and advertising business, the lifestyle platform reportedly earned $3.7 billion in revenue and $500 million in net profit last year, the first time it was profitable since it was founded in 2013. [Financial Times]

Since Chinese game developer miHoYo released Zenless Zone Zero, a new action role-playing game (RPG) populated with rogue-like elements last Thursday, the reviews from Chinese players have been mixed. Online communities have seen comments praising its combat mechanics and visual design, but others saying the game is somewhat unengaging. 

As the developer of hit game Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, miHoYo has caused a stir in the domestic gaming industry with this new release. Less than three days after the game became available to the public, the Shanghai-based firm announced that global downloads had surpassed 50 million, thanking players by distributing in-game rewards.

The free-to-download game is available on Windows, iOS, Android and PlayStation 5, with future versions planned to launch on Switch and Xbox, though there are no confirmed release dates for the latter.

We spent eight hours playing the game to give readers a comprehensive review.

Game background

In the environs of a post-apocalyptic metropolis called New Eridu, the last humans to exist live in a place called Hollows, where monsters roam. New Eridu thrives by extracting resources from Hollows, leading to conflict between monopolistic enterprises, gangs, and conspirators. Players take on the role of a Proxy, a group that links the Hollows and New Eridu.

As players progress in the Hollows, the Proxy recruits new members to their party as they continue to fight the roaming monsters. By combining the abilities of different members in the game, players can cause greater damage and have greater impact on their enemies.

Beautiful visuals and hard-hitting music

Zenless Zone Zero’s visual effects and camera movements are smooth, and the story animations are fluid, in a similar style to Japanese manga.

The game simplifies action elements, making it easy for beginners to pick up, while containing many intricate details for veteran players to master. It employs a three-character team for diverse combat strategies, an intriguing choice when first playing. Players can switch to another character during the battles for an enhanced hitting score, if they seize the right moment.

The game’s visual design has gathered widespread acclaim, especially for its stylized street fashion. Character design and game scene details are so rich I would give them a score above 9 out of ten. The music and sound effects are also fantastic, with high-quality music featuring electronic melodies and high-BPM (Beats Per Minute).

Plodding storylines and mediocre gacha animations

The storyline and dialogue of Zenless Zone Zero occasionally prompted me to speed through them, and may be more appealing to younger players. Meanwhile, the hitting impact sensation during battles is better on a PC, leaving plenty of room for improvement on the mobile version.

Gacha refers to a game mechanic whereby players spend virtual currency (in-game purchases) to receive random in-game items or characters, similar to toy vending machines, often seen in miHoYo’s mobile games. This is a gacha animation screenshot:

The gacha animations in this game are mediocre, and come nowhere near those of Genshin Impact, a game the tester played for two years. Additionally, compared to Genshin Impact, the character pool isn’t very appealing, and there were no characters I felt compelled to invest in.

The tester spent four hours experiencing the game on both mobile and PC. Currently, the variety of monsters in battles is rather limited, which could stifle extended play.

As the game is essentially a gacha pay-to-win system, and due to limited testing time, it could be that we’re yet to uncover its full complexity. However, from a beginner’s perspective, the overall gaming experience falls short of that of Genshin Impact.

Pros: 

• Unique combat experience
• Smooth artistic visuals
• Beginner-friendly mechanics
• Acclaimed music

Cons: 

• Bland storyline and dialogue
• Mediocre hitting sensation on mobile devices
• Characters and gacha animations less appealing than Genshin Impact
• Limited monster variety in battles

Conclusion:

Zenless Zone Zero shows great potential but needs further improvements to captivate players long-term. It doesn’t quite measure up to Genshin Impact, especially in the gacha mechanics, a crucial area that has earned billions of dollars worldwide for the company through its other hit titles.

The game’s greatest strength is its art design, making it satisfactory as a mobile game. However, given four years of development and the success of Genshin Impact, miHoYo was expected to deliver a better game. The current version falls short of our expectations.

E-commerce growth has slowed for China’s two major short video platforms, Douyin and Kuaishou, since the beginning of this year, local tech media LatePost reported on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the two content platforms have still enjoyed double-digit GMV increases of around 20% in recent months, according to the report, which quoted a source close to Kuaishou as pointing to the lack of significant expansion in its overall user base as the main reason that sales growth has dragged. Kuaishou is aware that too many advertisements could discourage short video viewers from placing retail orders in the app, said the report, with the company’s commercialization head Wang Jianwei also taking over the e-commerce business last November in an attempt to find the right mix of engagement and advertising. [LatePost, in Chinese]

Baidu’s shares surged 10.1% to HK$ 95.05 ($12.17) on Wednesday in Hong Kong, its highest price in the past month, after a mainland Chinese taxi fleet operator publicly complained about the company’s autonomous ride-hailing cars becoming a threat to its human taxi drivers. Four taxi drivers at Wuhan Jianshe Automobile Passenger Transport Co., Ltd. have suspended services since April and more are facing a significant reduction in salary, the company said in a letter sent to local authorities on June 20 and circulated on Chinese social networks this week.

The taxi firm blamed a sprawling expansion of Baidu’s autonomous cars, while multiple taxi drivers told media outlet CLS that it had become difficult to get fares in areas of the city where the internet giant had deployed large numbers of its robotaxis. Baidu said in May that its robotaxi service, known as Apollo Go (or Luobo Kuaipao in Chinese) and launched in 2021, had provided 6 million rides as of April 19, while it was aiming for the business to turn a profit by 2025, TechNode reported. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has previously announced that the company will unveil its robotaxi design on August 8, as competition in the sector heats up. [TechNode reporting, CLS, in Chinese]

Alibaba has signed NBA star Tony Parker as an ambassador for Alibaba.com, its cross-border business-to-business retail platform, just days before the Paris Olympics, as the company tries to lure European customers and eyes further international expansion. 

Why it matters: The signing of Parker comes shortly after David Beckham became ambassador for AliExpress, and its connections with professional sports figures indicate Alibaba’s intention to expand its businesses to reach a larger user base.

Details: Alibaba.com, founded in 1999 as the Chinese tech giant’s first business, was designed to serve as a bridge between foreign wholesalers and Chinese manufacturers.

• Tony Parker made his entrepreneurial debut in 2019, after a legendary career marked by four NBA championships during his prime. Alibaba said Parker has a “powerful appeal” in the US and Europe.
• The NBA star’s advertisements for Alibaba can be found in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport and subway stations, and at well-known landmarks such as Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
• The ongoing UEFA Euro 2024 football competition has benefited Chinese merchants on Alibaba’s international-focused e-commerce platform AliExpress, according to the company. One AliExpress seller from Xiamen, surnamed Zhang, decided to increase their stock of soccer-related goods “soon after” Beckham was appointed as the platform’s global ambassador ahead of the tournament. Zhang has seen a tenfold increase in sales within one month, AliExpress said in a WeChat post.

Context: Global sports events are a significant traffic pool for Chinese brands looking to expand their business overseas, with prominent logos on the field and strong visitor flow rate as well as live viewer count making for fast results, as demonstrated by the spike in downloads of Temu after its Super Bowl debut in 2023.

TSMC, listed in both Taiwan and New York, saw its market value surpass the $1 trillion mark on Monday, becoming the seventh-largest tech company globally by market capitalization, local media outlet Jiwei reported. Ranked by market valuation, the top ten most valuable companies include Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Saudi Aramco, Meta, TSMC, Tesla, and Berkshire Hathaway. Over the past 15 to 18 months, the semiconductor industry has led the stock market due to soaring global chip demand driven by the rise of AI, the report said. Semiconductors have attracted significant investment and government subsidies, notably the US government’s CHIPS Act, which offers companies billions of dollars to establish domestic chip factories. [Jiwei, in Chinese]

The US-listed Chinese electric vehicle trio has made some progress in their push to replace the chips for advanced driving functions inside their cars with home-grown components, following Tesla’s suit in hopes of deriving better computing performance to train their artificial intelligence models. NIO has carried out the tapeout phase for the Shenji NX9031, its first self-developed system on chip (SoC) for assisted driving and conditional autonomous functions, and will integrate the five-nanometer chip into its ET9 executive sedan as planned, scheduled for delivery in early 2025, according to a Monday report by Chinese media outlet 36Kr. The report cited sources as saying the tapeout for Xpeng Motors’ in-house replacement for Nvidia’s DRIVE Orin chips has also started, marking the end of the design process and the beginning of manufacturing. The report added that there is a bit of catching up for Li Auto, which aims for the completion of the tapeout for its in-house advanced driving chip, codenamed Schumacher, by the end of this year. In August 2018, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk revealed the company’s plan to swap Nvidia’s AI system with its Hardware 3.0 chips. [TechNode reporting, 36Kr, in Chinese]

Kuaishou, one of the main rivals to TikTok’s China sibling Douyin, showcased several fresh features for its text-to-video model Kling AI at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai last week, including the ability to generate videos up to 10 seconds. 

At WAIC, visitors queued to experience the Sora-like tool that is currently available by invitation only. Users sent simple prompts to generate videos, such as “a panda eating salmon” and “the Mona Lisa putting her glasses on with her hands”, with the resulting clips demonstrating Kling AI’s ability to render the inputs almost perfectly.

AI-generated videos have subsequently flooded the Chinese internet, with Kling AI being used to create clips featuring characters from historical films undertaking modern day tasks and spawning multiple memes.  

A video featuring Rong momo, a character from “My Fair Princess” who has become a well-known internet meme in China, feeding Princess Ziwei a chicken drumstick has gone viral on social platforms these days. The AI-generated video is based on the drama’s most famous scene in which Rong momo tortures Ziwei by repeatedly stabbing her with a needle.

Why it matters: Kuaishou will be hoping that its suite of self-developed large model series, including language model KwaiYii, image-focused Kolors, and video-centered Kling, will give it an edge as it continues to challenge to ByteDance’s Douyin and TikTok.

Details: More than 500,000 users have applied to help beta test Kling, senior vice president of Kuaishou Gai Kun revealed last weekend at a WAIC forum, with the number of videos generated reaching 7 million as of now. The Sora rival’s hype is such that English language posts teaching users outside of China how to apply for a Kling AI trial can be found on X, formerly known as Twitter.

• Kuaishou provided practical tips on the screen at the WAIC event, including advising users to use simple words and sentence structures and to avoid overly complex language. It also emphasized that its model is not sensitive to numbers, giving an example that if the prompt is “10 puppies on the beach,” the number might not be consistently maintained in its outputs.
• A member of staff from Kuaishou’s large language model team told TechNode that they were not at liberty to disclose the data used to train Kling AI, but indicated that it was open source.
• The TikTok rival meanwhile announced at WAIC that its Midjourney-like model Kolors would become open source, a move which Kuaishou said aims to contribute to a more prosperous ecosystem for the text-to-image generation community.
• Kuaishou’s investment in research and development has quadrupled over four years, with expenditure increasing from RMB 2.9 billion in 2019 to RMB 12.3 billion in 2023.

Context: Kuaishou, China’s second-largest short video company, launched its AI strategy in 2023, according to CEO Cheng Yixiao, who said that generative AI has a “very rich combination of business scenarios and huge value potential” for the content platform.

Editor’s note: ‘Landing AI’ is a series of special reports focusing on the field of Artificial Intelligence curated by TechNode. By investigating the development of AI landing in China and the behind-the-scenes stories of the industry, we’re going to dive deeper into everything that’s possible under the new wave of AI.

Chinese electric vehicle maker Zeekr is looking to enter South Korea by 2026, with plans to open showrooms in Seoul and the nearby province of Gyeonggi by next year, parent company Geely said last week in response to questions from Bloomberg. Under the current plan, the mainstream luxury carmaker will bring the Zeekr 001, its first model featuring advanced driving functions including autonomous parking, to woo local tech-savvy customers. The news comes as peer BYD recently started regulatory preparations in South Korea aiming to launch its first EV locally in the second half of 2024. Zhejiang-headquartered Zeekr, with four models on offer, will launch two new models in China later this year, including a five-seater van, the Mix, as well as a medium-to-large sports utility vehicle, codenamed CX1e, targeting Chinese families. Zeekr chief executive Andy An told investors last month that the New York-listed company would expand its footprint from 25 to more than 50 global markets by the end of the year. [Bloomberg, TechNode reporting]

Bloomberg on Monday claimed to have obtained an internal memo indicating that Microsoft will soon require its Chinese employees to use only Apple devices for identity verification when using work computers or phones. Employees will be restricted to using iPhones in offices starting this September, the report said. As part of Microsoft’s global Secure Future Initiative, this measure aims to ensure that all employees use Microsoft Authenticator, Identity Pass, and other similar applications for identity verification, which will affect hundreds of employees in mainland China. Microsoft made this decision because Android phones in China cannot access Google services such as the Play Store. Employees who previously used Android phones (including Huawei, Xiaomi, and other brands) will receive an iPhone 15 from the company. [Bloomberg]

BYD has reached a deal with the Turkish government to build a $1 billion electric vehicle plant in the country, part of the European Union’s Customs Union, a move that would allow the Chinese EV giant to export vehicles to the bloc without additional tariffs. Scheduled for operation by 2026, with roughly 5,000 new jobs created, the plant will be capable of making 150,000 vehicles a year, the government said on Monday, reported the Financial Times. The move comes after the EU, on July 4, began imposing temporary duties of 27.4% on China-made BYD cars, while that percentage ranged between 29.9% and 47.6% for other Chinese car manufacturers, slightly lower than what Brussels initially proposed. The company is also establishing a Ft 10 billion ($30 million) battery pack plant near Budapest in Hungary that will begin production next year. [Financial Times]

TechNode is thrilled to announce the BEYOND Expo x TechNode Networking Night: Thailand Edition will be held on August 7, 2024, at Medinii Sky Restaurant & Bar, 35th Floor, Bangkok. This casual event, organized by TNGlobal and supported by Techsauce Global Summit, promises an evening of networking, knowledge sharing, and innovation to bring together tech enthusiasts, industry experts, entrepreneurs, and innovators from across Thailand and beyond.

This event aims to strengthen Thailand’s tech community by fostering relationships and collaborations that drive innovation forward. Jason Ho, Co-Founder of BEYOND Expo, and Dr. Gang Lu, CEO & Founder of TechNode.com & Co-Founder of BEYOND Expo, will join us to share unique insights and perspectives on the latest trends and developments in the tech ecosystem, with a particular focus on Southeast Asia. You’ll have the opportunity to network with like-minded individuals, potential collaborators, and industry leaders in a relaxed and informal setting.

Your Presence Will Make the Difference:

Whether you are a seasoned professional or just beginning your journey in the tech world, this meet-up is the perfect opportunity to expand your network, gain fresh perspectives, and be inspired by the vibrant tech community.

Other Event Details:

Time: August 7, 2024, 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Address: 35th Floor, 413 Sukhumvit Klongtoey Nua, Khlong Toei Nuea, Watthana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand (located at The Continent Hotel Sukhumvit / Asok BTS Bangkok by Compass Hospitality)
Food and Drinks: Provided
Networking Tip: Don’t forget your business card!

How to Join the Movement:

Limited slots are available. Secure your spot now by clicking here to register. You will receive a reminder and confirmation 3 days prior to the event once your registration has been confirmed. Follow our social media for the latest news and announcements.

We look forward to seeing you there! Join us for an unforgettable night of inspiration, collaboration, and innovation. Don’t miss the chance to be part of a community that’s shaping the future of technology in Southeast Asia.

Electric vehicle maker Polestar’s China division is reportedly set to undergo its first major layoff with plans to reduce its workforce by about 30% by the end of September. The move is expected to have a significant impact on its local car manufacturing activities. The brand, owned by Chinese automaker Geely, has already suspended production at a facility in the country’s southwestern city of Chengdu while it also looks to downsize office space at its regional headquarters in Shanghai, local media outlet FEAutoCar reported on July 2, citing sources at the firm. The news comes just months after the Swedish company announced it was looking to reduce about 15% of its workforce globally in January. The company sold fewer than 1,000 cars during the first four months of this year in China, the world’s biggest auto market. [FEAutoCar, in Chinese]

A former Tesla engineer, now head of autonomous driving at China’s Chery, on July 4 shared her outlook on Chinese automakers’ future capacity to scale autonomous driving technology, as Tesla leads the way with its mass data and sophisticated artificial intelligence models.

Domestic companies are roughly 1.5 to 2 years behind Tesla in developing “end-to-end neural network” technology for autonomous driving. The recent release of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software v12 marked “a great leap forward” in applicability and user experience (our translation) according to Gu Junli, chief executive of Chery-affiliated ZDrive.ai, and a former senior staff machine learning engineer at Tesla, speaking at this year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai.

Gu said she expects Chinese players to partially replace modules of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) with data-driven, rather than rule-based, neural networks by 2025. This shift comes as car companies ramp up efforts to collect fresh, multiformat data to improve models with more computing power. However, there would not be a single large neural net, where the core capability of Tesla’s latest software is built, for production cars until 2026-2027 in China, Gu added. Tesla in April announced its FSD users had traveled a cumulative 1.2 billion miles.

Recent figures from the community-run FSD Community tracker show Tesla’s remarkable progress in refining its autonomous driving features. The latest FSD v12.3.6 version can drive 372 miles (599 kilometers) between critical disengagements, compared with just a few miles it reportedly achieved two years ago, according to crowdsourced data released by the website in May. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk later forecasted on X “a major improvement in MPI (miles per intervention)” with the release of the FSD v12.5 in late June.

“This means the system has met the requirements for most users on normal daily commutes,” said Gu.

Several Chinese early movers are working to achieve a partial end-to-end pipeline for enabling their advanced driving features, hoping to gradually transition to fully end-to-end algorithms. On July 5, Li Auto revealed details about what it called “China’s first single one model” behind its Navigation on ADAS (NOA) functions. The Chinese electric vehicle startup claimed this model would use raw sensor input to generate vehicle motion plans. However, unlike Tesla’s solution of “basically photons in and controls out,” as described by Musk, it still relies on pre-defined, explicitly coded rules to produce control actions as output.

Meanwhile, other peers, such as Xpeng Motors and Huawei, have been taking partial end-to-end approaches, using separate neural networks for multiple tasks such as perception, planning, and action, while many are still struggling to improve results. According to a recent survey compiled by China’s Gaogong Industry Institute, Chinese users typically take the controls at least 1-2 times per 100 kilometers (62 miles) as their cars’ ADAS functions do not react appropriately in urban scenarios. Tesla may find issues in localizing its ADAS software due to China’s complicated traffic conditions, said Xpeng’s head of autonomous driving, TechNode reported.

Gu mentioned Chery’s plan to launch the advanced city NOA function for some premium models in the first quarter of next year, while its single deep learning network could go live in 2026. The Chinese auto major, which sold nearly 1.9 million cars last year, plans to integrate Level 2 ADAS systems into as many as 500,000 new cars sold this year, including 150,000 units for overseas markets. Based in the eastern Chinese city of Wuhu, Chery had a relatively late start in autonomous driving, with ZDrive.ai being set up early last year.  

Despite Tesla’s leading position with its training wheels finally taken off, Gu envisioned that Chinese companies would contribute to a wider and more personalized adoption of self-driving technology worldwide. State-owned Chery in April reached a joint venture deal with Spain’s EV Motors to produce cars at a former Nissan plant in Barcelona later this year, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, customers from some overseas markets could access Xpeng’s XNGP ADAS capabilities as early as next year, president Brian Gu told investors during an earnings call in May.

READ MORE: Chinese companies take on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving with non-lidar approach, end-to-end AI

The US chip manufacturer Nvidia will ship over one million new H20 accelerator chips to the Chinese market this year, generating over $12 billion in revenue for the company, according to the latest forecast data from market research firm SemiAnalysis. Due to US export control policies, the export of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to China has been restricted since 2022. The H20 is a cut-down version GPU that Nvidia specifically launched for the Chinese market based on the H100, but its AI performance is less than 15% of that of the high performance chip. Nevertheless, analysts at SemiAnalysis stated that the H20 chip is now being shipped in volume and is growing in popularity with Chinese customers despite its reduced performance compared with its US counterpart the H100. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

There is a clear need to build AI technology that can be “reviewed, monitored, and traced”, according to the Shanghai Declaration on Global AI Governance, which was released at the country’s largest annual AI event, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which ended at the weekend. Released by Chen Jining, party secretary of Shanghai, the declaration came after local tech titans and startups spent July 4-7 showcasing their latest developments and updates on large language models in the city. The declaration called for “companies to comply with the laws and regulations of the countries in which they provide their AI products and services,” while encouraging international communication and cooperation in the field through the “spirit of openness and sharing.” [People’s Daily]

On July 6, the President of VeriSilicon, Dai Weimin, delivered a speech and presentation titled “Opportunities and Challenges of AIGC Chips” at the RISC-V and Generative AI Forum during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2024, held at the Shanghai World Expo Center. Based on current generative AI technology, achieving intelligence on par with or surpassing the human brain requires continuously expanding the scale of model parameters, a trend that necessitates an exponential increase in computational power, according to his speech. “Currently, numerous enterprises worldwide are developing their own AI large-scale models, with over 100 models in the Chinese market alone. The ‘AI-model war’ in the market seems like a chaotic competition and a waste of electricity. By 2028, China will have fewer than ten foundational large-scale models, ideally just five,” he claimed at the forum. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

“Hello, I will arrange the bread and fruit separately.” Upon hearing the command from the host, the humanoid robot Qinglong extended its arms and gently picked up a piece of soft bread with its steel fingers, placing it down into the basket on the table. 

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2024 in Shanghai, one of the most influential AI events within the global tech ecosystem, the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center on Thursday unveiled the open-source general-purpose humanoid robot Qinglong for the first time. The event marks the debut of China’s first full-sized general-purpose humanoid robot model, along with the release of its related open-source technologies.

Why it matters: The unveiling of Qinglong marks China’s entry into the advanced field of full-sized general-purpose humanoid robots. Its open-source initiative is intended to accelerate innovation, collaboration, and development within the global robotics and AI communities, potentially driving advancements in a range of industries.

Details: During the Summit on Humanoid Robots and Embodied Intelligence Development Forum at WAIC 2024, the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center demonstrated Qinglong’s operation and design concepts on site.

• Qinglong has been independently developed by Humanoid Robots (Shanghai) Limited, a new R&D institution established by leading industry enterprises with a registered capital of one billion RMB ($140 million). The company was designated as the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China in May 2024.
• Qinglong stands at 185cm tall and weighs 80kg, according to the company. It features a highly bionic torso and anthropomorphic motion control, supporting multi-modal mobility, perception, interaction, and manipulation. With 43 active degrees of freedom, Qinglong achieved a maximum joint peak torque of 400 N·m (Newton-meters) and 400 TOPs (Tera Operations Per Second) of computational power.
• The humanoid robot combines mobile lower limbs for agile walking with lightweight, high-precision upper limbs for operations, the on-site presentation stated. The company claimed that the model supports rapid walking, agile obstacle avoidance, stable incline and decline movement, and resistance to impact interference, making it an ideal platform for developing general artificial intelligence software and hardware.
• “In the Year of the Dragon this year, we named our humanoid robot Qinglong [meaning green dragon in Chinese] and initiated an open-source community for humanoid robotics,” said Jiang Lei, Chief Scientist of the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. “Through open-sourcing, our goal is to introduce a new humanoid robot model annually, each named after one of the Chinese zodiac animals, to foster a humanoid robot innovation community unique to China,” he announced at the forum.
• Jiang also announced the launch of the OpenLoong open-source community website, developed by the Innovation Center. The website includes the release of the robot’s hardware structure and parameters, with the embodied intelligence software package set to be open-sourced soon.

Context: On the same day, Tesla debuted its second-generation humanoid robot Optimus at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Hall during WAIC 2024. According to Tesla booth staff, compared with the first generation, Optimus has improved its walking speed by 30% while maintaining upright posture. Its fingers have also evolved to perform delicate tasks such as gripping eggs and handling heavy objects.

• Tesla plans to start limited production of humanoid robots next year, with over 1,000 Optimus units expected to assist in production tasks at Tesla factories, according to CEO Elon Musk.

BYD said on Thursday it has produced its eight millionth electric vehicle, just three months after producing its seven millionth unit globally at its Jinan factory in eastern China in March and three years after reaching its first millionth unit mark in mid-2021. The latest milestone was achieved at BYD’s newly opened factory in Rayong, Thailand, which is capable of producing 150,000 vehicles annually, and happened to be a blue BYD Dolphin hatchback, the most popular EV model in the country. The Chinese EV giant has found initial success in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy with sales of 12,942 units between January and May, capturing roughly 40% of the country’s booming EV segment, according to figures compiled by Autolife Thailand. Smaller Chinese rival Hozon in December began trial production on the outskirts of Bangkok with an output of up to 20,000 units annually, while China’s biggest car manufacturer SAIC has been making gas-powered MG cars in the country with Thai conglomerate CP Group since 2014. [TechNode reporting, BYD announcement, in Chinese]

China’s cross-border e-commerce platforms, including Temu, Shein, and AliExpress, might face tariff hurdles in the EU, according to the Financial Times, which details that the European Commission is set to propose abolishing the current threshold for duty-free purchases of goods under €150 later this month. The EU’s attempt to close this tax loophole comes as low-value Chinese-manufactured products flood the region, and fast fashion retailer Shein has confidentially filed for a London IPO. The report mentions that 2.3 billion parcels that missed the tax threshold entered the EU, citing official data. [Financial Times]

China’s eastern Jiangsu province is looking to buy an undisclosed number of Tesla Model Y electric vehicles in the 2024-2025 budget year, marking the first time in years that the company’s cars would be purchased officially by the authorities. The US giant’s cars have been widely barred from government-affiliated venues in its second-largest market over security concerns. The Shanghai-made Model Y rear-wheel drive, priced at RMB 249,900 ($34,368), was listed in a sourcing plan released by the Jiangsu Provincial Government Procurement Center on June 6, along with the Aito M7 and the Avatr 11, both featuring Huawei’s assisted driving technology. Several models from state-owned manufacturer SAIC and Volvo parent Geely are also on the list, including the IM L6 and the Galaxy E8. Some Chinese government office workers have been disallowed from parking their Tesla vehicles inside government compounds, especially those close to military bases, due to security concerns over cameras installed on the vehicles since 2021, Reuters reported. The news comes after Tesla’s locally-built cars were tested and found to be compliant with China’s data security requirements, announced by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on April 28, the same day chief executive Elon Musk arrived in Beijing for a visit. [TechNode reporting, Reuters, Jiangsu gov announcement, in Chinese]

The second generation of Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, made its debut this week at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, the US electric vehicle maker said on Weibo. Its unveiling was touted as “witnessing the further evolution of humanoid robots,” according to the Weibo post. Optimus was first released in August 2021, equipped with Tesla’s self-developed neural network and computer vision technology, and was designed to undertake dangerous or tedious tasks such as carrying heavy objects or grocery shopping. Last December, Tesla released a demo of the second-gen robot, which can perform delicate tasks such as picking up an egg and boiling it, demonstrating impressive dexterity. In April, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company plans to start using the Optimus in Tesla factories in 2025. [Tesla Weibo, in Chinese]

Chinese carmakers Geely, NIO, and Huawei-backed Aito on Monday reported record deliveries of electric vehicles for June as the country’s EV segment recovery gathers momentum. Meanwhile, Huawei and Li Auto are emerging as the leaders among the newer players, despite BYD and Tesla still enjoying a near-duopoly position in the world’s largest EV market.

Why it matters: The rally, which contrasts with overall flat sales in the market, comes amid a temporary cooling-off period for the industry-wide price war on electric autos in the country. It also reflects companies’ sprints to make deliveries by the end of the first half of 2024. A new wave of consolidation and some reshuffling is also speeding up within the sector, with fewer smaller players staying in the game and some legacy giants falling behind.

Details: Li Auto topped the ranking among young EV makers by delivering 47,774 cars to customers in June, up 36.4% from a month earlier, as sales of its most affordable extended-range hybrid crossover the L6 started to ramp up after its April launch. Chief executive Li Xiang also attributed the sales recovery to improved efficiency, as the company restructured its sales and delivery teams recently following a failed launch of its first all-electric model, the Mega, in March.

• Huawei continues to put pressure on Li Auto despite delivering 1,633 fewer vehicles than the Nasdaq-listed EV startup in June. The Chinese technology giant said its Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA), which for now includes Aito and Luxeed brands only, delivered 194,207 vehicles from January to June, which is more than the 188,981 units posted by Li Auto. Huawei will launch a new premium brand called Stelato with partner BAIC next month after it began taking orders for the first model, the S9, on May 31.
• Among traditional competitors, Geely set a new record for EV sales of 65,959 units in June. In particular, deliveries of its mainstream luxury brand Zeekr surpassed the threshold of 20,000 units for the first time since its inception. Geely management on Tuesday announced it was raising this year’s sales goal by 5% to 2 million units, while Zeekr’s annual outlook of selling 230,000 units remains on track. Lynk & Co sold 24,439 cars last month, 62% of which were EVs, a record high percentage for the Geely-Volvo joint brand.
• Changan’s EV sales rose 61% year-on-year and 14.7% month-on-month last month to roughly ​​64,000 units, of which 16,659 were Deepal-branded EVs. The automaker said it received more than 15,000 refundable orders for its first off-road sports utility vehicle, the Deepal G318, priced from RMB 175,900 ($24,186), five days after it was launched on June 13. Chery’s EV sales surged 181.5% to 180,947 units during the first half of this year, thanks to strong overseas demand for its budget cars, such as the QQ Ice Cream and Little Ant.
• Both NIO and Leapmotor reached the 20,000-unit milestone in June. NIO has sustained the growth momentum that it’s seen since April and is demonstrating the potential to deliver 30,000 cars a month once its first mainstream car goes on sale in September. Leapmotor reached the milestone for the first time last month, as the Hong Kong-listed firm now positions itself as a cheaper alternative to Li Auto. Smartphone giant Xiaomi handed over more than 10,000 SU7 sedans to customers in its third delivery month.
• Meanwhile, Tesla is feeling the heat. Sales of its China-made vehicles declined 10.5% year-on-year to 426,623 units during the first half of this year, including exports, according to figures released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). The US automaker said on Tuesday it delivered 443,956 vehicles in the three months to June 30, a smaller-than-expected 5% drop from a year earlier and up 14.8% from the previous quarter, sending shares up more than 10%, Reuters reported.

Context: China’s retail passenger EV sales volume is expected to reach 864,000 units in June, representing a 30% growth from the same month last year and a 6% rise from May, while overall car sales declined 8% year-on-year, the CPCA estimated on Wednesday.

READ MORE: China’s EV sales recovery picks up pace in May, helped by promotions

Chinese phone brand Xiaomi and Taiwan-based semiconductor company MediaTek launched their first joint laboratory on Tuesday, focusing on three major technologies: phone performance, telecommunications, and AI. The deal was announced by Redmi, a Xiaomi sub-brand, on China’s X-like platform Weibo. The joint lab’s first product will be the Redmi K70 Premium Edition, a budget-friendly mid-ranger that aims to achieve maximum optimization in performance benchmarks, game frame rates, and concurrent time for game frame boosting. Redmi’s general manager Wang Teng revealed that the joint lab has equipped the Redmi K70 Premium Edition with a next-gen dedicated gaming GPU and their self-developed dual-chip scheduling technology, in addition to the core chipset Dimensity 9300+. [Redmi Weibo, in Chinese]

Alibaba’s Taobao is sending more traffic to the “instant commerce” service of its food delivery arm Ele.me, via a prominent portal at the top of the e-commerce platform’s homepage, as Alibaba pushes faster delivery to align with its “user-first” strategy. The move comes after Alibaba denied multiple news reports that it intends to sell Ele.me. The “instant commerce” service, which previously mostly covered nearby supermarkets and could be found within Ele.me’s mini-program or app is in the process of luring more Taobao merchants to join. According to Alibaba, all Taobao and Tmall sellers who have local warehouses that can meet users’ needs for instant delivery can sign up to join the service. [TechNode reporting]

Correction: An earlier version of the article misidentified “instant commerce” service as one-hour delivery.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning announced on Tuesday that Premier Li Qiang will deliver a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2024 in Shanghai tomorrow. The AI-themed event will take place from July 4 to July 7 at the Shanghai World Expo Center and Expo Exhibition Hall. The exhibition area of WAIC 2024 exceeds 52,000 square meters, and over 500 companies, including Tesla, Microsoft, and Schneider, have confirmed their participation, according to the organizers. Scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, and stakeholders will gather in Shanghai to discuss cutting-edge technologies, industry trends, and ethical governance in the field of artificial intelligence. Baidu’s Ernie Bot, iFlytek’s Spark, Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen, Zhipu AI, Tencent’s Yuanbao, Huawei’s Pangu, and SenseTime’s SenseNova will all demonstrate their AI product capabilities during the three-day event. [China Star Market, in Chinese]

US-based private equity investment firm Matrix Partners has rebranded its China arm as MPC in English, the initials of Matrix Partners China, keeping the Chinese name unchanged starting from July 1. Matrix Partners is the latest dollar fund to make its China operations independent amid geopolitical concerns, following Sequoia, BlueRun, and GGV Ventures.

At the same time, the firm said it would also rebrand its Indian business to DZ47.

Why it matters: Matrix Partners’ renaming reflects greater independence for its China operations, according to the company, but stops short of a complete split from its international operations, the path that many of its US counterparts have opted for.

Details: “Each team’s leadership has operated with separate decision-making and separate back offices from inception,” the US-headquartered venture firm said in a notice, emphasizing that the renaming is driven by a desire to clarify “regional market dynamics” and a continued focus on “competing locally.” 

• In China, Matrix Partners’ investment reach includes companies in the Internet industry, healthcare, and retail fields, with Xpeng, Li Auto, and Ele.me being its best-known assets.
• The firm set up its China unit in 2008, managed by partners Zhang Ying, Xu Chuansheng, and Shao Yibo, 30 years after it was founded in Boston. MPC currently manages more than RMB 70 billion ($9.6 billion) worth of assets, its official website shows.
• The 16-year history of the early-stage-focused VC company in China has run alongside booming growth in the country’s Internet service industry. In an interview with local media outlet ChinaVenture, Zhang Ying said China’s faster economy and technological growth provided him with a “perfect starting point” for in-depth investment activities.
• Zhang added that he believes there will be a prolonged period ahead where investing in entrepreneurship will become “increasingly difficult,” due to the continued changes in the international landscape.

Context: In the past year, several US venture capital firms have split off their China arms as independent operations have felt increasingly like a better choice due to heightened geopolitical tensions and the increased likelihood of US-China technological decoupling.

Renault’s electric vehicle arm Ampere on Monday announced it will integrate lower-cost lithium iron batteries into several models under the Renault and Alpine brands over the next years in partnerships with Chinese battery maker CATL and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution. This means that the French automaker will add lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell chemistry for EV batteries to its portfolio, alongside more energy-dense yet expensive nickel cobalt manganese (NCM), hoping to meet the demand for lower-priced EVs. The goal is to reduce by 2026 roughly 20% of vehicle battery costs. Chinese EV battery duopoly, CATL and BYD, dominate the world’s battery market with cheap cells using LFP as the cathode material, with a combined market share of 53.1% from January to April 2024, according to data from Korean renewable energy consultancy SNE Research. CATL recorded shipment of 27.7 gigawatt-hours (GWh) worth of battery during the period in global markets excluding China, up 16.2% from a year earlier and ahead of LG Energy Solution in second place. [TechNode reporting, Renault announcement]

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) has issued a certificate for the completion of the independent maturity level-A certification to Huawei’s HarmonyOS kernel, as the operating system achieved a 100% self-developed ratio, the national research institution announced on Monday. An independent operating system kernel can ensure national information security and increase international competitiveness, which fosters a robust ecosystem of independent research and development in China, CAICT said in the statement. Huawei’s HarmonyOS kernel – developed in the wake of US sanctions against the Chinese tech giant – marks a new milestone for both the company and the country, CAICT added. HarmonyOS NEXT, which will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2024, represents an entire break from the Linux kernel and Android Open Source Project (AOSP) codebase. [CAICT, in Chinese]

Google plans to release the tenth generation of its Pixel series smartphones next year, featuring the Tensor G5 processor manufactured using TSMC’s 3nm process technology. Latest reports indicate that the Tensor G5 processor development is progressing smoothly and is nearing the tape-out stage. The Tensor G5 is Google’s first fully self-developed mobile processor, whereas the previous four generations of Tensor processors were modified versions of Samsung Exynos. The latest Tensor G5, manufactured using TSMC’s advanced 3nm process, is expected to significantly boost performance, the report said. Additionally, the Tensor G5 processor promises to enable Google to achieve comprehensive control from the processor to the operating system, applications, and devices, further enhancing the software-hardware synergy of the Pixel series smartphones. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

Tesla said on Monday that it will be offering Chinese buyers 0% financing on Model 3 and Model Y by the end of this month, an incentive the US automaker had offered in the world’s largest electric vehicle market in April. This time, buyers would not have to trade in their old Tesla vehicles for a new one to benefit from that, according to its website. The move comes after the company’s output decreased 7.3% to 283,043 units in the country for the first four months of this year, according to figures compiled by the China Passenger Car Association. The China-made Model 3 and Model Y are priced from RMB 231,900 and RMB 249,900 ($31,886 and $34,361) after the EV giant cut the starting prices of the two models by RMB 14,000 in April. Meanwhile, Huawei lowered the price of its Advanced Driving System by RMB 6,000 to RMB 30,000, hoping to make it more affordable, while Xiaomi said it is offering free subscriptions of its advanced driver assistance software for a limited time, local media have reported. [Jiemian, in Chinese]

As Tesla’s most advanced driver assistance software (ADAS) is becoming an immediate threat due to its impending arrival in China, major Chinese electric vehicle makers and auto tech companies are hurrying to pivot their strategies towards a more pragmatic yet challenging approach to developing similar offerings. Although Tesla’s rivals have for years been looking to cut out expensive components and master the newest artificial intelligence models, the game seems to be different this time.

Both NIO and Xpeng Motors are now embracing the so-called computer vision approach, championed by Tesla, hoping their upcoming models will achieve human-like downtown driving in cities via the use of fitted cameras and radar, rather than more expensive laser sensor units. Sinpro.ai, a supplier to NIO of ultra-high-resolution four-dimensional (4D) imaging radar, said it is prepared for delivery later this year with an annual capacity of 800,000 units. Tesla has reportedly replaced radar sensors on some models after years of attempting to remove them.

“It will be a difficult task for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software to deal with scenarios in China where it is common that a large number of electric scooters are usually ahead in the same lane with motor vehicles,” Li Liyun, vice president of autonomous driving at Xpeng, wrote on June 27 on Chinese Twitter-like microblogging platform Weibo. Xpeng is planning to remove lidar from its upcoming sedan, scheduled for launch later this year, local media has reported.

Xpeng and NIO are also following Tesla’s suit by transitioning to an “end-to-end” autonomous driving method after using modular-based neural networks that are heavily reliant on explicit coding. Meanwhile, more traditional automakers are turning to domestic tech companies for help, such as Huawei and DJI, to catch up with the latest AI trend. Despite big challenges pressuring the industry, some early movers have the potential to compete with the US pioneer, Liu Guanghao, partner at Shanghai-based venture capital firm Befor Capital, told TechNode.

READ MORE: China opens door wider to Tesla as local giants disrupt the EV sector with AI-defined vehicles

Vision-based approach

A break from previous strategies of using expensive chips and sensors to enable ADAS capabilities, the latest approach centers on reducing the cost of components in hopes of making more room for further price cuts. Many now have their eyes on the use of radar, ditched by Tesla in 2021 due to limitations in identifying stationary objects with low image resolution, as some parts makers now said it is coming close to lidar in terms of performance – but at a lower price tag.

“There is more overlap between lidar and our sixth-generation radar systems as we significantly improve the resolution,” Juergen Brandl, Head of Market China, Business Area Autonomous Mobility at Continental Group, told TechNode. “Radar could soon see through [objects] but lidar has some problems with the distance especially in difficult situations like fog and rain.” The German firm’s newest front-facing radar boasts a detection distance of 280 and 140 meters (174 and 87 miles) for vehicles and slow-walking pedestrians, respectively.

Advanced radar solutions like this also create three-dimensional point cloud datasets like lidars, helping automakers and developers move towards fully end-to-end models with raw data collection from multiple sensors to train their self-driving systems. “We can play a big role in the development of Level 2 plus ADAS systems in China,” Brandl said, adding that the company’s product is below the price of a lidar unit with “very good“ output in terms of point cloud data.

Some disagree however, saying the technology is still at an early stage. Production of Continental’s latest-gen radar started early this year and the company began delivering the world’s first 4D radar in 2021, which detects an object’s vertical information in addition to distance, direction, and relative velocity, generating more dense point clouds than a contentional radar. Meanwhile, major Chinese lidar makers have consistently enhanced the performance of their products and lowered the prices to just over RMB 1,000 ($137.6) per unit in recent years.

The key is whether 3D/4D radar could prove to be a more “cost competitive” option compared with lidar, said Liu. “I believe both [radar and lidar] have their special advantages and disadvantages,” Brandl said. ”I think time or the market will tell whether we need both of them or one solution only.”

Either way, prospects for early players are bright. Momenta, a self-driving car company backed by General Motors and Toyota, expects the bill of materials, or total cost of components, for the City NOA (Navigation on ADAS) function to be slashed to RMB 4,000-5,000 from the current RMB 7,000-10,000 in the next two years. The intent is to survive an unprecedented price war in China that has been ongoing for more than a year.

End-to-end AI

Chinese carmakers used to brag about their coverage of cities where their assisted driving software is said to enable cars to handle on-ramp to off-ramp driving, automatic highway lane changing, and congested streets. However, many are now pivoting their focus to provide a more human-like driving experience and a full end-to-end AI model is now seen as key to winning the battle.

Described by Tesla chief executive Elon Musk as “basically photons in and controls out,” such end-to-end neural networks play an integral role in a vehicle’s decision-making process, taking raw sensor data as input and producing control actions as output. This contrasts with the conventional approaches that see each functionality, from perception to planning and action, developed individually using rule-based designs, which are often inadequate  in addressing the vast number of scenarios that occur on the road, a team of researchers said in a recent report.

The result is that people still feel their cars pilot themselves inhumanly even when kitted out with some of the most cutting-edge ADAS on the market, partly because human driving behavior tends to be consistent rather than discrete. It is very difficult for the current AV (autonomous vehicle) stack to make coherent, long-term decisions, said Wu Xinzhou, Nvidia’s vice president of automotive at its annual developer conference GTC in March.

Recent surveys have shown automakers that customers are generally dissatisfied with existing ADAS functions. Nearly half of respondents take the controls 1-2 times per 100 kilometers (62 miles) as the city NOA functions do not react appropriately, while others make more frequent interventions, according to a recent survey compiled by China’s Gaogong Industry Institute. “When the driver has to interfere pretty often, then you cannot say this is autonomous driving,” said Brandl.

Xpeng is aiming for less than one intervention per 1,000 kilometers in major traffic areas in China, CEO He Xiaopeng announced early this year, without giving a timeframe. This was followed by a new software update for its XNGP ADAS in May enhanced by the first end-to-end AI model for production vehicles in China, according to the EV maker. NIO reshuffled its autonomous driving department recently, rolling up its perception as well as planning and control teams into a single group with a focus on new AI models, Chinese media outlet LatePost reported on June 19.

It requires huge amounts of data, for example, millions of video clips, to train AI systems, as well as deep pockets and access to AI chips. Musk told investors in April that his company will increase the number of Nvidia’s flagship AI processors it uses from 35,000 to 85,000 by the end of this year. He wrote in a post on X earlier that month that the investment in training computers, gigantic data pipelines, and video storage will be well over $10 billion cumulatively this year.

Such major investment and effort is not something all companies can handle however. “It would be so hard for most traditional automakers to do this by themselves. The best way is to pick a supplier,” Liu said.

The entry of Tesla’s FSD into China may feel like a new challenge therefore, but it may also coincide with a new era of partnerships around self-driving technologies.

Zhihu, China’s Quora-like question-and-answer platform, unveiled its latest AI-driven tool named zhida.ai last weekend, which is intended to provide “a new way to obtain reliable information” supported by quality content within the Zhihu community, according to the introduction posted on the platform’s official website. The company has partnered with domestic AI startup Model Best to develop the artificial intelligence foundation model Zhihaitu AI, which was released last April, and the model has been deployed to drive the new Q&A feature. When a user sends a question to the tool, it replies with a summary, a detailed answer, and a list of sources at the top, with direct links to relevant Zhihu pages. [Zhihu, in Chinese]

Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), shows that in May, iPhone shipments in China increased by 40% year-on-year, continuing April’s rebound momentum. CAICT announced that the shipment volume of foreign branded phones in China for May increased from 3.603 million units last year to 5.028 million units this year, a rise of 1.425 million units. Despite not being mentioned by name, the increase in shipments is largely due to Apple’s performance, as the company dominates the foreign brand phone market in China. The iPhone has seen multiple price cuts in the domestic market this year, with prices dropping to historical lows during the recent 618 shopping festival, reaching discounts of up to RMB 2,350 ($324). [MyDrivers, in Chinese]

In the first quarter, China’s cloud service spending rose by 20% year-over-year to $9.2 billion, according to the latest data from market research firm Canalys. The market continues to be dominated by the three giants—Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, and Tencent Cloud—which collectively grew 22% year-over-year and held 72% of the total market share. Alibaba Cloud led with a 37% market share, followed by Huawei Cloud at 19% and Tencent Cloud at 16%. Price cuts by major vendors and increased AI application investments boosted cloud adoption, the report analyzed. Additionally, both Huawei and Tencent introduced AI-focused partner programs to enhance market differentiation and foster AI adoption. [Canalys]

China’s Baidu currently has 300 million users of its ChatGPT alternative ERNIE Bot, the company’s chief technology officer Wang Haifeng announced at Wave Summit 2024, at which the search giant teased the latest version of its AI foundation model ERNIE 4.0 Turbo. The country’s most popular AI tool, ERNIE Bot broke the 100-million-user milestone in December 2023, four months after being approved to provide generative AI services to the public, successfully doubling the figure in April. Wang said Baidu’s AI bot handles 500 million queries a day. The new model can be accessed via the official website and app, with corporate clients able to call the API of Baidu’s most advanced model directly within its AI Cloud Qianfan platform, according to Baidu. [Baidu, in Chinese]

Chinese artificial intelligence firm iFlytek on Thursday unveiled the latest version of its AI model, Spark 4.0, which the company benchmarked against OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo, saying it shows better performance than the US company’s most-advanced model in five aspects, despite lagging in terms of coding and multimodal abilities.

Why it matters: Trained exclusively on a home-grown computing platform that is co-built with telecom giant Huawei, Spark 4.0 can be seen as sending a signal that China’s AI industry has entered a new phase of self-sufficiency despite the US’s restrictions on the country’s access to the most advanced chips, according to iFlytek.

Details: The Hefei-based company finally fulfilled its commitment to upgrade its Spark model to the level of GPT-4 in the first half of 2024, eight months after the promise was made. At Thursday’s event, however, Chairman Liu Qingfeng acknowledged that the gap would “widen again”, possibly to more than a year, once GPT-5 is released, because of its larger parameter size, longer training time, and the increase in the amount of data used.

• “It is necessary to recognize the comprehensive gap between China and the US in the LLM in a scientific and rational way,” said Liu, “but also to have the confidence to catch up quickly to ensure there is no generation gap.”
• The company has seen over 400,000 overseas developers build products based on the Spark V3.5 model that was introduced in January, with 7.02 million developers having used it in total.
• In a key upgrade, the Spark app and its desktop version, both of which are by iFlytek’s model series, added a feature called “personal space” where foundation models are dedicated to generating individualized content that matches one’s personality. The mechanism operates on the premise that users can input their information on work, study, and life, or accumulate sufficient dialog records with AI bots for enhanced learning.

Context: While iFlytek said its Spark 4.0 model ranked number one in eight international mainstream test sets, rival Alibaba on the same day was also certified by the world-renowned open-source platform Hugging Face as topping the world’s open-source big model list for its Qwen-2, with Meta’s AI model ranked behind it in second.

On Thursday, World of Warcraft’s classic server Wrath of the Lich King returned to China, with the addition of new servers Jaina and Deathstalker alongside the return of some other previously available editions. Due to the high volume of players attempting to access the games at the same time, long queues formed, forcing some users to have to wait hours for access. On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, NetEase Games apologized for the login difficulties experienced just 40 minutes after the launch of the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), stating that staff were urgently addressing the issue. Additionally, Blizzard announced today that the official servers for World of Warcraft in China will return on August 1. In April, Blizzard and NetEase renewed their game publishing agreement after a previous dispute over intellectual property control ended their 15-year relationship in January 2023. [Jiemian, in Chinese]

Chinese flying taxi startup Aerofugia has raised “several hundred million RMB” (between $13.76 million and $137.5 million) in a new round of funding led by state-backed investment fund Orinno Capital, one year after closing Series A in excess of RMB 100 million last June. The Series B closed by the subsidiary of Chinese automaker Geely is the largest funding round of its kind in the country’s segment of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft in two years, according to an announcement. Aerofugia said it will use the proceeds to push for the commercial operation of its AE200, a five-to-six seater tilt-rotor eVTOL aircraft with a range of 200 kilometers (124 miles). The company recently revealed plans to provide flying taxi pilot services to the public as early as 2026 in its headquarters city of Chengdu, capital city of China’s southwestern Sichuan province, as the Chinese government looks to establish what it calls a “low-altitude economy.” Orinno Capital is wholly owned by Chengdu High-Tech Investment Group Co., Ltd, a state-owned investment corporation, and the financing included previous backers Tsinghua Holdings Capital and CAS Star, a venture capital firm backed by Chinese Academy of Sciences, among others. [TechNode reporting, Aerofugia announcement, in Chinese]

Chinese phone brand Honor has responded to online chatter that it has begun developing mobile phones equipped with Huawei’s self-developed Kirin chips, with Honor’s CMO Jiang Hairong responding on the social platform Weibo that the suggestions are “pure nonsense”. Honor formerly operated as a Huawei sub-brand, before the two companies technically split apart in the wake of US sanctions against the latter. “Huawei is the great competitor that Honor respects and looks forward to competing with. As for the reports about Honor returning to Huawei, this is absolutely impossible,” Honor’s CEO Zhao Ming stated last September. In the first quarter, Honor took the top spot in the Chinese phone market with a share of 17.1%, followed by Huawei at 17%, according to market intelligence firm IDC.  [IThome, in Chinese]

Plants vs. Zombies Hybrid Edition, a remastered version of the classic tower defense video game published by the American company PopCap Games, went viral in China in June, 15 years after its first release. 

The creator of the Hybrid Edition is blogger Submarine Weiweimi (our translation of 潜艇伟伟迷 in Chinese) who posts on Chinese video platform Bilibili. Chinese netizens nicknamed him Cyber Mendel (father of modern genetics) because of the unique appearances and intriguing abilities he has given the plants and zombies in the new version.

Why it matters: The Hybrid Edition entices users with nostalgia and innovative gameplay, blending classic elements with new twists. In June, China’s live-stream gaming channels were flooded with images of vibrant landscapes and intense plant-based explosives.

Details: Submarine Weiweimi chose not to market this Hybrid Edition as a commercial product but aimed to provide a free gaming experience for players in China. The free strategy brought more players to the game, increasing its influence and popularity in China.

• The Hybrid Edition combines different creatures from the game Plants vs. Zombies, creating new species with dual-layered abilities. For instance, in the original game, Peashooter attacks zombies, and Sunflower produces the sunlight needed to make more plants. In the Hybrid Edition, these two are combined as Peashooter-Sunflower, which can produce sunlight and shoot pea bombs at the same time.
• Players can easily grasp the game with minimal effort to enjoy the thrill of gameplay, as both plants and zombies have multiplied their attack power several times through hybridization, compared to the original version.
• In the past month, Submarine Weiweimi’s Douyin (Chinese Edition of TikTok) account gained 1.47 million followers, while its Bilibili account attracted over 2.45 million followers, making it one of the fastest-growing and most popular KOLs (key opinion leaders) in China, according to market intelligence platform NewRank.
• As of writing, Submarine Weiweimi’s Bilibili account has 3.97 million followers, 18.69 million likes, and 4.3 billion views. On Bilibili, the influencer released a video responding to the popularity of the Hybrid Edition, stating that he had no grand ambitions but is simply trying to make up for the regrets of his childhood. As a member of the post-2000 generation, he has been deeply attached to the game Plants vs. Zombies since childhood, he said. He created the Hybrid Edition to improve on the original game’s components, he added.
• The official Bilibili account for Plants vs. Zombies announced last week that the third-party modified work Plants vs. Zombies Hybrid Edition has been integrated into its mini-program, allowing players to experience it in the game’s creative mode, according to local media outlet IThome.

Context: On November 20, 2023, Submarine Weiweimi released the first video of the Plants vs. Zombies Hybrid Edition series titled Hybrid Plants on Bilibili. Subsequent videos in the Hybrid Plants series have continued to gain video views, with enthusiastic fans actively engaging in the comments section, sharing creative ideas and suggestions to support the game.

• On March 27, the blogger released the downloadable files for the self-developed game Hybrid Edition 1.0 for free. On June 13, the Hybrid Edition version 2.1 was launched.

SF Tongcheng, a subsidy of China’s largest express delivery company SF Express, is eyeing on-demand delivery service in Hong Kong as the Hong Kong-listed unit recorded its first yearly profit in 2023. The entry will likely serve as a start to SF Tongcheng’s overseas expansion. The service will operate under the name “SoFast” beginning in July, according to SF Tongcheng’s Wednesday announcement, with a delivery focus on documents and small parcels within the island’s territory. According to a report by Chinese media outlet Jiemian, delivery riders will earn up to HKD$ 300 per hour, and have flexibility in work time and tasks. In mainland China, SF Tongcheng offers city-wide 30-minute deliveries. [Jiemian, in Chinese]

Alibaba’s DingTalk on Wednesday announced a partnership with six homegrown Chinese large language model makers to enhance the workplace communication platform’s capacity to autonomously perform tasks from prompts using AI. MiniMax, Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, http://01.AI01.AI>, OrionStar, and Baichuan will help DingTalk bring about what its president Ye Jun called, “the most open AI ecosystem” in China. DingTalk first integrated Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen model soon after it launched in April 2023, and launched DingTalk 7.5 version with its AI agent feature at the beginning of this year. The move brings chosen possibilities on foundation models for developers when building artificial intelligence agents on DingTalk, predicted the company in a speech at its Ecological Conference on Wednesday. [DingTalk, in Chinese]

Chinese electric vehicle brand Aito said on Wednesday that it has received more than 100,000 reservations with RMB 5,000 ($688) non-refundable deposits for the M9 sports utility vehicle, six months after its unveiling in December. The brand, launched by Huawei and its manufacturing partner Seres, reported deliveries of over 15,000 units of the M9 consecutively in April and May, making it China’s top-selling model in the RMB 500,000 plus price segment, according to an announcement from the company. Several major luxury brands, such as Porsche, Maserati, and Lamborghini, saw double-digit declines in their May sales in China, local media outlet Jiemian reported, citing figures from the China Automobile Dealers Association. The six-seated M9 SUV is priced from RMB 469,800 and RMB 509,800 ($65,725 and $71,321) for the range-extended hybrid and all-electric versions, respectively, and features cutting-edge technology from Huawei including a gigantic heads-up display and automated driving capabilities for urban scenarios. [Aito announcement, Jiemian, in Chinese]

China’s AI companies are rushing to win over OpenAI users in the country as the ChatGPT creator takes measures to block API traffic from countries and regions that it does not officially support. Affected regions include mainland China, Hong Kong, Russia, and Iran.

Why it matters: OpenAI’s latest announcement on API restrictions has been widely interpreted as targeting China, where  local enterprises and developers have been using OpenAI’s API to build products or services. On the other hand, the move is being regarded as an excellent opportunity for Chinese AI companies to woo these users.

Details: Developers in China have posted screenshots of a notice from OpenAI to various online communities that states, “Our data shows that your organization has API traffic from a region that OpenAI does not currently support.” The notice adds that OpenAI will block such access starting on July 9.

• API is an abbreviation for Application Programming Interface. Although Chinese IP addresses are not allowed to use OpenAI’s artificial intelligence software directly, local developers and companies have been able to create applications through OpenAI’s API platform, while individuals can change their IP address in order to get ChatGPT services. 
• Search giant Baidu, one of China’s leading AI companies, on Tuesday launched a program called Cloud in Hometown that grants additional tokens that equal the scale of their OpenAI usage to users who migrate from OpenAI to the company’s own ERNIE series model. 
• Baidu is also touting a zero-cost solution for developers to migrate from OpenAI, although it does charge a fee for further training, fine-tuning of prompts, and custom development services.
• Alibaba Cloud has also joined the fray with an alternative solution that it claims is “the most cost-effective” with 22 million free tokens for Chinese developers.
• Local AI startups, Zhipu AI, 01.AI, and Baichuan, have also launched exclusive offers for OpenAI users, with Tsinghua University-backed Zhipu being the most generous at time of writing with an offer of 150 million tokens for free.

Context: China has over one hundred AI models with parameters beyond 1 billion, according to data disclosed by the National Bureau of Statistics in March. Commercialization has become a key priority for the companies behind these models in recent months with a price war over tokens breaking out as the firms vie for potential clients.

Chinese battery giant CATL has revealed progress on its efforts to electrify passenger airplanes, as its incoming condensed matter battery will be ready to enable a flight range of between 2,000 and 3,000 kilometers (1,243-1,864 miles) in the next several years. The world’s largest electric vehicle battery supplier recently tested a four-ton civilian airplane with the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, a state-owned plane manufacturer, founder Robin Zeng told an audience on Tuesday at this year’s World Economic Forum (Summer Davos Forum). Zeng added that the company predicted an eight-ton electric aircraft powered by its high energy-dense battery will probably be launched as early as 2027, with an expected flight range of up to 3,000 km. CATL showcased a condensed matter battery prototype, a type of semi-solid state product with condensed electrolytes that boasts an energy density of 500 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), last April at the Auto Shanghai Show. [China Daily]

The National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) of China granted licenses to 104 domestic games for June on Tuesday, including two notable titles: Tencent’s action role-playing game Rock Kingdom and Lingxi Interactive Entertainment’s female-romance role-playing game Ashes of the Kingdom (the Chinese version of which is also known as Code: Ruyuan). The global version of Ashes of the Kingdom was launched in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia on March 30, 2023. In this female romance-themed game, players take the role of a disguised princess leading a spy mission during the tumultuous Eastern Han Dynasty of ancient China, navigating intrigue, romance, and political upheaval to protect what they cherish and unravel secrets that could reshape the empire. Ashes of the Kingdom earned around $8.92 million in revenue across global markets three months after its launch, according to market research firm DataEye. [NPPA, in Chinese]

China’s Hozon Auto on Wednesday lodged its prospectus with the Hong Kong securities regulators, hoping to become a publicly traded electric vehicle maker in the country following similar listings from mainland counterparts NIO, Xpeng Motors, Li Auto, and Leapmotor. The 10-year-old EV startup delivered 300,000 cars to customers as of last September, with five models on sale, including the smaller and more budget crossovers Neta Aya and X, and more premium sports sedans Neta S and GT. Although Hozon delivered 124,189 vehicles last year, roughly 27,000 units fewer than a year earlier, revenue slightly increased 4% year-on-year to nearly RMB 13.6 billion ($1.87 billion) in 2023, thanks to the company selling more premium products at higher prices. However, the Shanghai-headquartered company posted a RMB 4.84 billion loss for 2023 after losing RMB 6.7 billion a year earlier, resulting in a negative gross margin of 14.9% as of last year, according to the prospectus filed with the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing. The firm is looking to raise $1 billion from the listing, Reuters reported last September. [Hozon prospectus, in Chinese]

The live-action interactive dating game Love Is All Around announced on Tuesday that its mobile version will offer 20,000 limited trial copies for Android players from June 28 to July 2. The exact release date of the mobile version is yet to be determined. Launched by Chinese developer Intiny last October, Love Is All Around sold 1.9 million copies in three months, generating $11 million in revenue, making it the second best-selling Chinese PC game on Steam in 2023. In the live-action filming game, players take on the role of the male protagonist, using a first-person perspective to immerse themselves in realistic simulation interactions with six women, each with distinct appearances and personalities. [Love Is All Around Weibo, in Chinese]

China’s Great Wall Motor is poised for its big entry into Southeast Asia, as the automaker said on Monday it would begin manufacturing its cars in Malaysia and Indonesia as early as July, in addition to its planned entry into Vietnam, local media reported.

Why it matters: The news comes as Malaysia surpassed Thailand to become the second biggest car market in the region after Indonesia in the first three months of this year, according to sales figures released by industry groups and compiled by Nikkei. This makes it another attractive market for Chinese car manufacturers given its growing economy and large population.

• Total vehicle sales increased 5% year-on-year to 202,245 units in Malaysia from January to March, in part driven by the government’s economic stimulus package, figures from the Malaysian Automotive Association show. Meanwhile, Thailand’s car sales, including internal combustion engine cars and EVs, fell 24.6% to 163,756 units from a year earlier, partly because of tightening rules around car loans, said the Federation of Thai Industries.

Details: Great Wall Motor will start operating a pure assembly plant with Malaysia’s EP Manufacturing in Malacca in July at the earliest, Cheng Jinkui, president of the company’s ASEAN operations, told the Business Times.

• The two companies said in January they would commence assembly of two of Great Wall Motor’s popular Haval models – the Haval H6, a five-seater sports utility vehicle, and the Haval Jolion, a compact crossover. The cars will be made from “completely-knocked-down (CKD)” kits comprising major parts with the goal of producing 20,000 units a year by 2028.
• Another CKD facility in Indonesia is also set to come into production in July or August, while the Chinese automaker is aiming for local assembly in Vietnam in 2025, according to Cheng. Great Wall Motor said last June that it was exporting the Haval H6 hybrid EVs to Vietnam from Thailand, where it operates a car plant it acquired from General Motors in September 2020.

Context: Chinese automakers are ramping up their investments in emerging EV markets overseas, especially in regions such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, at a time when competition remains intense at home and the US and Europe are imposing punitive tariffs on China-made EV imports.

• Geely and Malaysian automaker DRB Hicom last year reached a $10 billion deal that will transform the country’s Tanjung Malim area into an “automotive high-tech valley” with an annual production capacity of 500,000 vehicles by 2035, China Daily reported. Sales of Geely-backed local automaker Proton more than doubled to roughly 154,000 units last year, while Smart, a brand co-owned by Geely and Mercedes Benz, began exporting cars to Malaysia last year.
• Indonesia said four Chinese automakers, namely Chery, Neta, General Motors’ China joint venture Wuling, and Dongfeng’s Sokon, have agreed to expand their global manufacturing footprints to the country. The deals were announced when Indonesian Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita visited Beijing earlier this month, Caixin Global reported. Neta, also known as Hozon Auto, shipped 16,458 EVs overseas from January to May, more than a third of its total deliveries.
• China recorded exports of roughly 519,000 new energy vehicles, mainly all-electrics and plug-in hybrids, for the first five months of this year, representing a 13.7% growth from last year, according to figures from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). BYD and Tesla were the largest exporters, with shipments of more than 130,000 units. Great Wall Motor exported 9,646 units but said last month it would shut down its European headquarters in Munich, Germany.

Pinduoduo is planning to launch more tools in the coming months beyond the automatic price adjustment feature that it introduced before the mid-year shopping event 618 as it looks to maintain its low price advantage, according to a LatePost report. The budget e-commerce platform is increasingly being hit by competitors offering lower prices for the same items. The upcoming tools are designed to “reduce merchants’ operating thresholds and decision-making costs” in an attempt to realize lower commodity prices in a simple and efficient way, the report added. LatePost also reported that Zhao Jiazhen, co-CEO of the platform’s parent company PDD and a figure who was originally in charge of its overseas business Temu, has recently retrained some of his attention on Pinduoduo. [LatePost]

US firm Scopely’s digital spin on the classic board game Monopoly Go! topped the global mobile game market in May, grossing $226 million in revenue from the App Store and Google Play, while Chinese developer Tencent’s multiplayer online battle arena game Honor of Kings secured second spot with $219 million, according to market intelligence platform Sensor Tower. Another notable Tencent entry in the top 10 was the mobile version of Dungeon and Fighter, which was only released in China on May 21, but still achieved over $100 million in revenue in only 10 days to rank eighth in the global mobile game market for the month. In May, global mobile game players spent nearly $6.7 billion on the App Store and Google Play, with the Chinese iOS market accounting for 19.2% of the total, the report added. [Sensor Tower, in Chinese]

In response to recent news about large-scale layoffs, Chinese game developer Perfect World told local media outlet Southern Finance Omnimedia on Monday that the company’s gaming projects are always adjusted based on actual operations and personnel adjustments are continuously ongoing. The company’s developing game One Punch Man is still progressing, though details about the current number of development personnel were not disclosed. There were previous reports about Perfect World’s largest round of layoffs, with nearly two entire office buildings being emptied. Over a thousand people were laid off in total, and some development departments have been cutting hundreds of staff members, one Perfect World employee claimed earlier online. Perfect World, founded in 2004 in Beijing, is best known for Perfect World International, an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). [IThome, in Chinese]

Indonesia’s trade officials said Temu’s business model conflicts with local government regulations, which require a distributor or intermediary to be present in the product’s journey from factory to consumer. According to a report by CNN Indonesia, the Pinduoduo sister app has yet to apply for a license to operate locally, said Isy Karim, the director general of Indonesia’s domestic trade. So far, Temu ships Chinese-manufactured goods at especially low prices to over 50 overseas markets on six continents, but it has entered only two countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. The Indonesian government will continue to “closely monitor” the potential entry of Temu, as local officials worry that the Chinese online retailer poses a threat to the island country’s small- and medium-sized merchants, the report added. [CNN]

Major investors in fast fashion giant Shein have privately asked the firm to consider buying back their shares, according to a report by the South China Morning Post that cited unnamed sources, as Shein faces resistance to its plan to list in London. The China-founded and now Singapore-headquartered company reportedly switched its long-awaited IPO to London from New York in May this year due to regulatory hurdles in the US, but there have been no reports or evidence confirming Shein has filed a prospectus with the London Stock Exchange. The SCMP report also noted that deals selling Shein’s shares on private markets continue to take place due to concerns over its potential IPO returns. [SCMP]

Chinese tech giant Huawei opened the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC) 2024 in the city of Dongguan in southern China on June 21, by launching the new Beta version HarmonyOS NEXT, an all-scenario operating system for developers. The HarmonyOS ecosystem covers a diverse range of products including smartphones, smart wearables, tablets, headphones, smart driving vehicles, and smart home solutions.

“HarmonyOS NEXT is a fully self-developed, independently controllable operating system originating from China,” said Yu Chengdong, Huawei’s Consumer business group chair, at the event.

Why it matters: HarmonyOS NEXT is entirely independent of Google’s Android system. The kernel of HarmonyOS NEXT, the most critical part of the operating system, has cut its ties with  the Linux system altogether, the company professed.

Details: HarmonyOS NEXT Beta version has been promoted to developers since June 21 and will be released to consumers in August, according to Huawei. 

• Yu announced that the upcoming flagship smartphone Huawei Mate70 series will be the first device to come with HarmonyOS NEXT pre-installed in the third quarter, while the firm’s other smart devices are expected to come loaded with HarmonyOS NEXT version in the fourth quarter.
• HarmonyOS, released in August 2019, has undergone four generations of development. Currently, the Harmony ecosystem includes over 900 million devices, with 2.54 million developers actively contributing to its development, Huawei claimed. Additionally, the monthly volume of API (Application Programming Interface) calls for application development has reached 82.7 billion, the company said.
• HarmonyOS NEXT needs to strengthen its native app ecosystem due to the discontinuation of support for Android applications. HarmonyOS native applications have entered a full-scale sprint phase, with over 1,500 apps launched and 5,000 apps under development. 

Context: Huawei developed its own operating system, HarmonyOS, due to US sanctions restricting its access to Google’s Android that took hold in 2019. This move aimed to ensure independence and provide a viable alternative for its global smartphone market.

• In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei’s HarmonyOS surpassed Apple’s iOS, becoming the second largest operating system in the Chinese market after the Android system, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research. HarmonyOS’s market share in China has risen from 8% in the first quarter of 2023 to 17% in the same period of 2024, while iOS’s share decreased from 20% to 16%, the report said.

Nissan ceased operations at one of its eight joint manufacturing facilities with Chinese automaker Dongfeng on June 21 in the country’s eastern city of Changzhou, less than four years after production began at the factory in late 2020, Nikkei reported. The plant, where the Japanese automaker has been producing its Qashqai compact crossovers, has an annual capacity of 130,000 units, accounting for more than 8% of the company’s total production capacity of roughly 1.6 million units in China, the report said. Nissan’s China operations reportedly plan to slash their annual output by 30%, after reporting a 16.1% decline in sales last year, as a growing number of consumers turn to low-priced electric vehicles from Chinese rivals. [Nikkei, TechNode reporting]

Two clashes between staff and customers in one day at Manner, a rapidly expanding coffee chain in China, have sent discussion of the company’s working practices viral on Chinese social media over the weekend, as anger at those involved has turned to scrutiny over how Manner treats its employees. Surveillance footage from one store shows a woman demanding that her coffee be made first because she was “late,” with a staff member telling her that orders are processed in the sequence they are received and offering to cancel her order if she was dissatisfied; the ensuing argument between the two then escalates into a physical fight. A similar confrontation seemingly occurred at another Manner store in Shanghai and has also gone viral online. A report from local media outlet Jiemian quoted a Manner employee as saying that the company assigns only one person to stores that record daily sales of under RMB 5,000 ($688.50), with the lone worker responsible for everything from looking after stock, taking orders offline and online, making coffee, and cleaning. According to the report, Manner’s baristas earn about RMB 5,000 a month on average even in first-tier cities like Shanghai. Manner has grown popular due to its affordable prices and high-quality flavors, with its cheapest Americano priced at RMB 15. The brand, which was founded in 2015, opened its 1,000th store last October. [Jiemian, in Chinese]

China’s Ministry of Commerce has received complaints from some domestic automakers unhappy that the European Commission requested sensitive business information concerning their sourcing of raw materials for batteries and manufacturing components during its investigation into the country’s subsidised electric vehicle imports. “The type, scope and quantity of information collected by the European side was unprecedented and far more than what is required for a countervailing duties investigation,” He Yadong, a commerce ministry spokesperson told a news conference on June 20. The comments were made when Chinese state radio asked about the possibility of Brussels spying on China’s EV industry and came after MG’s owner SAIC said it had withheld information related to battery formulation from the EU investigators, citing business confidentiality. Beijing and Brussels on June 22 agreed to start consultations over the EU’s anti-subsidy probe against China-made EVs. [Reuters, TechNode reporting]

Level Infinite, the overseas gaming distribution arm of Tencent Games, announced on Thursday that it has launched a global version of its hit mobile game Honor of Kings in a swathe of new international markets including Japan, South Korea, North America, and Europe.

Level Infinite stated that Honor of Kings has now established a global service network and supports 14 languages to enhance the gaming experience for players around the world.

Why it matters: The most profitable title from Tencent Games, Honor of Kings is already the world’s biggest multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game according to the company, with a global launch somewhat overdue. Honor of Kings maintains a daily active user base of 100 million, the company said.

Details: TiMi Studio, a subsidiary of Tencent Games, originally released Honor of Kings in China in 2015. The latest development means it is now available globally in more than 160 countries. 

• Honor of Kings is a competitive MOBA title where players choose from a diverse line of heroes, each with unique skills, to engage in strategic team battles. To celebrate the global release, the game introduced Lu Yana, a new hero exclusive to the global edition. Currently, a total of 85 characters, of which 28 are free to use, are available to global players.
• The design inspiration for Lu Yana comes from the mysterious Latin American legend of Boitata, according to the game team. The first region-themed exclusive hero was born after in-depth discussions with local gaming experts, they added. Boitata is a mythical creature from Brazilian folklore, often depicted as a giant serpent or dragon that emerges from bonfires and protects the forests.
• At time of writing, Honor of Kings topped the free-download game chart in 10 countries or regions, securing a spot in the top 10 of 25 countries’ free-download gaming charts, local gaming media outlet GameLook reported today. The ten countries or regions where it tops the charts are Canada, the Philippines, Brunei, Myanmar, Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Bermuda. Additionally, in terms of free-download mobile games, the game ranked second in the US, fourth in Japan, and eleventh in South Korea.
• Tencent Games has deployed dedicated servers in every country or region to ensure low latency and optimal game performance, the same GameLook report revealed. Due to regulatory constraints, Honor of Kings cannot achieve global cross-server play between Chinese and global versions. However, Chinese players can authorize migration of their data when logging into the global version.

Context: In the first quarter, Tencent’s revenue from the overseas gaming market increased by 3% year-on-year to RMB 13.6 billion ($1.88 billion), while revenue from the domestic gaming market decreased by 2% year-on-year to RMB 34.5 billion ($4.77 billion). 

• In 2023, Honor of Kings reached nearly $1.48 billion in in-game revenue, making it the highest-grossing mobile game of the year for Tencent Games, according to market intelligence firm AppMagic.

Luckin Coffee plans to bring its beverage brand to the Malaysian market with a local partner as the Chinese coffee chain expands beyond Singapore, its first foreign location. Malaysia’s media outlet The Edge cited sources familiar with the matter in a report on Thursday. The partnership is accompanied by an “ambitious store expansion plan” for the next five years. US-listed Luckin Coffee is involved in a price war on its home turf, despite recording its first quarterly loss in two years in the March quarter and a negative operating margin of 1%. As of March 31 this year, Luckin Coffee, founded in 2017, has 18,590 stores globally, of which 32 are in Singapore and the rest in China. [The Edge]

Alibaba-owned workplace management app DingTalk has put global expansion on its agenda after running a small-scale pilot serving hundreds of Chinese enterprises with overseas businesses, according to a report by Chinese media outlet 36Kr on Thursday. The report said DingTalk had drawn employees from product R&D, solutions, sales, and marketing to form a mixed team to support the expansion project, and is currently hiring Southeast Asia-based regional managers and solutions managers. According to the company, by the end of 2023, DingTalk had more than 700 million users, and the platform also serves 25 million corporates and educational institutions, of which 120,000 were paying customers. [36Kr, in Chinese]

Chinese automaker SAIC has responded to the European Commission’s decision to impose a punitive 38.1% tariff on its electric vehicles by unveiling a range of accessories, from baseball caps to coffee mugs, featuring a distinctive 38.1 design with a small EU flag forming the decimal point. Other items include table tennis bats and little badges with the MG logo and the words “A quality car specially selected by the EU,” according to the designs posted on China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform Weibo by Shao Jingfeng, a deputy design chief at SAIC. It is not clear whether the state-controlled manufacturer will actually produce and sell the collection, yet Shao has invited public feedback on the social media space. The news comes after Brussels said on June 12 it will impose additional tariffs of between 17.4% and 38.1% on Chinese electric vehicle imports, with MG’s owner and those deemed incompliant with EU standards facing the hardest hit, TechNode has reported. [TechNode reporting, Shao Jingfeng’s post on Weibo, in Chinese]

E-commerce sales dropped 7.0% from a year ago during China’s second-biggest annual shopping event, the 618 festival, third-party data provider Syntun said in a report on Wednesday. The dip in the mid-year festival’s numbers came despite major player Alibaba achieving a historical record on 88VIP loyalty membership sign-ups and JD announcing that it had set a new record for both transaction volume and orders.

A total of RMB 742.8 billion ($102.3 billion) in merchandise volume was generated by the country’s online retailers as part of the event, according to Syntun, the first drop recorded since figures began in 2008, as Chinese consumers tighten their wallets amid economic uncertainty.

Why it matters: E-commerce platforms invariably choose to release consumption data that is favorable to them in an attempt to portray untouchable positions in a crowded industry.

Details: Led by emerging platforms Douyin (China’s TikTok sibling) and Kuaishou, livestreaming-based sales enjoyed continuous growth and popularity during the month-long 618 festival period, with accumulated sales rising 12.1% to RMB 206.8 billion compared to the same period last year.

• Alibaba’s Taobao said it saw 81 livestreaming channels operated by merchants and influencers sell goods valued at more than RMB 100 million each, and JD, which only began focusing on the shopping format in late 2023, noted growth of over 200% in orders placed via livestreams. Meanwhile, Xiaohongshu reported livestream orders more than five times those of last year as of June 18.
• Pinduoduo, a fast-rising platform fueled by its highly-affordable offerings, has tried hard to maintain its ultra-low price advantage during the 618 period, with the Temu sister app introducing a price-adjustment tool that allows it to automatically cut prices within a range set by merchants to ensure better exposure for their items.
• According to a screenshot of  a notice within Pinduoduo, “the feature can not be turned off until the end of the promotion on June 21, 2024 once it is turned on.” This language suggests  that low prices potentially come at a cost to merchants and supply chains.
• As the creator of the 618 festival, JD this year faced a major backlash from more than 50 local book publishers as it pushed its “low-price strategy” despite the publishers protesting that the company was discounting books to below-cost prices. Some publishers announced that they would refuse to supply JD in the future. Conflict between merchants and platforms have intensified as the former chase ever lower prices to attract customers.

Context: The 618 festival began more than a decade ago to celebrate the founding of JD, before being adopted by other platforms. Its sales peaked at nearly RMB 800 billion in 2023.

Volkswagen-backed Gotion High-tech said on Wednesday that claims its supply chain has ties to forced labor are false, after a group of US Republican lawmakers called for the company, along with its larger rival CATL, to be added to an import ban list. “All allegations are completely groundless and contradictory to basic facts… Gotion is in strict compliance with all applicable laws and regulations with respect to its operations and business activities in the U.S,” Gotion said in a statement. The company claimed that it found no business relationship and connection to forced labor or anything that violates applicable laws and regulations between the company and its suppliers and suppliers’ subsidiaries, after conducting thorough internal reviews. Rep. John Moolenaar, head of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, among several others, sent two letters to the Biden administration calling for action to ban the companies from shipping goods to the US, Wall Street Journal reported on June 6. CATL also denies the claims. [TechNode reporting, Wall Street Journal]

Tencent announced on Wednesday that its mobile game Dungeon and Fighter (DNF) will no longer be available on certain Android platforms from June 20 due to its contract expiring. In a statement, the DNF operations team recommended that players on Android directly download the game from the official website. Tencent has notified major domestic Android app stores, including those of Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo, that updates for the DNF package on these channels will cease today, according to local media outlet Yicai. “Listing on domestic Android channels (app stores) means losing half our revenue, and our official website packages even get secretly replaced with revenue-sharing channel packages during installation. It’s better to stick to our official website for the game,” the CEO of XD Games, Huang Yimeng, told Yicai. [Yicai, in Chinese]

CATL announced on Tuesday it is establishing a giant new battery plant on an area of 260,000 square meters (2.8 million square feet) on the outskirts of Beijing. The facility will be the company’s first in northern China and is set for operation in 2026. The world’s largest battery supplier by shipment did not reveal the capacity of the factory to be developed in China’s capital city, but it is located adjacent to Xiaomi’s electric vehicle plant in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (E-town). The news comes after CATL last month set up a joint venture with Xiaomi and state-owned automaker BAIC for battery supply in the city, with CATL owning 51% of the new venture with a registered capital of RMB 1 billion ($140 million).

CATL also said it will deepen its partnership with BAIC to develop the so-called “skateboard chassis” for future battery EVs, while developing new models powered by its swappable batteries and co-establishing public facilities for battery swaps, after the two companies joined hands in 2022. CATL’s Integrated Intelligent Chassis (CIIC) is said to be a one-stop approach, intergrating battery cells, electric motors and other key parts under one structure, which means reduced weight for the car with no need for a separate battery pack. Chief scientist Wu Kai last November expected the company to begin producing the CIIC in the third quarter of 2024. CATL-backed EV startup Hozon is working on the first use of the chassis and Avatr, the premium EV brand from Chinese automaker Chang’an, is also collaborating with CATL on a similar effort. [CATL announcement, in Chinese]

Intel’s Lunar Lake processor, also known as the Core Ultra 200V series, is being fully manufactured by TSMC for the first time, with the computing module using TSMC’s 3nm process (N3B technology) and the platform control module using TSMC’s 6nm process (N6 technology), according to local media outlet MyDrivers. Intel will launch the Lunar Lake at the end of the third quarter, introducing the new Lion Cove P-core architecture, Skymont E-core architecture, and Xe2-LPG integrated graphics architecture for the first time. The Lunar Lake will also debut the integration of on-package memory (16/32GB). Another part of the Core Ultra 200 series, Arrow Lake, will target high-performance desktops and will enter the market in the fourth quarter. [MyDrivers, in Chinese]

Chinese automaker Dongfeng Motor will introduce the first global model from its premium electric vehicle brand Voyah as early as the third quarter of this year, in what will be a direct challenge to Tesla’s best-selling crossover the Model Y, local media has reported.

The 100% electric compact sports utility vehicle (SUV) will feature Huawei’s vision-based approach to automated driving functions on urban streets. It will also be produced in a joint plant set up with Nissan, as fierce competition has put downward pressure on the Japanese firm, a regulatory filing has shown.

Why it matters: Stellantis and Nissan’s Chinese manufacturing partner expects the model to appeal to young families and drive sales in the country’s already crowded mainstream luxury EV segment, company sources told National Business Daily (in Chinese) on Tuesday.

Details: Sources added only full-electric variants will be on offer for the Zhiyin (知音), which loosely translates as “bosom buddies” in Chinese. This is in line with a filing that was published last month by China’s top industry regulator, which shows the car has six variants with battery options using two types of cathodes – more energy-dense nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) and cheaper lithium iron phosphate (LFP).

• The five-seater SUV measures 4.7 meters in length and 1.6 meters in height with a wheelbase of 2.9 meters, according to the registration filings released by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). This is roughly the same size as the Tesla Model Y and smaller than the first model under the Voyah brand, the Free SUV.
• The all-wheel drive version will have a dual electric motor setup with both motors providing a power output of 160 kW, while other variants will be offered with either a 215 kW or 230 kW electric motor. All the variants have no lidar components, which are normally packaged on the car roof or near the bumpers to help the vehicle sense and interpret its surroundings.
• This means the new car will utilize the so-called “pure vision” approach, a strategy championed by Tesla, relying on cameras and artificial intelligence, rather than the more visible but more expensive laser sensor units, to achieve automated driving. Voyah announced in April at this year’s Beijing Auto Show its first global model would feature Huawei’s intelligent driving software and operating system HarmonyOS.
• Dongfeng will manufacture the car at its latest joint plant with Nissan, which opened last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan with an annual capacity of 300,000 units. Nissan has been making several electric models including the Ariya with Dongfeng at this plant to date, although it sold less than 2,000 units of its second EV-only model in the country over the past six months, figures compiled by auto service platform Dongchedi showed.

Context: Nissan’s China joint venture with state-owned Dongfeng reported sales of 723,139 cars in the country last year, representing a 21.5% plunge from a year ago. The companies last November announced plans to export vehicles from China in 2025. The Japanese carmaker was also reportedly considering a 30% cut of its annual car output in China, along with peer Honda.

• Dongfeng’s Voyah in January announced a collaboration with Huawei to develop smart EVs. The brand has three models on sale and delivered 24,869 EVs, including all-electrics and plug-in hybrids, from January to May. The automaker’s off-road vehicle lineup Mengshi also works with Huawei.

WeChat owner Tencent will ban virtual influencers from livestreaming on its TikTok-like service Video Accounts, a strict move that the tech giant said aims to “encourage more real live hosts who can interact with viewers in real-time.” The move comes as rival platforms have largely adopted a hands off approach to AI-powered anchors. According to a draft rule covering “low-quality content,” the platform would ban avatars powered by AI or plugins from livestreaming and selling, and would penalize offenders depending upon the severity of the incident. The draft regulation underwent a ten-day public feedback period in early June and is expected to go into effect on Friday. [ThePaper, in Chinese]

Huawei’s upcoming flagship phone the Mate 70 Pro may continue the same triple punch-hole design on the front as the Mate 60 Pro, with identical hole positions and sizes, according to tech blogger Moment Digital. Currently, the Huawei Mate 60 Pro smartphone is the only phone that uses this triple-front-hole design. In April, another source, Digital Chat Station, suggested that the Huawei Mate 70 series would include a OV50K 1/1.3-inch large main camera sensor developed by California-based OmniVision Technologies, offering advanced capabilities designed for smartphone cameras and other imaging applications. The Huawei Mate 70 series is set to launch in the second half of this year; the previous generation Mate 60 series was launched last August. [IThome, in Chinese]

Chinese e-commerce platform JD said it hit a record high in merchandise volume and order numbers for its recent mid-year shopping event 618, though it failed to provide specific figures. The company said more than 500 million users shopped via JD during the online festival, which began on the evening of May 31, adding that customers had responded positively to its theme of “cheap and good” this year. Small merchants serve as a common focus for JD and rival Taobao during the event, with the former saying that more than 150,000 such sellers saw their sales grow by over 50%. Alibaba’s marketplace provided similar data, with 1.9 million small- and medium-sized merchants on Taobao experiencing double their turnover year-on-year as of June 18, according to the company. [JD, in Chinese]

On Chinese social media platform Weibo, tech blogger Digital Chat Station today revealed details about Xiaomi’s first flip phone, the MIX Flip, which he said will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and a large outer display. The MIX Flip is expected to be released next month, the blogger mentioned in the comments on his post. The new flip phone may also offer a 1.5K flexible inner display, a 32MP front camera, a 50MP main camera, a 60MP telephoto rear camera, and a 4,900mAh battery with 67W wired charging, according to previous leaks. Xiaomi has yet to publicly confirm a release date or further details regarding the new flip phone. [Digital Chat Station, in Chinese]

Chinese developer Game Science last week invited a group of domestic gaming media outlets and veteran gamers to attend an offline demo event of its upcoming game Black Myth: Wukong, a highly-anticipated self-developed AAA game which has captured widespread attention in China this summer – even before it’s launched.

On Monday, local media released their evaluations of the new title, which is loosely based on the Monkey King character from Journey to the West, and gave their assessments of the game’s visual quality, artistic details, and playability.

Why it matters: As China’s first AAA title in recent years, Black Myth: Wukong is eagerly anticipated among Chinese gamers, with the hype continuing to build toward the game’s global launch on August 20. Major Chinese game companies such as Tencent and NetEase rarely develop single-player PC games due to high development costs and risks associated with return on investment, giving this title extra importance.

Details: The demo of Black Myth: Wukong lasted for two and a half hours. Several domestic gaming media outlets and players shared their impressions of the demo on various social media platforms in the aftermath.

• An action-adventure game based on the classic Chinese literary work Journey to the West, Black Myth: Wukong showcases a rich mythological aesthetic through its art, according to most media feedback. “It’s stunningly gorgeous, the animations are incredibly fluid, it’s steeped in rich Chinese culture, and there’s just something immensely satisfying about playing as a Monkey King and beating up all sorts of mythical creatures with a giant extendable staff,” wrote Mitchell Saltzman, editor of American video game media outlet IGN.
• Each battle is unique throughout the two and a half hours of gameplay, according to local gaming media outlet Youxi Putao. Each boss exhibits distinctive combat styles and tactics, including the Sword Wolf Leader, Spirit Master, and Black Bear Spirit. “Some bosses wield their skills with flair, showing off their prowess with full force. Others may seem simple-minded but excel in using underhanded tactics. Coupled with well-tuned game mechanics that vary spells and abilities, players can enjoy a diverse experience in boss battles,” said the editor from Youxi Putao (our translation).
• However, the game’s main thrill lies in its intense, high-quality boss battles, overshadowing the relatively mundane and unexciting content found between them within a short two-hour gameplay trial, the same Youxi Putao report claimed. 
• “While there are side paths, they frequently lead to dead ends or loop back to the main route. These paths include mobs, item materials, and elite monsters, but the combat lacks diversity and challenge. The absence of unique terrains, traps, or mechanics contributes to a bored monster-clearing experience. Additionally, the rewards are generally underwhelming, making it less appealing to engage with these mobs later on,” the editor from Youxi Putao wrote.
• On Bilibili – a popular Chinese video sharing platform themed around anime, manga, and gaming culture – on Monday, veteran gamers posted trial play videos and commentaries that quickly earned hundreds of thousands of views. The videos show that the combat system of Black Myth: Wukong emphasizes fast-paced and agile battles, particularly highlighting evasion and jumping. 

Context: An AAA game is a high-budget video game developed by major studios, known for advanced graphics, complex gameplay, and extensive marketing. These games involve large teams, long development cycles, and aim to deliver great gaming experiences with broad industry impact and high sales expectations.

• The physical deluxe and collector’s editions of Black Myth: Wukong for PC are priced at RMB 820 ($113) and RMB 1,998 ($276) respectively. In China, the deluxe edition was limited to 20,000 sets at the first round of pre-sales, while the collector’s edition was limited to 10,000 sets. Pre-sales for these editions began on June 10 and June 17, with both selling out in less than a minute. Reservations on the e-commerce platform JD exceeded one million for both rounds of pre-sales. Currently, it is unknown whether Game Science will start a third round of pre-sales for the game.

The German Chamber of Commerce in China has called on Beijing and Brussels to seek a resolution through negotiation on EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports, which it says offer no protection to German carmakers and foster tariff escalations that can only hurt the industry. “The industry also made quite clear statements that tariffs, as suggested now by the EU, will not increase the competitiveness of the automotive industry,” Maximilian Butek, executive director of the German Chamber of Commerce in East China, told the South China Morning Post. The comments come as Germany’s vice-chancellor and economics minister Robert Habeck will meet Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss trade issues on Thursday, and after Brussels announced the imposition of extra duties of up to 38.1% on Chinese EV imports last week. In the latest sign of worsening relations between China and Europe, the Chinese government on Monday announced it has opened an anti-dumping investigation into imported pork and its by-products from the European Union, with Spain, the Netherlands, and France among the major pork exporters to China. [South China Morning Post, Reuters]

Chinese ride-hailing company Didi said on Tuesday it has no timeline set for when it will list again on public markets, amid rumors that it is preparing for an initial public offering in Hong Kong two years after being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. The comments came after The Information reported on Monday that representatives from the Chinese ride-hailing giant have been approaching potential US-based investors over the past few months, joining meetings and calls organized by investment banks such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Bloomberg reported last October that the ride-hailing platform hoped to list shares in Hong Kong in 2024, although that was a year later than previously planned, according to The Information report. The company said it has been maintaining regular communication with investors to keep them updated on the progress of it’s business, although there is no timetable at present regarding a potential IPO. Didi’s revenue increased 14.9% year-on-year on the back of a 30.3% growth in total trips in the January-March quarter, as the firm’s business returns to normal following its delisting from the US and a major investigation into its practices in China. [The Information]

Major Chinese online retailers including Taobao and JD and emerging platforms like Xiaohongshu have said they saw positive metrics during China’s month-long 618 shopping festival, where low prices have taken center stage as merchants navigate the challenge of reduced consumer spending.

In an email, Alibaba sent to TechNode, the Taobao owner said it has seen “encouraging user engagement and growth” from merchants of all sizes.

Why it matters: The 618 shopping festival is the second largest online shopping event in China, with consumption levels during the event seen as a barometer of the country’s overall spending trends.

Details: Pinduoduo’s standout performance has turned it into a model for competitors, although the discount shopping app has become more aggressive recently as it looks to maintain its appeal. Before its main promotions began in late May, Pinduoduo quietly launched a system designed to automatically adjust prices within the range set by merchants, so that a product’s price drops if a competitor platform offers a lower price.

• At the same time, Taobao revamped its homepage to closely resemble that of Pinduoduo, its biggest rival. Changes include reducing the number of fixed channels, and highlighting algorithmically recommended items that it thinks users are likely to buy.
• In another key figure revealed by Alibaba, newly-added members of 88VIP, Taobao’s loyalty membership package, more than doubled in May compared to the previous month. The growth was fueled by additional value-added services such as access to unlimited free parcel returns. Taobao said more than 35 million users were recorded as part of the program in the first three months of 2024.
• JD, the platform that began the 618 shopping festival in celebration of its founding, this year partnered with Hunan TV for its evening gala three years after such last event was held. As part of the project, JD said it would hand out “heavyweight prizes” including resort stays and sports tickets to users who shopped on the app during the gala, which started at 8 p.m. on Monday. 
• Elsewhere, content-sharing platform Xiaohongshu reported triple orders on purchases made via its site compared with the same period last year.

Context: The main e-commerce players kicked off their 618 promotions in mid-May, but none have posted overall sales totals for the period.

Qcraft, a Chinese startup co-founded by four former engineers at Google’s self-driving project Waymo, has raised “several hundred million RMB” (between $13.78 million and $137.68 million), more than a year and half after closing a Series B round where it attracted a similar amount of funding in late 2022. The investment was jointly made by Beijing-based investment firm Cuihu Capital and Beijing Zhongguancun Science City Construction Holding Co., Ltd, a conglomerate backed by the Chinese Academy of Science, according to a statement published on June 14. Best known for developing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for Li Auto based on Horizon Robotics’ computing platforms, Beijing-based Qcraft said it has facilitated “a top Chinese electric vehicle maker” to deliver nearly 400,000 cars with its Navigation on ADAS (NOA) technology. Among the existing investors in the five-year-old startup are Chinese tech giants Bytedance and Meituan. [Qcraft announcement, in Chinese]

At the Worldwide Developers Conference 2024, Apple introduced the DockKit accessory integrated with the DockKit protocol for phone stabilizers on June 14, demonstrating the latest AI-phone stabilizer from the Chinese camera brand Insta360. Engineers from the DockKit team showcased that the stabilizer can directly access the iPhone’s native camera on the iOS 18 system for auto-tracking, front/rear camera switching, and zoom control. With DockKit’s tracking technology, the Insta360 AI-phone stabilizer can lock onto and track subjects without requiring manual adjustments, the company claimed. Insta360 has said that the Insta360 Flow series AI phone stabilizer will be released in the coming weeks, despite not yet disclosing other product details or pricing. [TechNode reporting]

Tata Group, one of India’s largest conglomerates, is in negotiations to acquire at least a 51% stake in the Indian subsidiary of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Vivo, according to Indian media outlet MoneyControl. A final deal has not yet been reached because Vivo is seeking a higher valuation than what Tata Group is currently offering, though Tata Group remains interested in the potential acquisition and plans to take control of the joint venture’s production and sales network for future localization, according to the report. Under continued pressure from the Indian government, Chinese smartphone manufacturers are being compelled to sell majority stakes in their Indian subsidiaries to continue operations in the country. Another Chinese smartphone brand, Oppo, is also in talks with local firms to divest its Indian subsidiary, the report added. [MoneyControl]

The European Union announced on Wednesday it has taken a case-by-case approach to deciding how much tariffs could increase on Chinese electric vehicles. In a move that surprised many industry professionals, the preliminary duties set to hit Chinese EV imports will rise from the general 10% basis on all of them to between 27% and 48%, with SAIC and those deemed incompliant with EU standards facing the hardest hit. The tariff hikes are relatively moderate for the likes of BYD and Geely, which have either committed to growing deep roots within the EU or have already done so in the past.

Broadly speaking, the additional duties are still in line with what many analysts had expected, despite the possibility of a massive but temporary plunge in China’s EV exports to Europe. Chinese battery EVs are priced in general around 80-100% higher in Europe than in their domestic market, creating room for price adjustments, said Jefferies analysts led by Johnson Wan. There could be very limited benefit for major European players, as the high-volume EV segment would remain intensely competitive with subdued margins, said Patrick Hummel, Head of European Autos Research at UBS.

Although Bernstein analysts expect the provisional tariffs to be a serious turn-off to smaller Chinese brands, prompting them to focus on other export markets, bigger Chinese players are likely to step up their localization efforts. Paul Gong, UBS’s head of China Autos Research, also wrote in a note to clients, “Localization of production may become an increasingly appealing option over longer run compared to direct shipping from China for exporters to take shelter from trade conflicts and geopolitical tensions.”

Below, we take a look at what the key Chinese players have been doing in Europe and their respective prospects in a continent home to some of the world’s most important automakers.

BYD

China’s top EV maker is widely considered the least affected by the newly announced tariffs, with the strength to still break even on an import model thanks to its significant cost advantage versus peers. BYD’s EVs would still be priced lower than the similar models launched by European rivals, even if the company raises prices by 17.4% to fully pass on the additional tariff to customers, although the measure could effectively prevent its dominance in destination markets.

The leading Chinese player would also have a 25% cost advantage over European counterparts even after localizing the production of its popular sedan in the region, according to UBS’s previous findings. Set to be the first major Chinese automaker with a production base in Europe, BYD expects its Hungary plant to begin operation before 2026, with an annual capacity of 150,000 units. Although exports to Europe only account for a single digit percentage of its total sales, it aims to “be in a leading position” in the regional market by 2030.

SAIC

China’s biggest car manufacturer got relatively unfavorable treatment, and analysts expect the measures will significantly curb its competitiveness in Europe. The European Commission will impose tariffs of nearly 50% on EVs from the Chinese state-owned automaker, along with those deemed to be the least compliant with the nine-month anti-subsidy investigation announced last September. The company, which owns the iconic MG brand of British origin, said earlier it had “fully cooperated” with the investigation and hinted that the EU regulators misused their investigative powers in order to view sensitive business information related to its supply chain.

SAIC responded on Thursday by saying, “As SAIC MG’s sales in Europe continue to grow, we are planning to introduce China’s new energy vehicle (NEV) technologies and green factories to the continent” (our translation). The firm also called for more cooperation between China and the EU. China’s top car exporter to Europe, with shipments of nearly 243,000 units to the region last year, revealed plans last July to build a manufacturing facility plant on the continent.

Geely, Chery, and Dongfeng

Volvo parent Geely was among the three Chinese companies selected for further scrutiny and saw a relatively moderate tariff increase of 20%, another individually calculated duty rate. The impact is likely to be very marginal to China’s third biggest car exporter, thanks to its ownership of Volvo and the currently limited scale of its own brands in the region. Geely’s EV brand Zeekr said on Tuesday it is looking to establish a presence in six to eight European countries by year-end.

Chery, as well as its state-controlled peers such as Dongfeng and Chang’an, faces an extra 21% charge in a category for those cooperating with the probe but not sampled. Jaguar Land Rover’s Chinese manufacturing partner in April reached a joint venture deal with Spain’s EV Motors to produce cars at a former Nissan plant in Barcelona later this year, Reuters reported previously. Meanwhile, Dongfeng’s Voyah brand, previously planning to enter Germany, France, and Italy, has for now been selling EVs mainly in Nordic countries.

NIO, Xpeng Motors, and Leapmotor

Like their bigger peers, Chinese EV makers NIO, Xpeng Motors, and Leapmotor are also set for extra charges of 21%. NIO, which currently sells four models from more than €60,000 ($64,361) in Europe, higher than most domestic competitors, said on Wednesday its commitment to the regional market remains unwavering and it will continue to explore new opportunities within the EU despite protectionism.

The company is still looking to introduce its lower-priced vehicles, including an upcoming third brand codenamed Firefly, in Europe, but the plan is now being adjusted based on the current situation. Delivery of the first model, a well-designed boutique car, will begin in the first half of 2025 in China at a price cheaper than the BMW Mini, CEO William Li recently told investors during an earnings call.

Zhejiang-based Leapmotor, which has Stellantis as its largest shareholder, is also making pivots. Chief executive Carlos Tavares said on Thursday the European auto giant will shift the output of some Leapmotor products to Europe due to the tariff hikes, having reportedly explored the potential of building EVs jointly in Italy. A similar scenario could unfold for Xpeng Motors and its European ally Volkswagen. President Brian Gu last September revealed plans to enter Germany, Britain, and France, with Italy also being included earlier this year.

Ant Group spent a record RMB 21.2 billion ($2.9 billion) on research and development last year, according to its 2023 sustainability report posted on Thursday. The figure rose 3.6% from a year earlier and 12.7% compared to 2021. The fintech giant said that spending was largely focused on artificial intelligence technology. Ant opened its Bailing AI foundation model to the public in November. In other key figures, the affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba said it had served more than 87 million small business enterprises by providing digital payment services as of 2023. As part of the company’s overseas expansion effort, Ant Group has cooperated with 25 e-payment platforms, reaching over 1.5 billion accounts at home and abroad to boost cross-border payments. [Ant Group, in Chinese]

Honor on Thursday launched its first flip foldable phone, the Magic V Flip, as the Chinese phone maker aims to intensify its competition in the high-end foldable market against leading players such as Samsung and its former parent company Huawei. The Magic V Flip features a 4-inch cover screen, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, a 50MP main camera with a Sony IMX906 sensor, and 66W fast charging. The new device combines an innovative flip design with high-speed performance, appealing to users seeking convenience in a compact, fashionable form, the company claimed. Currently, the Magic V Flip is only available in China, with a starting price of RMB 4,999 ($689). In the first quarter, Honor led China’s smartphone market with a 17.1% market share, according to market intelligence firm IDC. [Honor Weibo, in Chinese]

A 17-year-old fashion design student has garnered widespread attention in China for making it to the final of an Alibaba-backed global math competition, with her background of studying at a Jiangsu-based vocational senior secondary school marking her out against the other finalists who hailed from prestigious schools such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and MIT. Ranked 12th out of a total of 801 finalists, Jiang Ping was also the only female in the top 30, according to Alibaba. Jiang spent two years self-studying partial differential equations, according to a video posted by the competition organizer, Alibaba’s DAMO Academy. She said she wanted to show what she could do and “be seen by others.” The annual competition allowed teams to use artificial intelligence to solve the math problems this year, but none of the teams who employed AI were successful in making it to the final. [DAMO Academy, in Chinese]

In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei’s HarmonyOS surpassed Apple’s iOS in the Chinese market for the first time, making HarmonyOS the second most-used operating system in China behind Google’s Android, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research. The report indicated that the market share held by Huawei’s HarmonyOS in China rose from 8% in the first quarter of 2023 to 17% in the first quarter of 2024, while the share held by Apple’s iOS declined from 20% to 16%. The 5G adoption rate of HarmonyOS reached 50% in the first quarter of 2024, the report added. On Tuesday, Huawei updated its HarmonyOS with a new 4.2 version for its Huawei Mate 40 series smartphones. [IThome, in Chinese]

A Chinese AI content creator has challenged cybersecurity firm 360 Security Technology over its use of an image of a woman wearing an ancient costume, which he claims he created via an AI model to showcase a “partially redrawn feature” on the company’s search engine.

The argument between creator DynamicWang and 360 Security escalated as the two parties failed to settle, with the company’s vice president Liang Zhihui saying it is willing to resort to legal action.

Why it matters: As the emerging technology of artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to create content, authorship attribution lacks a clearly defined legal framework.

Details: Even before DynamicWang publicly asked 360 Security to apologize over the alleged copyright infringement on June 8, the firm was in the midst of a public opinion storm, this time over its perceived disrespect toward women. When founder Zhou Hongyi introduced the repainting function at the company’s AI product launch on June 6, he used “sexy” as a prompt to ask the AI-powered search engine to redraw a woman’s breasts of the female in the controversial picture, which DynamicWang since claimed was based on his AI-generated work.

• The creator said 360 Security should acknowledge the infringement and compensate him with a symbolic RMB 1 ($0.14). He said the firm “stole” the image generated by his self-trained AWPortrait model.
• According to Liang, the author made a request to the company that he wants 360 Security paid him ten times the model price, together with the cost of compensation. 
• Local media outlet NBD quoted DynamicWang as interpreting the price to use his model as RMB 4,499 is for small- and medium-sized AI startups. This was not the price set for public-listed 360 Security, the creator said. 
• Each side has its own version of the story. While the creator mentioned compensation and apology were “prerequisites,” and buying the model was optional, Liang said purchasing the author’s AWPortrait model for ten times the price was “beyond our knowledge,” according to a WeChat screenshot of his conversation with DynamicWang. The current argument between the two sides is whether DynamicWang owns the copyright to the images generated by the model he trained. 
• In his latest Weibo post late Wednesday, the creator introduced himself as a photographer whose images are posted on Unsplash, Getty Images’ free gallery site, and that the training data he used to feed AWPortait model included his photography and Unsplash images, which he says means there are “no copyright issues” on his side.

Context: In January, the Beijing Internet Court granted copyright protection for an artificial intelligence-generated image, ruling that the image involved had an element of “originality” due to the plaintiff inputting multiple prompts and adjusting the parameters before generating a picture of a young woman through the text-to-image AI model Stable Diffusion. The ruling was seen as the first such AI-generated image copyright infringement case in China.

Japan’s Ministry of Finance trade statistics show that half of Japan’s semiconductor manufacturing equipment exports were heading to China in the first quarter, according to the Japanese media outlet Nikkei Asia. In the first quarter, Japan’s total exports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, components, and flat panel display manufacturing equipment to China were valued at $3.32 billion, a 82% year-on-year increase, and a new record post-2007. Notably, the share of Japanese semiconductor manufacturing equipment exported to China has exceeded 50% for three consecutive quarters, the report added. Last July, Japan announced export controls on 23 semiconductor-related items used for chip making to align with US restrictions on China’s ability to produce advanced semiconductors. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

The US government is considering additional restrictions on China’s access to advanced chip technology used in AI, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The potential measures aim to limit China’s ability to utilize a cutting-edge chip architecture known as gate all-around (GAA), the report said. GAA transistor architecture enhances chip performance and reduces power consumption. The specifics of the proposed rules are still under discussion, and it is unclear when a final decision will be made, according to the media outlet’s sources. Major semiconductor companies Nvidia, Intel, AMD, TSMC, and Samsung are planning to begin mass production of GAA-designed chips next year, the report added. [Bloomberg]

The demand for advanced process chips has surged, as AI servers and high-performance computing (HPC) applications transition to AI phones. Taiwanese media outlet Economic Daily News reported on Tuesday that Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD have almost booked TSMC’s 3nm process to full capacity, leading to a queue of customers extending to 2026.

Why it matters: The rapid evolution of AI technology across multiple sectors has driven a surge in demand for advanced process chips. Increasing orders from major clients is expected to further push TSMC to innovate and develop advanced manufacturing processes. 

Details: Currently, TSMC’s 3nm lineup includes N3, N3E, N3P, N3X, and N3A, according to the Economic Daily News report.

• N3E, which entered mass production in the fourth quarter of last year, primarily serves AI accelerators, high-end smartphones, and data centers. N3P is expected to enter mass production in the latter half of this year and will become the preferred chip process for mainstream applications including mobile devices, consumer electronic products, base stations, and networking by 2026. N3X and N3A are designed for customized demands such as high-performance computing and automotive clients.
• The latest high-end chips this year are all adopting the 3nm process, according to Chinese media outlet Icsmart. Apple will introduce the M4 series processors this year and is set to release the next-gen A18 series processors for its new iPhone16 series this September. Later this year, Qualcomm will launch its flagship mobile platform Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, while Nvidia is set to unveil the RTX 50 series graphics cards. AMD will release the fifth-gen EPYC Turin processors in the second half of the year, with plans to launch the MI350 series next year.
• TSMC, as the exclusive supplier of Apple’s A-series processors for the new iPhones, will see a significant increase in demand for related 3nm orders. Apple’s iPhone 16 series this year is expected to increase sales volume by 5% year-over-year to 92-95 million units, the Economic Daily News report forecasted.
• To ensure stable supply over the next two years, TSMC’s strategy is to convert some of its 5nm equipment to support 3nm production. Industry sources indicate that TSMC is likely to up its production of 3nm wafers to between 120,000 and 180,000 a month.

Context:The total production value of the top ten semiconductor foundries in the first quarter reached $29.2 billion, a decrease of 4.3% compared to the previous quarter, according to market research firm TrendForce.

• In the first quarter, TSMC led with a revenue of $18.85 billion and a market share of 61.7%, followed by Samsung with $3.36 billion and an 11% market share. Shanghai-based chip foundry SMIC took third place with $1.75 billion in revenue and a 5.7% market share.

Apple is in the process of finding a way to bring Apple Intelligence, its system that integrates generative AI for iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, to “all of our customers,” the tech giant’s top software engineer Craig Federighi said in an interview with media outlet FastCompany. Though he did not directly mention China, Apple’s second-largest market, Federighi did note that “in some regions of the world, there are regulations that need to be worked through,” and that Apple has started the relevant procedures. Large models need to get approval from authorities before a public-facing launch in China, where US-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT is not officially available. Apple has announced it forged a partnership with ChatGPT to power some of its AI “Intelligence” features at the company’s developer conference on Tuesday. [FastCompany]

Lilium, a German aviation firm backed by Chinese tech giant Tencent, said on Monday it has established its regional headquarters in China’s southern city of Shenzhen as part of a collaboration agreement with the government of the city’s Bao’an district. Lilium will set up its local entity (力翎航空) in the Bao’an Low Altitude Economy Industry Public Service Center, becoming the first European manufacturer of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) to base a regional office in the district. The company hopes its flying vehicles will eventually meet local safety requirements and receive airworthiness certification from China, a prerequisite for the commercial operation of eVTOLs in the country, making it “an active and contributing industry player in the region’s low altitude economy.” The news comes as dozens of local governments in China have recently released their work plans to facilitate the development of eVTOLs, responding to Beijing’s call to bolster what it calls the “low-altitude economy,” as TechNode has previously reported. With Shenzhen-based Tencent being its largest shareholder with a roughly 22% stake, Lilium in April set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in the city with a registered capital of €1.9 million ($2 million), according to the Chinese corporate database Qichacha. [Lilium release, TechNode reporting]

Chinese electric vehicle maker Zeekr’s aggressive global expansion drive is putting it on track to achieve its annual delivery target of 230,000 units for this year, executives said on Tuesday at its first-quarter earnings call. The company is planning to expand its footprint from 25 to more than 50 global markets by the end of this year, said Andy An, chairman of Geely Auto Group and chief executive of Zeekr. This would include 6-8 mainstream European countries, as well as those in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Australia. The updated plan is an acceleration of the one revealed by An at this year’s EV100 forum in April for selling Zeekr EVs in six Western European countries and 38 markets on China’s south coast and in the Gulf region by year-end.

Financial chief Yuan Jing said the Geely affiliate still has a “very big ambition” for Europe but will spend more effort on other locations outside of China this year, adding that its parent company’s global manufacturing footprint would give it more flexibility than most competitors. The comments come as the European Commission is about to publish the results of a nine-month probe into Chinese EV subsidies. New York-listed Zeekr on Tuesday reported its first quarterly financial results as a public company. Revenue for the January-March quarter rose 71% year-on-year to RMB 14.74 billion ($2.04 billion), with a narrowed net loss of RMB 2.02 billion. Vehicle delivery more than doubled to 67,764 units for the first five months of this year. [Zeekr financial release]

On Thursday, global investment leaders gathered at BEYOND EXPO’s Global Investment Summit in Macao, offering a comprehensive exploration of pivotal themes, shaping the future of investment amid the current complex and evolving financial landscape.

Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly the star of this summit. Investors shared how the buzz around the promising technology is revolutionizing investment paradigms, and how geopolitical tensions are impacting the expansion of AI companies and global data governance.

David Beckham, Sands Global Ambassador, also joined the Summit to share his business insights. “I’ve always thought that the best businesses that we have are the authentic ones,” he said, adding that he would never get into something that he didn’t believe in.

Attract users with market-fit AI products

Creating a product that fits the market is the ultimate goal that any entrepreneur or company must achieve, and this also applies to companies focused on building a sustainable AI business.

When talking about the shift in investment strategies in the AI era, Harry Man from Matrix Partners China, and Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund both mentioned that while they acknowledge mergers and acquisitions as a viable exit strategy, they still aim to invest in companies with unicorn potential to achieve greater returns through IPOs.

“I guess all of us are early stage venture capitalists, right? We all like to shoot for the moon. We want to invest in the biggest idea that eventually goes on to an IPO. And that’s how we make money,” said Harry.

However, many AI application companies are currently being overvalued amid the hype, which was the consensus among guests at the Summit.

De-risking or global collaboration? 

There’s no doubt that geopolitical tensions are exacerbating the technology decoupling between China and the US markets. However, most startups remain focused on the local market, limiting the impact of these geopolitical issues.

The US is in the process of restricting China’s access to American companies’ AI cloud services from overseas and advanced chips. But according to Esther Wong, the founder and CIO of 3Capital, while China may lag behind the US in cutting-edge AI models and algorithms, it can leverage its market size for operational excellence.

Panelists agreed that AI startups aiming for the global market may need to choose between the Chinese and US markets in the future.

Despite tensions, global collaboration is still ongoing in areas like open-source AI models and data governance. “Regulation of data and data flow is beyond the control of any single entity. Tt requires global collaboration to implement proper data control and regulation,” Wong noted.

What to evaluate when investing in emerging markets?

Investing in emerging markets was also a hot topic on Thursday’s panels. Betting on these markets requires multifaceted considerations, as factors such as political stability, regulations, and investor protections are crucial risks to evaluate.

“So there are actually factors that are more at a political and regulatory level. And then there are also more local cultural practices,” said Akio Tanaka, a Partner at the global venture capital firm Headline.

Roderick Purwana, who serves as a Managing Partner at East Ventures, mentioned during the Summit that Indonesia is set to have a new president in October. “I think the government has been relatively supportive, I guess, of the tech ecosystem in Indonesia, making it easier to anticipate their plans and actions.”

Meanwhile, investment organizations are increasingly focusing on ESG issues. However, emerging markets often lack strict environmental regulations. William Mimassi Pedroso, a Partner at Latin America’s Monashees, emphasized that gender diversity and data protection, including personal data protection, are important and substantial elements, because if these are not addressed, investors will raise questions later in the growth phase.

Overall, based on investors’ experiences and views, a nuanced approach balancing risks and opportunities is needed for investing successfully in emerging markets.

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan on Tuesday announced a plan to buy back shares valued up to $2 billion, with the board saying it believes that the company’s existing financial resources are “sufficient” to support share repurchases while “maintaining a strong financial position.” The move comes just days after the Beijing-based company reported solid first-quarter earnings, with revenue rising 25% from a year earlier and profit recorded around 60% higher than last year, landing at RMB 5.4 billion. Meituan’s shares have grown more than 80% from a January low of around HK$60, and the firm has already spent about $995 million on stock buybacks this year. [Meituan, in Chinese]

Li Auto is on track to offer its new level 3 automated driving system within the next 12 months, which would enable hands-free, eyes-off driving under certain conditions, as it transitions towards “end-to-end neural network” architecture, according to chief executive Li Xiang.

Why it matters: The comments mark an increase in competition between Tesla and Chinese automakers over the adoption of autonomous driving. The US automaker is reportedly looking to roll out the latest version of its “Full Self-driving-Driving” software in China, its second-largest market.

• The news also comes as Li Auto started calling back some former staff late last month having previously dismissed roughly 30% of its 1,100-person Autonomous Driving Group in a setback to the company’s launch of its first battery electric model, the Mega. 
• Most employees rehired by the electric vehicle maker work on the NOA (Navigation on ADAS — advanced driver assistance system) function for urban driving scenarios. Vice President Lang Xianpeng on June 7 promised surviving employees from his team that the layoff was now over, sources familiar with the matter told the 21st Century Business Herald (in Chinese).

READ MORE: China opens door wider to Tesla as local giants disrupt the EV sector with AI-defined vehicles

Details: Li Auto will roll out a new version of its NOA software in the third quarter of 2024. This version still requires the driver to be in full control but will not rely on a high-definition map. The company announced that it will launch its city NOA function to users in 100 major Chinese cities in November.

• This will be followed by a wide release of its Level 3 autonomous driving system later this year, or in early 2025, Li told the audience at the China Auto Chongqing Summit on June 8, according to short videos posted on the social media platform WeChat.
• Li said the company has been working on an end-to-end artificial intelligence approach since late 2023. The approach is using video clips from real driving situations as well as machine learning algorithms to handle the vehicles’ control. It is also exploring Visual-Language Models (VLMs), which could better learn patterns and correlate between visual data and natural language than existing offerings.
• Li Auto’s L3 conditional autonomous system will use both approaches, Li said, allowing the human driver not to monitor the vehicle constantly but to be ready to take control, according to the definitions set by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). It could further evolve to a level 4 highly autonomous driving system over the next three years, Li added, without elaborating further.

Context: Automakers in China, including Li Auto, have either been applying for mapping licenses or working with map services in order to collect large amounts of highly detailed geographical data, which helps autonomous vehicles (AVs) make better decisions when performing driving tasks. However, many of them, such as Huawei and Xpeng Motors, are now looking for alternatives due to cost and complexity reasons.

• It is unknown whether Li Auto will take legal responsibility for its upcoming level 3 technology. Last year, Mercedes-Benz became the first automaker allowed to sell cars with its L3 Drive Pilot system in California and Nevada, Reuters reported. China is pushing for similar regulatory initiatives with assistance from automakers including BYD, SAIC, and NIO.
• Li Auto has been working on layoffs since May to cut 18% of the company’s workforce, which stood at roughly 5,600 as of last year, while that percentage for the Autonomous Driving Group was more than 30%, according to the 21st Century report. President Ma Donghui told investors in November the company planned to have 2,000 employees for AVs by the end of 2024. 

READ MORE: Li Auto accelerates assisted driving tech competition amid launch of first battery EV

The stock price of Chinese livestreaming e-commerce company East Buy dropped 9% and closed at HKD 13.9 on Tuesday, fueled by its star livestreamer Dong Yuhui saying that he was very “resistant” to being a salesperson and that he doesn’t enjoy promoting goods for sales. The New Oriental subsidy’s Hong Kong-listed shares have fallen 15.5% in the past five days, marking a new blow after famous private tutor Michael Yu, also the founder of the two companies, said publicly that East Buy’s livestream sector is doing “a messy job” right now. The former tutoring firm has found success via its e-commerce transition since mid-2022 as Dong, a former English-language tutor who pitches products bilingually, helped East Buy attract a flood of viewers. Yet the company’s latest earnings results showed its net profit had more than halved in the six months ending November 2023, making the achievement of stable profits a key challenge for East Buy. [Yicai, in Chinese]

On June 10, Chinese developer Game Science started the pre-sale of its upcoming action role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong, which sold out within seconds. Currently, reservations on the e-commerce platform JD have exceeded one million. The PC Deluxe and Collector’s Editions of Black Myth: Wukong are limited to 20,000 and 10,000 units, respectively, with prices of RMB 820 ($113) and RMB 1,998 ($276). Notably, the Deluxe Edition includes the Tightening Spell, a magical incantation decoration worn as a headband by the protagonist of the classical 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. The release date for Black Myth: Wukong is set for August 20, with the digital standard edition priced at RMB 268 ($37). [IThome, in Chinese]

On June 10, at WWDC 2024 (the Worldwide Developers Conference), Apple CEO Tim Cook announced plans for the Apple Vision Pro to be launched in markets outside the US, with pre-orders in China beginning on June 14 and official sales starting on June 28. The Apple Vision Pro headset is finally arriving in mainland China after being on the market for four months. Japan and Singapore will also start sales on the same day. The 256GB version of the Apple Vision Pro is priced at RMB 29,999 ($4,135), the 512GB version at RMB 31,499 ($4,342), and the 1TB version at RMB 32,999 ($4,549). Optical inserts, which are needed based on the user’s vision, must be purchased separately, starting at RMB 799 ($110). [Jiemian, in Chinese]

Chinese domestic travelers spent RMB 40.35 billion ($5.56 billion) during the Dragon Boat festival, three days in which 110 million trips were made, data from Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed. Per capita tourism expenditure rose 4.2% compared to the same period last year, though it lagged the 2019 figure. Consumer confidence remains damp on the second Dragon Boat Festival after China lifted its Covid-19 restrictions. The traditional June Chinese holiday sees people celebrate by eating sticky rice dumplings and racing dragon boats. Reports from mainstream local travel service providers showed bookings from smaller and county-level cities reached a fervor surpassing the popularity of travel experienced in China’s megacities. [Xinhua, in Chinese]

BYD on Thursday revealed plans to launch an electric shooting brake in July or August that will compete against luxurious offerings from German majors such as the BMW 5-series, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, and Audi’s A8 saloon. The Denza Z9 GT will feature an innovative electric drive system using three separate motors, among other new technologies, BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu told investors during the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Shenzhen, as reported by Shanghai Securities News. China’s biggest electric vehicle maker first showcased the Panamera-like model at the recent Beijing Auto Show in April, with the vehicle boasting a combined output of nearly 1,000 horsepower and acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) within three seconds. BYD currently has three Denza models on sale and delivered 47,388 vehicles under the mainstream luxury brand for the first five months of this year, representing a 3.7% growth from last year and of which most were its multi-purpose van the D9. The automaker plans to launch three new models in the lineup in the second half of this year with an annual delivery target of 200,000 units, Zhao Changjiang, general manager of the Denza unit, told Chinese reporters in February. [Shanghai Securities News, in Chinese, TechNode reporting]

On Thursday, World of Warcraft announced on Chinese social media platform Weibo that a deletion-based technical test for the Chinese server will begin on June 11, in preparation for the upcoming server launch of the expansion set Wrath of the Lich King. The team also promised players an official China launch later in June.

Why it matters: June 6 marked 500 days since Blizzard’s servers went offline in China and 57 days since NetEase Games announced that a deal had been done to secure their return. Chinese gamers are eagerly following the latest updates on the return of Blizzard games to the mainland China market.

Details: The technical test for World of Warcraft’s domestic servers will last for seven days, with the final launch of the official servers still requiring some time, according to the announcement.

• To celebrate this moment, World of Warcraft’s China team has prepared two rewards for gamers participating in the test: a unique commemorative online pet and an exclusive achievement badge for the Chinese servers.
• On Weibo, some veteran players questioned the need for testing a hit game that has been around for over a decade, while others got emotional at the sight of the login interface of World of Warcraft. Furthermore, many players are urging the prompt return of other popular Blizzard games such as the digital collectible card game Hearthstone and the multiplayer first-person shooter title Overwatch.
• The pressure on servers for relaunching World of Warcraft might surpass that of new game launches, the team said in the announcement. Many players prefer returning to their original servers rather than joining new ones based on server loads. This server preference could result in login pressures on certain servers far surpassing the norm, potentially exceeding the server pressures during the initial launch of a new game, the team explained.
• Testing is also needed for new technology and server capacity expansion, according to the NetEase and Blizzard teams. “Over the past year, the server backend has undergone multiple updates, with new technologies planned for implementation in the future. These upgrades require further debugging in high-pressure environments to ensure smooth operation in the new environment,” the announcement added.

Context: On April 10, China’s NetEase and its US games partner Microsoft announced that they aimed to bring popular Blizzard titles back to China after the former’s falling out with the developer that ended an almost 15-year partnership. The two companies are now working to bring online games from Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard which Microsoft bought last year, back to China, starting this summer. 

• NetEase was the publisher of Blizzard games in China from 2008 to 2023.

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan has reported better-than-expected earnings for the first three months of this year, posting a 25% revenue increase to RMB 73.3 billion ($10.1 billion). Its core local business generated RMB 54.6 billion fueled by strong takeaway orders. Net profit for the quarter rose to RMB 5.4 billion compared to RMB 3.4 billion a year prior, partly as the company’s new businesses narrowed losses by nearly half versus the same period last year. CEO Wang Xing attributed the first quarter’s earnings results to the firm’s reorganization that began early this year, which pushed for closer operating connections between food delivery and in-store services, a move that he said had increased “the platform’s overall efficiency.” On the related earnings call, Wang also told investors that Meituan is taking steps to research the possibility of entry into European and Southeast Asian markets, while continuing to evaluate the Middle East’s market potential in terms of food delivery. [Meituan]

NIO said on Thursday it aims to deliver between 54,000 and 56,000 electric vehicles for the April-June quarter, which could represent a year-on-year growth of between 129.6% and 138.1%, after reporting a wider first-quarter net loss and a reduced revenue of RMB 9.9 billion. This means June deliveries could reach roughly between 18,000 and 20,000 units as the Chinese EV maker handed over more than 36,000 cars to customers in the past two months, partly thanks to a significant price reduction on its battery leasing program in March. The company attributed the 7.2% year-on-year revenue decline and the RMB 4.9 billion ($677 million) net loss to seasonal factors such as the eight-day Lunar New Year holidays in February as well as lower average selling prices due to promotions and discounts. NIO will begin delivering the first model under its third brand, codenamed Firefly, in the first half of next year, covering a price range of between RMB 100,000 and RMB 200,000, William Li, founder, chairman, and chief executive, told investors during an earnings call. [NIO financial report]

China’s major southern city of Guangzhou unveiled its action plan on May 31 to boost the development of the so-called “low-altitude economy,” vowing to become China’s first city to commercialize aircraft for passenger transport in low-altitude airspace over the next three years, and it is not alone. Nearly 30 Chinese major city and provincial governments have brought similar initiatives into their work plans for this year as of writing, according to public records.

Chinese regional authorities are responding to Beijing’s call to establish a number of strategic emerging industries as some traditional economic pillars of the country are in recession. Beijing also wants to replicate its success story of electric vehicles from land to sky, as part of its ambition to become a global leader in technological innovations. Among various aircraft from drones to traditional helicopters, flying cars are likely to be a bright spot, and southern China could offer what it takes for that to happen, industry experts said.

What is a low-altitude economy?

Although there is no official definition of what constitutes a “low-altitude economy,” it usually refers to various businesses centered around civil-manned and unmanned aerial vehicles below 3,000 meters in altitude, including manufacturing, flight operations, and services for agriculture, logistics, and tourism.

The idea was first mooted by China’s State Council with an outline for establishing “a national comprehensive transportation network” back in February 2021 and was later listed as one of the strategic emerging industries at the central economic work conference in December.

Compared with China’s traditional general aviation sector, which includes military and commercial flights, a low-altitude economy is characterized by the elements of vertical take-off and landing, green energies, and intelligent piloting, said Burt Guo, CEO of Aerofugia Technology, a subsidiary of Geely.

“EVs in the air”

Electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL), also known as flying cars, are considered the most promising application, garnering particular attention from investors and entrepreneurs, due to their potential for both passenger and cargo delivery at a presumably lower cost than helicopters. That is not the only reason, though. China is looking to leverage the capabilities that already exist within its EV industry, from supply chain to charging infrastructure, bringing the global competition for emerging technologies from the ground into the air.

“So is it almost like EVs in the air?” “Yes, you get the point,” Guo said when asked by Zheng Junfeng, an anchor of Chinese state television news services CGTN, at the recent BEYOND EXPO 2024 tech event last month in Macao. Guo added that eVTOL could share around 70%-80% of the materials and components with EVs, with the rest being sourced from the suppliers for traditional aircraft, while there is always room for collaboration with its parent company in fields such as manufacturing and charging.

“It’s kind of an ecosystem for new energy transportation,” Guo said. Geely led a €50 million ($55 million) funding round into Volocopter in 2019 and the German air taxi startup set up a joint venture with Aerofugia two years later.

It also represents a more cost-effective solution for urban transportation compared with subways and bypasses. Each parking garage and building rooftop in the city could be “ideal” for flying vehicles to park and refuel, according to Jian Dan, executive vice general manager of Civil Aviation Investment Fund, led by the parent of Beijing International Airport Co Ltd (our translation). “It is totally different from helicopters,” Guo echoed, saying the landing space would be “considerably smaller” than what a traditional helicopter uses.

Although consulting firm McKinsey in 2020 estimated it would cost $200,000-$400,000 to build a takeoff and landing area along with two spots for parking or vehicle maintenance, Jian believed the smallest location of such kind could be as cheap as “several thousand RMB.” Guo said a flying car would cost 30% of a helicopter, even as the technology is still in the early stages, and in the end, the cost of a trip by eVTOL could plunge to roughly two to three times that of a taxi.

Still a distant future

Although the industry is growing at a faster pace, it could take at least three to five years before flying vehicles get commercialized, mainly because most players are still navigating technological challenges and regulatory hurdles, experts said. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) expects 5% carbon emission reductions globally by 2030 through the use of sustainable aviation fuels, innovative new propulsion technologies, and other efficiency improvements.

Electric planes are definitely the future of aviation, but the technology is not ready yet, and the battery is one of the key issues, Zhou Lisha, CEO of Chinese battery startup Montavista, told the audience at the BEYOND EXPO 2024. “Companies have to prove every inch of their aircraft is safe, and one of the tests is to make sure the batteries won’t catch fire, because you can’t stop or pull to the side of the road when something goes wrong,” said Zhou.

For that reason, governments are implementing highly stringent rules and safety standards for electric and autonomous aircraft. China has set a goal for businesses to mass produce lithium-ion batteries that meet aviation safety standards with an energy density of 400 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), as part of a development plan through 2035 released by four top government bodies late last year. For comparison, CATL’s latest Qilin battery reportedly has an energy density of 255 Wh/kg.

Operating air taxis in low-altitude urban airspace may also encounter many conflicts with high-rise buildings within a volatile electromagnetic environment. There has to be new telecommunication infrastructure facilities and a new air traffic control system to support the operation of those unmanned aircraft, according to Jian. “It is definitely not feasible for those machines to communicate with air traffic control via radio,” Jian said at this year’s BEYOND EXPO.

Guangdong: a major staging ground

The Chinese government is jumping in to offer some help. Guangzhou said it will keep “close connections” with eVTOL makers and provide “necessary assistance” to them, when it comes to issues related to research and development, and airworthiness certification, among others. The capital city of southern Guangdong province also plans to build at least five eVTOL airport terminals, known as vertiports, as well as 100 takeoff and landing spots by 2027.

Headquartered in Guangzhou, US-listed Ehang said in October it received an airworthiness “type certificate” from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, CNBC reported, while Xpeng AeroHT, an affiliate of local EV maker Xpeng Motors, followed suit by submitting its application in March. AutoFlight, another Shanghai-based startup, reportedly hit a milestone early this year when its five-seater Prosperity aircraft completed a low-altitude flight between the southern cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai in the Guangdong province.

Guo expects the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) to be the first region in the country where its flying vehicles will be available. “If you take a taxi from here (Macao) to Shenzhen it takes one to two hours. That will be only around 15 minutes if you use a flying vehicle,” Guo said.

READ MORE: Beyond Expo | Self-flying cars are closer to being realized than self-driving cars: Geely executive

Kuaishou on Thursday introduced a text-to-video model, “Kling,” which the short video platform operator says can generate “up to two minutes of video with 1080p high-definition.” In a demo the company released, the Sora-like model shows the ability to create a video featuring a cat driving a car through a busy downtown street based on simple text prompts, with Kuaishou saying Kling aims to “make imagination alive.” The Douyin rival also highlights Kling’s ability to produce videos following realistic motions and making people dance from full-body photos. The Kling video model is “self-developed” by Kuaishou’s LLM team and uses Sora-similar technology, according to its official website. It is available for an invitation test on the Kuaiying app, a video shooting and editing app of Kuaishou. [Kling, in Chinese]

Chinese artificial intelligence company Zhipu AI on Wednesday announced its second price cut in a month, slashing the price tag of its “most popular model” by more than half. The company said it would now offer its GLM-4 model at a charge of RMB 0.10 ($0.014) per 1,000 tokens, but CEO Zhang Peng insisted the move was not part of “a simple price war.”

Why it matters: Offering ever lower prices to capture market share characterizes China’s AI sector at the moment, where over 200 large language models have been released since October 2023.

Details: Tokens are sequences of data that large language models use to process text. GLM-4-0520, the most advanced model built by Zhipu AI, has a context window of 128,000 tokens with RMB 1 for every 10,000 input tokens. The price of this advanced model was cut in May.

Generally, 1,000 tokens are equivalent to around 750 English words or 500 Chinese characters.

• The deep discounts are a result of “iterations of the models’ core technologies,” Zhang said at a Zhipu AI open day on Wednesday. In an interview on the same day, Zhang was quoted by local media outlet TMTPost as saying, “not only can we join [the price war], but we can do it without losing money.”
• The company, which is backed by leading Chinese academy Tsinghua University, has disclosed that it currently serves 300,000 enterprise-level customers, and on average its model family processing exceeds 40 billion tokens daily.
• On the consumer side, the firm has a GenAI app called Zhipu Qingyan that is powered by the company’s foundation model ChatGLM, with the app already having amassed 300,000 AI agents that can perform tasks such as creating mind maps and making schedules since its launch last August, the company said.

Context: Zhipu AI has received at least nine rounds of financial injections from Chinese state-backed funds, major tech companies, and well-known venture capital firms since it was founded in 2019. Those supporters include Alibaba, Tencent, Sequoia, and Hillhouse.

• The Beijing-based company also acts as an investor and has invested in seed and angel rounds in rival ModelBest, a firm similar to Zhipu AI that was founded by Tsinghua University graduates. 

China’s National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) on Wednesday announced the approval of the third batch this year of imported game licenses. This batch includes 11 mobile games, one PC-end game, and three console games (for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch). Notably, Black Desert, Daemon X Machina, and Valorant, three titles acquired by Tencent Games, have been approved. In 2020, the tactical first-person shooter game Valorant was launched by US developer Riot Games, the same company behind popular title League of Legends. Tencent Games, as a major shareholder of Riot Games, intends to release the mobile version of Valorant soon, though the specific date has not yet been confirmed. [NPPA, in Chinese]

On Wednesday, China’s leading drone maker DJI announced it has conducted a high-altitude transportation test with drones on the southern slope of Mount Everest, marking the first time that a civilian drone has completed a round-trip on a route at altitudes between 5,300 meters and 6,000 meters. From April 25 to May 1, DJI’s test team conducted a week-long test of the FlyCart 30 drone’s high-altitude flight and transport capabilities at and above the Everest Base Camp on the southern slope of the mountain, located at an altitude of 5,364 meters, according to the company. The test team claimed a new civilian drone flight record by reaching an altitude of 6,191.80 meters and achieved a round-trip at an altitude of 6,000 meters with a payload of 15 kilograms. The drone can transport oxygen cylinders up the mountain and bring back garbage on its return trip, DJI said. [DJI, in Chinese]

FinDreams Battery, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese automaker BYD, has won a contract to supply affordable lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells to Tesla for the Elon Musk-led auto firm to make its Megapack energy-storage batteries, Chinese media outlet LatePost reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter. BYD is set to supply as much as eight gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery cells annually from early 2025, if Tesla’s new Shanghai plant reaches full capacity, which could bring the Chinese manufacturer revenue of RMB 3.5 billion ($483 million) based on average industry prices. The move could give Tesla more bargaining power and avoid its reliance on CATL, which is currently the exclusive supplier of storage batteries for the US automaker in China, sources said. Last month, Tesla began construction of its first overseas Megafactory facility, scheduled for operation in Shanghai in the first quarter of 2025. It plans to initially make 10,000 Megapack units a year, equal to around 40 gigawatt hours of energy storage, Chinese state media outlet Xinhua first reported on April 9, 2023. [LatePost, in Chinese]

TikTok eyes a shopping sales goal between $12 billion and $13 billion for the second half this year in the US, according to a 36Kr report on Tuesday. The high target was set after the short video platform fell far below expectations in the first five months.

The report quoted key data from Tabcut, a Chinese firm that tracks TikTok Shop’s performance, indicating that TikTok generated less than $2 billion in the US shopping business from January to May 2024.

Why it matters: The potential ban TikTok faces in America seems to have already hurt its growing e-commerce business in its largest user base country.

Details: TikTok, the international version of Douyin, was reportedly hoping to expand its US e-commerce business tenfold to as much as $17.5 billion this year, according to a January report from Bloomberg. TikTok has so far only accomplished 11.4% of its GMV goal in the past 5 months, the 36Kr report said.

• TikTok hosted a small closed-door meeting in Shenzhen in mid-May, 36Kr added, where it invited its key domestic sellers to convey a message that the platform “remains optimistic about its prospects in the US market despite facing a political headwind.” The company also assured attendees that TikTok has comprehensive contingency plans in place even in the “worst-case scenario.”
• As the latest effort to counter the US government’s request to divest or ban the app, TikTok parent ByteDance has appointed John Rogovin, a former lawyer of Warner Bros, as its global general counsel. The company sued the US government in May with the aim of blocking a law requiring it to sell its US operation or face a total ban. In the appointment announcement, TikTok said Rogovin will report to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo, and indirectly to TikTok chief Shou Chew.

Context: TikTok Shop officially entered the US market in September 2023, although little official data has been given to the outside world regarding its merchants and sales. The platform has grown to 170 million users in the American market, according to figures released in January,  up from 150 million last year.

China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) has been increasing efforts to adopt domestic semiconductor manufacturing equipment, as China strives to end its dependence on US chip-making technology, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. While SMIC’s technology lags behind industry leaders such as TSMC and Samsung, at its new Jingcheng facility near Beijing, the firm is aggressively integrating domestic chip production equipment and reducing its reliance on American tools, according to a source. The push for local chip production aims to shield Beijing from US sanctions, with China increasing investment in research and development in related areas. A key example of a breakthrough in this direction is the Huawei Mate 60 smartphone launched last August, which is equipped with the Chinese tech giant’s self-developed Kirin 9000S processor, the report mentioned. [The Wall Street Journal]

Nine major Chinese automakers, including BYD, SAIC, and NIO, have been allowed to proceed with a pilot program to test their production vehicles with medium-to-high levels of automation on public roads, according to a document jointly published by four central government departments on Tuesday. The initiative, launched in November by China’s top industry, public security, transport, and housing authorities, is aimed at facilitating the deployment of intelligent and connected vehicles and sustaining the drafting of subsequent rules, regulations, and national standards for access to such vehicles.

The nine companies are mostly state-owned manufacturers with some private EV makers also included, namely BAIC, BYD, Changan, FAW, GAC, NIO, SAIC, SAIC’s truck subsidiary Hongyan, as well as electric bus maker Yutong. They are now required to detail their proposed testing plans and safety evaluation methodology for autonomous vehicles as part of an application process for temporary permits to commercially operate their robocars with L3 and L4 self-driving functionality on select Chinese public roads. Some of the early movers with the technology, including Tesla, Xpeng Motors, and Huawei, did not join the program. [MIIT announcement, in Chinese, TechNode reporting]

Apple is in negotiations with leading mobile service provider China Mobile to launch its Apple TV+ streaming service in China, according to an exclusive report by US media outlet The Information. Insiders say Apple has substantial reasons to reach an agreement, which would extend Apple TV+ coverage to over 200 million China Mobile users. If negotiations succeed, Apple TV+ will be the only US streaming service available in China. Additionally, Apple has reached an agreement with Tencent to offer several popular applications in the Chinese market on Vision Pro, the report added, after Tim Cook confirmed that Vision Pro will be launched in China later this year. [The Information]

Two authors behind a Stanford University AI project have apologized to the Chinese team behind open-source AI model MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5 after social media users in China outed the former for having plagiarized the latter model, which was developed by Tsinghua University and ModelBest Inc. The incident sparked widespread discussion on the Chinese internet.

Two authors of the Stanford Llama3-V team, Siddharth Sharma and Aksh Garg, today apologized to the MiniCPM team on social media site X for their academic misconduct, announcing they would withdraw the Llama3-V model from use.

Why it matters: Members of the Stanford team acknowledged they had plagiarized Tsinghua University and ModelBest Inc’s work. 

Details: “We sincerely apologize to the authors of MiniCPM for our failure to verify the originality of Llama3-V,” Aksh and Siddharth wrote on X today. “Mustafa, who wrote the code, described exciting extensions that we promoted without knowing about the prior work by OpenBMB (founded by Tsinghua University and ModelBest Inc). We take full responsibility for this oversight. We’ve removed all references to Llama3-V in respect to the original authors.” 

• On May 29, a Stanford AI team claimed online that they could train a multi-modal large model surpassing GPT-4V for only $500, according to local media outlet Quantum Bit. Subsequently, social media users discovered that the team’s Llama3-V model used a model structure and code highly similar to ModelBest’s MiniCPM-Llama3-V2.5, with partial variable name modifications. Llama3-V also features the same tokenizer as MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5, including the latter’s newly defined special symbols.
• On June 2, Chinese firm ModelBest Inc confirmed that the Stanford large model project Llama3-V, similar to MiniCPM, is able to identify Qinghua Jian ancient Chinese characters from China’s Warring States Period. Remarkably, the matches also shared identical mistakes. This character data, obtained by the research team through months of scanning and manual annotation of each Qinghua Jian character, had not been publicly disclosed, confirming the act of plagiarism.
• “While it’s good to be recognized by international teams, we believe in building a community that’s open, cooperative, and trustworthy,” ModelBest Inc CEO Li Dahai stated. “We want our team’s work to be noticed and respected, but not in this manner.”
• ModelBest Inc’s chief scientist, Liu Zhiyuan, who is also a tenured associate professor at Tsinghua University, told an Yicai reporter that the rapid development of artificial intelligence relies on the global sharing of algorithms, data, and models. “Two out of the three members of this Llama3-V team are merely undergraduate students at Stanford University, and they have a long journey ahead. If they can acknowledge their mistakes and make amends, it would be a great virtue,” he said.
• Christopher David Manning, the director of the Stanford AI Laboratory, also issued a statement condemning the act of plagiarism and praising the Chinese open-source model MiniCPM.

Context: Founded in August 2022, ModelBest Inc secured a new round of financing worth hundreds of millions of RMB in April. Huawei’s Hubble Technology Venture Capital led the investment, with participation from Chunhua Capital, Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, and Chinese Quora-like platform Zhihu. In February, ModelBest Inc launched the open-source model MiniCPM.

Major Chinese e-commerce player JD has seen a flurry of consumers from lower-tier cities buy goods on its “buy 9.9, enjoy free shipping” channel, which attracted more than 100 times the number of shoppers year-on-year within the first hour of the 618 shopping festival, with over 75% of users from third tier and lower cities. The company posted the initial results on its official WeChat account, adding that big brands including Apple and Xiaomi topped RMB 100 million ($13.8 million) in transaction value “soon” after the beginning of the mid-year shopping festival. Rival Alibaba meanwhile said about 185 brands, also including Apple and Xiaomi, exceeded RMB 100 million in total merchandise volume on Tmall as of 9 p.m. on May 31. This year, Chinese online retailers have set different timelines for the ongoing shopping bonanza while tending to provide ambiguous data, which has made it harder to compare performance year-to-year. [JD; Jiemian, in Chinese]

Prosperity7, the capital fund of Saudi Aramco, has invested in China’s GenAI startup Zhipu AI in the latest $400 million fundraising round, according to Bloomberg quoting anonymous sources. The investment valued the Tsinghua University AI spin-off at about $3 billion. Zhipu AI’s backers include Chinese tech titans Alibaba and Tencent as well as food delivery giant Meituan. Fresh injections from the Saudi fund are flagged as the first well-known capital venture outside China to bet on the country’s AI industry to build an OpenAI alternative. A previous test conducted by Tsinghua University showed Baidu’s ERNIE Bot 4.0 and Zhipu AI’s GLM-4 as top China’s large language models in terms of overall capabilities. [Bloomberg]

Li Auto is going to combine its sales and delivery divisions into a new group in the company’s latest effort to revamp its operations and rev up sales, after reporting lower-than-expected financial results for the first quarter of 2024. The move is expected to bring consistency and spread resources across the two teams, people with knowledge of the matter told Chinese media outlet Meiren Auto on Monday. Performance evaluations had previously been measured by orders and deliveries respectively, which had the potential to lead to conflict when customers put down early orders but wanted their cars delivered the following month, the report said. The news comes after the Chinese electric vehicle maker announced on April 3 a reorganization to sharpen its focus on product development and a failed launch of its first all-electric model, the Mega, in March. The company on May 21 reported a 37% decline in first quarter profit, saying it had delayed plans to launch more battery-powered electric vehicle models to next year. [Meiren Auto, in Chinese]

Chinese phone maker Honor announced today that it will release its first small foldable phone, the Magic V Flip, on June 13. Pre-orders are now open in three color options: black, pink, and white. The new foldable phone features 12GB of RAM and comes with three storage choices – 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB – according to the company. Honor has said it is procuring the largest external screen on the market for this new model, with this aspect expected to be a key selling point for the Magic V Flip, according to local media outlet IThome. China’s foldable phone shipments reached 1.86 million units in the first quarter of 2024, representing an 83% increase year-on-year, as reported by market intelligence firm IDC in April. In the first quarter, Huawei maintained its leading position with a share of 44.1% in the domestic foldable market, while Honor ranked second with a share of 26.7%. [IThome, in Chinese]

Major Chinese automakers reported higher electric vehicle sales for May than in April, boosted by new government subsidies and the continued use of discounts to lure cost-conscious shoppers. Notably, NIO and Geely’s Zeekr were among the top-performing companies in the market, reporting their best-ever monthly deliveries.

Why it matters: The latest sales figures marked a swift turnaround for Chinese auto majors as they have been mostly grappling with weak consumer sentiment and intensifying competition in recent months.

• Demand was mainly boosted by China’s new subsidies encouraging consumers to trade in their old, less eco-friendly vehicles for new more energy-efficient ones. Meanwhile, several regional trade events have garnered more consumer attention than usual and boosted the appetite for new models, such as the recent Beijing Auto Show, wrote the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) on May 29.

Details: Both NIO and Zeekr witnessed triple-digit growth year-on-year in May, with monthly deliveries reaching a record high.

• NIO said on June 1 that it surpassed the 20,000 vehicle sales limit last month for the second time since its inception, with its delivery numbers up 31.5% from April. The growth was driven by additional cash rebates totaling RMB 1 billion ($138 million), offered by the company in the name of car trade-ins since April 1, as well as a more than 25% price cut on its battery leasing program in March.
• Zeekr’s May deliveries reached 18,616, up 16% in a month, thanks to strong demand for its redesigned 001 shooting brake, of which sales surpassed 10,000 units for two months since delivery began on March 1. The Geely affiliate on May 10 became the fourth Chinese EV maker to go public in the US. Sales at its parent company also picked up momentum to 58,673 units over the month.
• Meanwhile, Li Auto saw its best-ever monthly sales this year in May, buoyed by a recent price reduction of up to RMB 30,000 on its existing vehicle lineup and the strong demand for the L6, which went on sale in mid-April. The company said the L6 accounted for more than 15,000 units out of its total deliveries in May and that it expected the number to surpass 20,000 units in June.
• Sales of Huawei-backed EVs took a slight hit in May while the Chinese tech giant was busy launching the redesigned versions of its existing Aito cars with partner Seres. Huawei’s Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA), which currently consists of Aito and Luxeed series models, reported combined deliveries of 30,578 units last month, up 3.2% from April, with no breakdown.
• State-owned manufacturers Chery and GAC’s Aion also reported strong May sales, as both companies introduced big discounts in a move to respond to Beijing’s call to boost consumption. Chery on May 9 began selling the Sterra ET crossover at a competitive starting price of RMB 189,800.
• Xiaomi reported a 22.3% improvement in deliveries from April and aims to deliver more than 10,000 units starting in June.

Context: Retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles, which include all-electrics and plug-in hybrids, increased 27% year-on-year and 2% month-on-month to roughly 574,000 units during May 1-26 in China, when passenger car sales fell slightly to 1.2 million units, the CPCA figures showed.

• BYD, by far the dominant player in the market, on May 4 began offering subsidies of up to RMB 8,000 to consumers trading in their old cars. The auto giant on May 28 rolled out two new models with a driving range of 2,100 kilometers (1,305 miles), enabled by its latest plug-in hybrid technology.

Chinese book publisher Motie Group has warned it has halted the shipping of all books to online retailer JD, as a dispute between the two companies over low-priced promotional books during the mid-year 618 shopping festival became increasingly heated. Shen Haobo, founder of Motie, issued a lengthy public post on his WeChat account urging JD to remove all Motie-published books and return them to the company. According to local media outlet Yicai, the source of the dispute is a model that allows JD to sell books at any price it wants, with the publisher effectively unable to control the price of its goods on the platform. E-commerce platforms’ relationship with merchants has deteriorated amid the escalation of the former’s ongoing low-price strategy. Yicai quoted one of JD’s sales and procurement staff who was responsible for the book category as saying that the platform only wants consumers to buy good books cheaply. Shen retorted by labeling the platform’s behavior as “hooliganism.” [Yicai, in Chinese]

Amazon has announced that its Kindle China eBookstore will cease its cloud download service on June 30, 2024. Undownloaded eBooks will no longer be accessible and related customer support will be discontinued. Amazon recommends users download purchased eBooks to their Kindle devices and apps (including mobile and desktop versions), and remain logged into their Amazon accounts for continued access. In 2022, Kindle announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market and stopped operating the Kindle China eBookstore on June 30, 2023. Amazon has provided refund services to users, maintaining them until June 30, 2024. Additionally, Chinese users still have the option to use Kindle e-readers through third-party reading apps such as Tencent’s WeChat Read. [MyDrivers, in Chinese]

Shein plans to file for a London IPO in the coming days as its stalled US listing shows no signs of making progress, according to a report from Sky News on June 2. The report said the listing is expected to value the online fashion giant at around £50 billion, less than the $66 billion valuation the business was given during its last funding round early last year. Filing a prospectus with UK regulators does not guarantee a successful listing for Shein, according to Sky News, and a previous report revealed that the China-founded fashion retailer would still prefer to go public in the US, however, uncertainty around its proposed US listing has forced the company to consider alternatives. [Sky News]

Tencent on Thursday launched an AI assistant app called Yuanbao, signaling the Chinese tech giant’s belated entry into the highly competitive artificial intelligence assistant field with an independent entry based on the company’s Hunyuan foundation model.

Yuanbao integrates artificial intelligence-based search, summaries, and writing competencies, and can be used to analyze documents, and basically engage with people based on prompts.

Why it matters: The opening of the independent app shows that Tencent has finally chosen to face competition head-on, several months after AI offerings from its rivals. Baidu’s ERNIE Bot has already amassed 200 million users, while ByteDance’s Doubao currently boasts over 26 million monthly active users.

Details: Tencent’s Yuanbao distinguishes itself from Baidu, Alibaba, and ByteDance’s products by offering direct access to content from the WeChat ecosystem, the company’s super app with nearly 1.4 billion monthly active users, which the firm says will give it superiority in terms of content timeliness and richness.

• WeChat, the all-in-one app, features a fan page functionality similar to Facebook’s, known as Official Accounts, where individual creators or enterprises can publish articles or information to subscribed users. The content cannot be directly accessed through mainstream search engines such as Baidu.
• Since its launch in September 2023, the parameter scale of Tencent’s Hunyuan large model has been upgraded from hundreds of billions to trillions, according to Tencent, and the pre-training corpus has increased to 70 trillion tokens.
• Based on the published guidelines of the Yuanbao app, the consumer-oriented assistant currently offers multiple AI agents, similar to GPTs, which can be selected for various functions, including English-speaking practice, daily life translation, and avatar generation.

Context: Last week, Tencent announced that it had made the lite version of its Hunyuan model free to access, while the price of its more powerful version has been reduced by 50% to 87.5%, as the firm joined a fresh price war among major Chinese tech companies.

• Tencent’s announcement comes just hours after iFlytek said its SparkLite API would be permanently free. In an interview with TechNode at the BEYOND Expo 2024, the firm’s vice president Wang Wei mentioned that the decision was made because “iFlytek should have a sense of social responsibility as a major company by making [AI] technology available for broader applications.”

In the first quarter, global shipments of wearable wristband devices totaled 41.2 million units, with Apple, Xiaomi, and Huawei ranking as the top three brands, according to market research firm Canalys. Apple saw a 12% year-on-year decline in global shipments but maintained its leading position with an 18% market share. Xiaomi took second place with a 15% market share, while Huawei secured third spot with a 13% market share. The Canalys report claimed that Xiaomi’s 38% year-on-year growth was driven by a diverse product lineup and rapid overseas expansion, while Huawei’s 46% year-on-year growth was driven by strong domestic sales of the Watch GT4. [Canalys, in Chinese]

Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor has made the decision to shut down its European headquarters in Munich, Germany, and will dismiss about 100 employees before Aug. 31, when the closure will take effect, Automotive News Europe reported on Wednesday. A company spokesperson attributed the move to “tough market conditions” and the “very concrete threat of punitive taxes” on Chinese imports, adding that the automaker will supervise its regional operations remotely to sell cars via local distributors in countries such as Germany and the UK. The automaker, headquartered in the northern Chinese city of Baoding, is still planning to build a factory in Europe with Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic among the possible locations, although it sold only 1,621 vehicles on the continent in the first four months of this year. The European Commission is supposed to inform Chinese exporters of whether it intends to impose punitive tariffs by early June and they could come into effect within a month or so, Bloomberg reported on May 22, citing consulting firm Eurasia Group. [Automotive News Europe]

Developed by Korean firm Nexon and published by Tencent Games, the mobile version of Dungeon and Fighter has held the top spot on both the free and top-grossing games charts in the iOS App Store in China for ten consecutive days since its May 21 launch. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the game’s first-week revenue exceeded $140 million, citing data from consulting firm Niko Partners. “If the game maintains this momentum, it could continue to generate around one billion dollars in annual sales for Tencent Games,” Niko Partners analyst Xiao Feng Zeng said in the Bloomberg report. Dungeon and Fighter was first published by Nexon in South Korea in 2005, featuring fast-paced 2D side-scrolling action gameplay with a focus on cooperative multiplayer dungeon crawling and PVP (player versus player) combat. [Bloomberg]

Tesla is looking to meet regulatory registration requirements for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software in China and begin testing the latest version of it on Chinese public roads, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. If the US automaker manages to gain approval from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it may roll out version 12 of the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) in China this year, and allow owners to subscribe to the service at about $98 per month. The service now charges Chinese buyers a one-time fee of RMB 64,000 ($8,828), according to the report. The news comes after Tesla chief executive Elon Musk met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing last month and China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), a top auto industry group, confirmed that Tesla’s China-made vehicles are compliant with the country’s data security requirements. [Reuters]

On Wednesday, Chinese PC maker Lenovo announced a strategic partnership with Alat, a subsidiary under Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) focused on transformative technology investments and sustainable manufacturing, with Alat proposing a $2 billion zero coupon convertible bonds investment in Lenovo. 

Lenovo will establish its Middle East and Africa (MEA) regional headquarters in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, which will include a customer center and R&D center for the region. The company will also build a new manufacturing base for personal computers and servers in Saudi Arabia.

Why it matters: As a wholly-owned subsidiary of PIF, Alat aims to leverage this collaboration to drive industrial transformation in Saudi Arabia, positioning the country as a world-class hub for sustainable technology manufacturing. Lenovo will look to increase its presence in the MEA region via the partnership.

Details: Lenovo will issue $2 billion in convertible bonds to Alat, using the proceeds to repay debts and for corporate purposes, according to the announcement. 

• The bonds mature in three years and can be converted to equity at HK$10.42 ($1.33) per share, a 10% premium over the 30-day average VWAP (Volume Weighted Average Price). Issuance is contingent on Lenovo shareholder and regulatory approvals. Currently, Lenovo has approved a proposal to issue 1,150,000,000 warrants at a price of HK$1.43 ($0.18) per warrant, according to the statement.
• PIF, a sovereign wealth fund, manages assets exceeding $700 billion, according to Lenovo. The agreement between the two parties stated that Alat will have the authority to nominate a non-executive director candidate to join Lenovo Group’s board of directors through the customary director appointment procedures of Hong Kong.
• “Through this powerful strategic collaboration, Lenovo will have significant resources and financial flexibility to further accelerate our transformation and grow our business by capitalizing on the incredible growth momentum in the MEA region,” said Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang.
• “As Lenovo establishes its regional headquarters in Riyadh and a clean energy manufacturing base in Saudi Arabia, we expect its growth to accelerate in the MEA region,” said Alat CEO Amit Midha.

Context: In the first quarter, global PC shipments increased around 3% year-on-year to reach 57.1 million units after eight consecutive quarters of decline, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research. Lenovo secured the leading position in the global market with a 24% share, reaching 13.7 million units, up by 8% year-on-year.

• The market intelligence firm IDC predicts that the IT and business services market in the MEA region is expected to reach nearly $38 billion in 2027, driven by the continuous increase in large-scale projects and rapid economic development in the region.

NIO’s power infrastructure network has continued to secure partnerships, as the company said on Thursday that it now offers owners of IM Motors vehicles access to more than 22,500 proprietary fast chargers across China. They can find the nearest NIO fast chargers in their locations and pay for charging by using their own apps, according to an announcement, in a similar arrangement to those with Changan, Geely, and Xpeng, among others. IM Motors, a premium electric vehicle brand launched by China’s SAIC, has four models on sale with a price range between RMB 199,900 and RMB 459,800 ($27,586-$63,452). It reported deliveries of 38,253 units last year and that number was roughly 12,300 from January to April. NIO is also working with several major automakers and state-owned utilities, including GAC and Southern Power Grid, on battery swapping and operates 2,427 battery swap stations nationwide as of Thursday. [NIO announcement, in Chinese]

Chinese ride-hailing platform Didi on Wednesday posted a 14.9% year-on-year growth in first-quarter revenue as total trips increased 30.3% to 3.75 billion. Specifically, the number of trips taken reached record highs of 32.5 million and 8.7 million per day in China and overseas markets, respectively, compared with the 31.9 million and 8.5 million the company achieved in the previous quarter. Didi’s January-March comparable operating profit also improved to RMB 900 million ($124 million), although it reported a net loss attributable to shareholders of RMB 1.4 billion due to a reduction in investment income from its stake in Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng. China’s biggest ride-hailing service said last August that it would become a strategic investor in Xpeng with a stake of 3.25%, while the EV maker was set to acquire its smart EV business. The Beijing-based ride-hailer has targeted 10% growth in daily trips in 2024, which refers to the completion of 33 million rides on average per day, according to a March 21 report by Chinese media outlet LatePost. [Didi filing]

ByteDance, owner of TikTok and Douyin, reportedly has major initiatives underway for AI-powered hardware projects, with two key hardware divisions currently driving these efforts, according to a 36Kr report that cited several sources. The report stated that one team is codenamed “D line,” led by Li Haoqian, founder of open wearable stereo brand Oladance, which ByteDance acquired recently. The other group, dubbed “O line,” is a cross-functional team tasked with exploring AI-based consumer hardware products. According to the report, it works closely with ByteDance’s artificial intelligence software team “Flow” on integrated hardware-software AI solutions. The TikTok maker overhauled its VR arm Pico late last year, two years after it was acquired by ByteDance, which was once seen as the company’s strong move into the VR industry with hardware headsets. [36Kr, in Chinese]

For the first time, BEYOND EXPO organizers hosted the SheTech Summit this year to celebrate the dynamism of women in technology. The panel brought together women leaders, showcased groundbreaking tech innovations, and prompted conversations on gender diversity in the tech industry.

We highlight key takeaways from three panel discussions where successful female leaders shared their insights and experiences.

Panel 1: The advantages of women leadership in tech and innovative companies

Michelle Chen, co-founder and CEO of Biosyngen, leads the company’s operational oversight, strategic direction, process optimization, government interactions, financial strategy, and investment discussions. With extensive expertise in corporate management, finance, and biopharmaceutical negotiations, Chen has co-established two prominent biotech ventures and amassed 17 years of leadership in Fortune 500 enterprises.

“As for advantages of female traits in the workplace, it’s important to categorize different aspects of rationality,” Chen said. “For instance, when it comes to self-motivation and the desire to engage in meaningful pursuits, women may have a broader focus, especially in the context of running a company. They tend to be more empathetic and attuned to the feelings of their employees.” 

Chen said that showing empathy and sensitivity toward employees has contributed to minimal turnover in her tech-driven pharmaceutical company and fostered loyalty and long-term commitment. She added that a predominantly female executive team has allowed Biosyngen to enhance the collective ability to observe and interpret subtle cues involving employee well-being, ensuring sustained success, and organizational vitality. 

“Let’s not overly emphasize gender equality or favoritism — everyone deserves equal opportunities,” Chen said. “Whether in AI, technology, or life sciences, passion drives individuals to pursue meaningful endeavors. Women, like everyone else, aspire to contribute meaningfully. It’s about embracing opportunities in industries one is passionate about and applying learned skills. Simplify your approach, adapt to circumstances, and seize opportunities as they come.”

Panel 2: Gender Lens Investing: How Women Shape the Future of the World?

Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund, is a Silicon Valley investor and alumna of Stanford University School of Engineering. With expertise in AI in healthcare, enterprise AI/networks, edge computing, and data privacy, she has built a distinguished ecosystem. 

Before Fusion Fund, Zhang was a serial entrepreneur and materials science researcher. She has been bestowed with various recognitions, including Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Silicon Valley Women of Influence, and Forbes 30 under 30 VC honoree.

Zhang said that Asian cultures usually stereotype girls as being “obedient and likable.” However, she said that leadership roles entail making tough decisions, inevitably leading to some disapproval.

“Women must embrace this reality: is it more crucial to be liked or respected? As an entrepreneur and leader, earning respect is paramount,” Zhang said. “Ultimately, admiration and even reverence will follow, creating a powerful force.” 

During the session, Zhang mentioned an intriguing perspective on the subconscious advantages of women. She said that a woman’s strong intuition “stems from potent subconscious information processing.”  

“Over 90% of decisions are subconscious, yet we struggle to rationalize how it captures and computes data,” she said. “Besides computational power, women’s heightened awareness, driven by deep-seated insecurities, leads to heightened data capture. For instance, when walking alone at 2 a.m., women are more alert, consciously collecting data on their surroundings. Conversely, men might overlook potential dangers due to a perceived sense of safety.” 

Tina Tao, president and partner at Sinovation Ventures, oversees daily operations and professional services, including fundraising, finance, and business development. With previous work experience at Microsoft, IBM, and Google, she manages the incubation function at the Al Institute of Sinovation Ventures. 

Founded in 2009 by Kai-Fu Lee, Sinovation Ventures manages over $2 billion in Assets Under Management across various technology sectors. 

“Thirty years ago, we started with only a few female students, and now we’ve reached a significant proportion,” Tao said. “Reflecting on the presence of female university students, which has existed for just over a century, it’s remarkable how women have become a dominant force in education. In the past hundred years, from the first female university student to today, women have nearly become half the student population. Compared to the thousands of years of human civilization history, this rate of progress is incredibly rapid, even remarkably fast.” 

Dialogue with Olympian DENG Yaping

Table tennis icon Deng Yaping has clinched 18 world championships, including four Olympic golds, in her stellar 14-year career. With a record for the longest reigning top-ranked female table tennis player in the world, spanning eight years from 1991, her dominance in the sport is unmatched. 

Post-retirement, Deng pursued academic excellence, earning undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral degrees from Tsinghua University, the University of Nottingham, and the University of Cambridge, respectively.

During the conversation, Deng reflected on the perception gap between her public and private persona. While renowned for her athletic prowess and post-career contributions to sports development, she said she is approachable and gentle, contrary to the fierce demeanor often perceived on the table tennis court. 

Deng attributes her success to early challenges and perseverance, highlighting the crucial role of her father’s encouragement amid initial setbacks. She said that failure — including losing a critical match — taught her invaluable lessons in preparation and resilience. 

Speaking on the investment in the sports industry, Deng emphasized China’s sports marketing landscape was evolving and she seeks to promote Chinese brands globally through events like the Beijing Olympics. 

Deng said one of the most common questions she receives is: “Why are Chinese female athletes so strong?”

“Traditional Chinese culture plays a significant role,” Deng said. “Despite centuries of restrictions and oppression, it instilled resilience in women. Through the teachings of grandmothers and mothers, Chinese women learn to endure hardship and persevere, both at home and in society. Talent aside, the key factor in athletic success is grit. Chinese female athletes exhibit remarkable training intensity and exceptional endurance, reflecting their formidable willpower.” 

China’s online retailer JD said it will hold a one-day 2 yuan ($0.28) campaign for millions of goods with free shipping during this year’s 618 event, set to begin on Friday, as cheap remains a main theme across the country’s e-commerce marketplaces and consumers care priorities.

Why it matters: The market pressure that JD faces has now intensified as Pinduoduo, which operates on the principle of low prices and user-friendly after-sales service, continued to nibble away at what was once China’s second-largest e-commerce retailer by market capitalization.

• Rarely seen in public, founder Richard Liu has recently returned to media headlines for his wolfish statements within the company. As JD rushes for its most important 618 event, Liu’s remarks on the company’s tendency to fire underperformers who don’t work hard have raised concerns about its ability to maintain growth.

Details: The company had a press conference about the 618 mid-year shopping festival on Tuesday, where JD promoted it will provide “saving to the extreme and cheaper shopping experiences” to customers.

• When JD and Taobao try to provide more cash subsidies to shoppers, Pinduoduo more straightforwardly implements its low-price advantage by urging merchants to cut prices, with those who do so getting higher search rankings during the shopping festival. The price war that has permeated the industry in the past two years seems like a bottomless pit for e-commerce participants.
• At the press event, JD invited several of its sales and procurement staff, a group responsible for finding products that cater to users’ interests, to bargain at minimal cost with suppliers, and finally promotes to shoppers, to share their work publicly. The sales and procurement employees have been frequently thrust into the public eye by JD after livestreaming conducted by some of them last Singles Day found initial success for the company that had seldom participated in live-commerce before.
• JD said in the latest official WeChat post that rich commodities, affordable prices, and careful services of its 618 festival are the result of the “tireless efforts” of this group of employees, just one day after the company announced a gradual annual fixed salary for procurement staff to 20-month pay.

Context: Sandy Xu, the current CEO of JD, revealed that its “10 billion yuan subsidy” channel has amassed over 100 million users since launched last March, while more than one million third-party sellers have operated online stores on the platform, which is in contrast to itself in previous years when JD’s self-operated stores the main within its ecosystem.

At the annual gaming event SPARK 2024, Tencent Games announced the start of limited paid closed-beta testing for the mobile version of Civilization, though it has not disclosed a specific date for its non-wipe tests. The Civilization series, developed by US firm 2K Games, is an iconic turn-based strategy franchise renowned for its immersive gameplay and historical depth. Players take on the role of leaders of civilizations, guiding them through various eras of history, managing resources, developing cities, conducting diplomacy, and engaging in warfare with other civilizations. Tencent’s Aurora Studios acquired the franchise from 2K Games and has collaborated on the development of the mobile version, according to the Chinese gaming giant. The full launch of the title is anticipated for the latter half of this year. [Tencent Games Weibo, in Chinese]

BYD on Tuesday unveiled its latest-generation plug-in hybrid platform DM-i 5.0. The company said the technology gives its newest models a driving range of 2,100 kilometers (1,305 miles) at a starting price of only RMB 99,800 ($13,772), an advance that will likely accelerate China’s transition from fossil fuels to green vehicles.

Why it matters: The launch comes after figures from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) show that new energy vehicles (NEVs), most of which are battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids, represented more than half of China’s personal vehicle market in the first half of April.

• The surpassing of the 50% mark in vehicle registrations in China came for the first time in the week of May 13-19 in a historic moment. The milestone means that NEVs are now mainstream in the country, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu claimed on Tuesday, citing official figures (our translation).

Details: BYD said its fifth-gen dual-mode (DM) hybrid technology features an integrated system that covers all aspects of thermal and energy management, comprising cooling modules for front-end body parts, batteries, and in-car infotainment software.

• China’s biggest EV manufacturer also announced a breakthrough among production vehicles for their gasoline engines worldwide, as its new PHEVs can potentially convert 46.06% of the thermal energy they produce during combustion into mechanical energy, indicating a more efficient performance than rivals’ offerings.
• The company said it has also managed to reduce the excessive energy consumed in extreme weather conditions and achieved fuel consumption of 2.9L/100 km with an empty battery on the new platform. This gives its Qin L and Seal 06 compact sedans a driving range of 2,100 km on a full tank and full charge.
• The Qin L sedan, first unveiled at this year’s Beijing Auto Show, measures 4.8 meters in length and spans a 2,790-millimeter-long wheelbase. It comes as a mid-range offering between the Qin Plus and the more premium Han under the Dynasty family that accounted for nearly half of BYD’s sales last year.
• The Qin L has a similar-sized sibling, the Seal 06 DM-I, which is characterized by a more sleek and sporty design to attract younger customers. Both models have five variants respectively, providing an all-electric driving range between 80 km and 120 km and are priced between RMB 99,800 and RMB 139,800.

Context: A growing number of automakers in China are pivoting their efforts to develop PHEV models, as BEVs remain on a slow growth trajectory. Sales of PHEVs, which include extended-range hybrids (EREVs) in China, surged 64.2% year-on-year in April, compared with the 12.1% growth rate achieved by BEVs, CPCA figures showed.

• A week earlier, Chery launched the Fulwin T9, a plug-in hybrid crossover with a similar price range to BYD’s Song Plus, while Dongfeng unveiled its latest answer to the popular crossover, the Aeolus L7, with an estimated 1,500 km of driving range.
• Geely and Changan sell PHEVs under their Galaxy and Deepal lineups, respectively, while international majors from Volkswagen to Toyota are reportedly accelerating their steps to introduce such offerings in China.

READ MORE: Chinese officials reaffirm commitment to EV ambitions and promise raft of support measures amid industry doubts

On Tuesday, the Internet Society of China issued draft regulations entitled Requirements for Managing Minor Online Game Service Consumption for public consultation. In China, minors are entitled to game refunds if game operators fail to provide adequate protection, as mandated by laws regarding the online protection of those under the age of 16. The draft represents the first comprehensive consumption management standard in the gaming industry, which is intended to be used to resolve disputes over refunds involving minors and gaming companies. The standards make it clear that gaming companies do not bear sole responsibility: if providers implement anti-addiction measures but a child’s guardian helps them bypass these barriers, the refund may range from 30% to 70% rather than the full 100% as previously mandated. Repeated misconduct can result in full liability for the responsible party, the draft rules say. [Internet Society of China, in Chinese]

On Monday, Honor launched the Honor 200 and 200 Pro smartphones in China, with the 200 Pro model featuring a 6.78-inch OLED display with a 1.5K resolution, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, a 50MP main camera with OIS (Optical Image Stabilization), 100W fast charging support, and dual front cameras. The standard version has a similar display but uses the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor and lacks some advanced features such as wireless charging. Both models share a sleek design with curved edges and come in various colors, including black, white, pink, and blue. The Honor 200 series ranges from RMB 2,699 ($372) to RMB 4,499 ($621). In the first quarter, Honor saw double-digit growth in China, capturing a 16.1% market share with sales of 8.9 million units, driven by popular new models and its expansion in offline retail channels, according to Counterpoint Research. [IThome, in Chinese]

Alibaba has signed one of England’s most iconic football players David Beckham as a global ambassador for its international e-commerce platform AliExpress, a high-profile move as the Chinese tech giant looks to further promote the platform to the world. An advertising video featuring Beckham highlights the “free shipping and returns” feature, with the former England international encouraging shoppers to “score more with AliExpress.” Alibaba’s International Digital Commerce Group, which includes platforms such as AliExpress, Lazada, and Trendyol, has experienced the fastest growing path among the company’s six main units in recent quarters. The partnership comes after Alibaba become one of the sponsors of Euro 2024, which runs next month. AliExpress claimed that “Chinese cross-border merchants are set for a wave of traffic” in a WeChat post where the company announced Beckham as a brand ambassador. [AliExpress, in Chinese]

Macao is playing a positive role in facilitating the entry of Chinese electric vehicle makers into Portuguese-speaking countries, global accountancy firm Deloitte said in a recent report. 

The report, released on May 23 at the BEYOND EXPO 2024, reflected the growing presence of Chinese cars in global markets and the strategic role of Macao in enabling these moves. GAC’s EV unit Aion also showcased its latest offerings during this year’s expo, as its state-owned parent company, which is also a manufacturing partner of Toyota and Honda in China, sets its sights on global expansion and targets vehicle sales of 1.1 million units of its own brands this year. 

Macao could harness the abundant talents with language expertise and knowledge of law from Portuguese-speaking countries to facilitate Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) manufacturers’ entry into these markets, Deloitte wrote in the Chinese language report. “The city could also leverage its mature exhibition facilities and experience […] to provide a platform for cooperation and exchange between China’s NEV industry and overseas markets,” said Norman Sze, vice chair of Deloitte China in a press release (our translation). 

The comments come as Chinese EV giant BYD is rushing to produce EVs locally in Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America and a major Portuguese-speaking nation, with operations of its $600 million industrial complex expected to begin in the middle of this year. Rival Great Wall Motor also reportedly started operations of its Iracemapolis plant in the country this month, while Chery, one of China’s largest automobile exporters, opened its first overseas factory in Jacarei in Sao Paulo back in 2014, reported China Daily.

Deloitte forecast that Latin America, which accounts for 6% of total car sales worldwide, could reach sales of roughly 7.2 million passenger cars in 2030 with a solid growth rate of 5% year-on-year through the end of the decade. Meanwhile, around 5% of total car sales could be electric in the region in 2025, up from the current 2%, thanks to stimulus measures from major countries and a growing base of middle-class consumers, according to the consultancy firm. 

Held between May 22-25 in Macao, this year’s BEYOND EXPO had a theme focused on Latin America for the first time, as the Chinese Special Administrative Region has historically had close and extensive relations with Portuguese-speaking countries. The Asian tech event hopes to become a bridge for communication between Chinese enterprises and South American markets, according to co-founder Jason Ho.

TikTok’s Chinese sibling app Douyin implemented a new “hotspot content” verification mechanism on Monday, in what it said was a move to strengthen community regulation and governance of the platform, which has 800 million daily active users. In a notice posted by Douyin’s security unit on its official WeChat account, the platform said it would ask accounts involved in “trending events of high social concern” to provide proof of identification; failure to do so within 24 hours would see their accounts blocked. The rules also require content creators to clearly label fictional stories, with users who fail to do so and cause misunderstandings among the public subject to penalties ranging from a 30-day ban to an indefinite suspension of their accounts. The moves come after the social media accounts of a top influencer called Maoyibei were deleted from multiple platforms following her widely shared story of a boy and his missing homework books in Paris that was reportedly fabricated. [Douyin, in Chinese]

The China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase III Co., Ltd. (referred to as the Phase III Fund) was registered on May 24, with a capital of RMB 344 billion ($47.5 billion), according to the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity. The China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, commonly known as the “Big Fund,” was established in 2014 to support the development of China’s semiconductor industry. The new company’s business includes managing private equity funds, venture capital funds, equity investments, investment management, asset management, and business management consulting. Shareholder information reveals that the Phase III Fund is jointly held by 19 shareholders, including the Ministry of Finance (17.4419%), China Development Bank Capital (10.4651%), Shanghai Guosheng Group (8.7209%), China Construction Bank Corporation (6.25%), Bank of China Limited (6.25%), Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (6.25%), Agricultural Bank of China Limited (6.25%), and Bank of Communications Limited (5.8140%). [Icsmart, in Chinese]

Short video platform Douyin is aiming for an ambitious RMB 4 trillion ($552.3 billion) goal in e-commerce transactions this year, according to local media outlet 36Kr. The figure represents an increase of more than 30% on the transactions completed by the TikTok sibling app in 2023, the report added. Douyin’s online retail business expanded to the trillion yuan scale in just six years, boosted by its huge number of daily active users, and its model of marrying video-sharing with shopping is now well established. The target comes as the ByteDance-owned app continues to eat into the market shares of China’s older e-commerce players. Rival Alibaba, which recorded a GMV of RMB 7.97 trillion from its Chinese consumer-facing businesses in the fiscal year 2022, didn’t disclose figures for the following year, instead saying that its Taobao and Tmall platforms saw mid-single-digit year-over-year declines in order volumes. [36Kr, in Chinese]

Tech bloggers have posted screenshots of Huawei’s new HarmonyOS NEXT interfaces for phones and notebooks on the Chinese social platform Weibo, as the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC) 2024 approaches. The leak is being seen as a signal that the HDC, scheduled for June 21-23, will see the debut of the beta version of Huawei’s self-developed operating system HarmonyOS NEXT for developers. The Chinese tech giant is aiming to expand its HarmonyOS ecosystem to include 5,000 native apps by the end of 2024, with a long-term goal of reaching 500,000. Currently, more than 4,000 apps are integrated. The consumer version of HarmonyOS NEXT is expected to enter into the market in the fourth quarter of this year. [IThome, in Chinese]

Google has chosen TSMC over its long-term partner Samsung to manufacture its self-developed Tensor G5 processor for Google’s next-generation Pixel 10 series smartphones, according to US media outlet Android Authority. A shipping list of Google Tensor G5 samples has been exposed, which directly displays TSMC’s InFo-PoP packaging technology, the report revealed. Android Authority claimed that “LGA” in the list is an abbreviation for Tensor G5, specifically “Laguna Beach,” as Google may use abbreviations to conceal its activities. Companies must declare the contents and value of goods when importing or exporting overseas, and some regions share this information with third parties, which eventually gets listed in various databases, the report explained. [Android Authority]

China’s online retailer JD said on Monday morning that it plans to raise the annual fixed salary for sales and procurement staff to a 20-month package from the current 16-month over the next one-and-a-half years. The move comes days after founder Richard Liu warned employees that the company doesn’t tolerate poor performers who don’t hustle. “The company will always love you if you have good work performance even if you never work extra hours,” Liu said in a recent internal memo. He also noted that staff who prioritize their careers over their personal lives are not his “brothers,” a term Liu frequently uses to refer to his employees regardless of gender. China’s e-commerce market share, previously dominated by Alibaba and JD, is being rapidly eroded by Pinduoduo and Douyin, adding urgency to the need for change within the former giants. [JD, in Chinese]

Some of the hottest emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and the metaverse, are expected to facilitate the significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from businesses. However, it would require large amounts of data and professionals to achieve this goal, experts said on May 25 at the BEYOND EXPO 2024. 

A large language model, or LLM, consisting of neural network algorithms for analyzing vast amounts of datasets, summarizes information and creates sophisticated output at a speed much faster than human counterparts. This could automate workflows for carbon capture and carbon trading, said Chen Nan, deputy director of the Research Institute at SinoCarbon Innovation and Investment Co., Ltd. 

However, experts warned that information generated by those language models could sometimes be inaccurate and unreliable, making the involvement of professionals in training models essential. 

“When we use AI to improve the operation of a wind power plant or select an ideal site for some renewable energy facilities, we normally expect something more precise,” Chen said. 

AI-driven carbon reduction

According to Chen, AI-enabled carbon emission management is promising for commercialization in areas including carbon accounting and carbon trading. 

Carbon accounting, the process of quantifying greenhouse gas emissions, can be complex due to variations across regions and industries. Different places and industries have varying standards, guidelines, and requirements, “creating a high bar for many industry people.” 

AI could assist in identifying relevant guidelines and standards while highlighting their differences based on specific scenarios. However, Chen said it would only work if professionals were involved in providing specific model training guidelines to analyze and compare them. 

Businesses also face challenges in fulfilling their reporting obligations to the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, a tool designed to address carbon leakage from non-EU countries. In such scenarios, Chen said LLMs could be of great help. 

Although regulators provide detailed rules for calculating embedded emissions during the production process of CBAM goods, AI could help importers understand where and how to fill in the necessary information, Chen added.

Meanwhile, AI could also help facilitate international carbon trading. While financial mathematical models have traditionally been used to predict carbon market prices, AI could enhance the carbon trading approach with more comprehensive and specific strategies. 

However, AI would require guidance from human experts, who would provide such systems with knowledge related to relevant policies, regulations, and specific trading rules, Chen said. 

AI + the metaverse

Experts argue that new energy-saving measures for businesses could emerge by leveraging AI and the metaverse. 

“Training Al in metaverses will become the new paradigm for Al research and development,” Yuan Yu, director at the Metaverse and Digitalization Promotion Center of Tsinghua Industrial Research Institute, told the audience.

Industry experts said that the metaverse could provide a training environment with lower costs and risks, as well as higher efficiency and diversity. This would, therefore, help boost the development of Al for addressing climate change. 

One of the first sprouts of this new paradigm includes testing autonomous vehicles under various complex road conditions in a virtual world, which has already become a common industry practice.

The industrial metaverse can also be an effective tool in the fight against climate change, driven by digital twin technologies, a virtual representation of a physical object, system, or process. 

“Long-term climate predictions are notoriously challenging due to the complexity of interactions among various factors,” said Ralf Ma, general manager of Beijing Miaorun Technology Co. Ltd. “A high-quality replica of our planet could enhance our ability to forecast climate patterns.”

Business leaders at the Middle East Oasis Forum of BEYOND EXPO 2024 shared valuable insights on combining creativity and strategic confidence, highlighting their experiences in accelerating sustainable development and robust economic progress in the region. 

The panelists at the “Confidence with Imagination” included host Andre Kwok, founder of Good City Foundation and chief of staff at Tsangs Group, along with Jackson Zhang, the assistant to the chairman and manager of International Affairs at DeepRock Group and Biosphere 3, and Yamin Xu, dean of Tomorrow.City Institute at the Smart City Expo World Congress.

Navigating Middle Eastern markets with confidence and humility

There has been a significant shift in mindset among Chinese entrepreneurs over the years, Xu said.

Historically, Chinese business leaders admired Western companies and focused primarily on American and European markets. However, with China’s rise and the success of its infrastructure development strategies like the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese entrepreneurs have found new confidence in doing business globally. 

Xu noted that while this confidence is beneficial, it sometimes borders on arrogance. He said entrepreneurs need to adopt a “more mature and balanced worldview, recognizing the importance of understanding local histories, cultures, and economic contexts when expanding into new markets.”

Xu also expressed optimism about the younger generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, adding that they are better equipped to navigate the complexities of the global business landscape due to their broader experiences and open-mindedness. 

However, he cautioned other entrepreneurs to be alert to global changes and avoid harboring outdated mindsets. Xu concluded that a successful global expansion not just requires confidence but also understanding and respecting diverse markets and cultures. 

“In the journey of Middle East expansion, humility and respect are our guiding lights,” Xu said. “With a balanced worldview and openness to diverse cultures, we forge connections that transcend borders, ensuring enduring success and mutual prosperity.” 

Embracing confidence for Middle Eastern ventures

Zhang said Chinese companies expanding globally should strategize integrating resources to form corporate communities for better handling challenges in foreign markets. He highlighted that DeepRock Group leverages its experience in green building and energy management to upgrade and transform local regions.

Zhang added that Chinese enterprises venturing into international markets must be confident in their global expansion, adding that companies should thoroughly prepare and understand their target market’s cultural nuances and business environment. 

To illustrate his point, Zhang shared examples, including DeepRock Group’s involvement in the Masdar City project in the United Arab Emirates. He said he has noticed the evolving mindset of Chinese entrepreneurs and the shift toward a more global outlook.

However, Zhang also urged investors to be wary of the socio-political events of countries in the region — while Egypt is currently under military rule and faces political challenges, Libya, endowed with abundant oil resources and high per capita income, flourished during the era of Gaddafi, and Iran, a densely populated country with a high level of education, has high unemployment rates. 

“Although my understanding of these three countries is limited, I believe Iran maintains a positive attitude toward investment from China,” he said.

Zhang reiterated that as investors embark on their Middle East ventures, they should “harness the power of confidence tempered with cultural sensitivity.”

“By understanding local nuances and embracing diversity, we pave the way for meaningful collaboration and sustainable growth in international markets,” Zhang said.

Cross-border e-commerce has emerged as a catalyst for economic growth while offering consumers a smooth shopping experience. This consumption model has granted access to China-manufactured products for people globally. 

BEYOND EXPO’s cross-border e-commerce summit panel discussion provided insightful perspectives from industry leaders on the growth trends and opportunities in the global e-commerce landscape for 2024 and beyond.

The cross-border ecosystem is far more complex than sellers in China shipping to buyers abroad after receiving an order. It encompasses various elements, including cross-border platforms, payment systems, investors, and data service providers.

Chinese sellers new to cross-border transactions are grappled with a crucial question: how and where to start? 

Deena Ghazarian, chairwoman of the Consumer Technology Association’s executive board and founder and CEO of Austere, said partnering with established brands and service-based companies leverages e-commerce platforms including Amazon.

Xiaohongshu, a popular lifestyle-sharing platform that has expanded to the e-commerce business, is seeking to emerge as a service provider to leverage its content and targeted advertising capabilities to drive cross-border e-commerce growth, according to Ning Guang, the company’s business manager.

When asked about the perception of Chinese brands in the American market, Ghazarian said “regionalizing and rebranding” would help appeal to diverse consumer bases. 

“We took assets, got a more diverse background, it came across as a diverse brand,” Ghazarian said,” said. “Once we did that, you had no idea it was a Chinese brand.” 

Cheryl Tang, APAC sales director of Indiegogo, however, argued that consumers gravitate toward a brand with a “bright spot.” 

“We have also seen Chinese brands following Chinese brands going overseas and transforming into U.S. local brands successfully,” she said. 

The cross-border e-commerce industry may adopt AI technologies faster than other sectors due to factors like time zone differences, round-the-clock operations, and the desire to leverage AI for cross-cultural challenges, the panelists said. 

On Friday, BEYOND EXPO organizers invited a group of distinguished entrepreneurs for the Asia-Latam Tech Forum, aiming to explore opportunities for collaboration in business and technology, while promoting cultural exchange and understanding between Asia and Latin America.

The Asia-Latam Tech Forum featured discussions on trade, investment, innovation, and ideas, providing a platform for stakeholders from both continents to explore avenues for growth and prosperity. 

Below are key insights from the three discussion panels held during the forum. 

Panel 1: Latam: The next hotbed of venture capital investments

William Mimassi Pedroso is a partner at Monashees, an early-stage venture capital firm, where he has worked since 2020 and manages relations with the company’s limited partners globally. Pedroso has worked in various capacities, from law to CFO roles, in Brazil and China. He holds a law degree with honors from the University of São Paulo, with proficiency in multiple languages. 

Founded in 2005, Monashees is a renowned early-stage venture capital firm in Latin America. The company invests in innovative startups across various sectors, providing crucial support and resources for their growth and success. With a strong track record, Monashees is a leading player in the region’s vibrant startup ecosystem.

Pedroso expressed optimism about Latin America’s potential for growth in the venture capital sector, given the region’s favorable regulatory environment and increasing digitalization. He highlighted areas such as fintech and clean tech as particularly promising, noting the region’s natural resources and innovative potential. However, he acknowledged that the need for technical talent and English proficiency among developers remains a challenge. 

Pedroso said he sees Latin America as a burgeoning market with ample room for expansion, especially with the right investments and support.

Panel 2: Latam’s innovation ecosystem and collaboration opportunities with Asia

Ingrid Barth is a seasoned economist and entrepreneur with a background in finance, technology, and advocacy. Formerly with JPMorgan and Santander, she founded Linker, a pioneering digital bank for businesses, later acquired by Omie. Additionally, she holds influential roles in fintech regulation and startup development, including representing Brazil in G20 initiatives.

During the panel discussion, Barth spoke about effective communication methods in changing perceptions about Brazil’s business landscape. She advocated for highlighting Brazil’s strengths, such as its innovative potential and natural resources, to attract foreign investors and foster collaboration. 

Barth stressed the need for confidence in Brazil’s capabilities and encouraged entrepreneurs to seek the right local partners when entering the Brazilian market. She also underscored the significance of understanding cultural nuances and navigating regulatory frameworks. 

Barth admitted the role of public policies in shaping business environments and suggested learning from China’s dynamic ecosystem and strategic initiatives. Meanwhile, she called for a proactive approach to showcasing Brazil’s opportunities and fostering international partnerships for mutual growth.

Panel 3: Rising unicorns and IPOs in Latam

Eduardo L’Hotelier, a Brazilian computer engineering graduate, founded GetNinjas in 2011, growing it into Latin America’s largest service marketplace. He led multiple successful fundraising rounds with renowned firms like Monashees Capital and Tiger Global. In 2021, L’Hotelier took GetNinjas public on the Brazilian stock exchange (NINJ3) but sold his stake in the company in January 2023.

GetNinjas is a Brazilian online platform connecting clients with freelance professionals in various fields, including home services, events, classes, and more. The company has revolutionized how people find and hire services, simplifying the lives of millions of users in Brazil.

L’Hotelier attributed Latin America’s booming market to being fueled by its young demographic and tech adoption. He said Brazil’s robust social media usage offers ample opportunities for startups, adding businesses need to understand local laws and culture, while partnerships help to navigate the market. 

L’Hotelier also noted the growing interest from Asian investors in Latin American startups, particularly in Brazil. He said that Brazilian entrepreneurs demonstrate resilience despite bureaucratic hurdles, adding that there is a shift toward a global mindset with more startups eyeing international expansion.

L’Hotelier said the company wishes to help their global partners achieve similar results by leveraging their expertise and technological advancements.

In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics are transforming our daily lives and work environments. These cutting-edge technologies are poised to unlock innovative digital experiences and redefine our interaction with the world.

At the BEYOND EXPO’s ConsumerTech Summit on Friday, industry leaders gathered to explore the potential and challenges of these burgeoning technologies through a series of insightful panels.

The integration of artificial intelligence into personal devices has been a hot topic in recent months, with companies vying to harness this powerful technology to enhance user experiences. The idea of personalized AI is rapidly moving from science fiction to reality.

Jingkang Liu, the CEO and founder of 360-degree camera maker Insta360, described his vision as a future where individuals have a digital personal assistant by their side, constantly learning from their interactions, understanding their preferences, and providing tailored solutions.

However, the path to this AI-driven utopia has its challenges. One of the primary concerns raised was the issue of privacy and data security. As Carl Pei, co-founder of Nothing Technology, noted “The core of security is truth.” 

“The core of privacy is to make uses transparent to users, that is, what data we collect, they can choose whether to give us this data or not,” Pei continued. “We must fully communicate the benefits of sharing their data — what advantages they will gain and what enhanced services we can provide. Our goal is to ensure that the product allows them to truly experience the value of these services.”

The panelists in the morning session also explored the interplay between cooperation and competition within the industry. While acknowledging the inherent human tendency towards competition, they advocated for a balanced approach that encourages collaboration and mutual growth. 

Specifically, industry players should strive for a healthy ecosystem where competition is driven by deeper insights into customer needs, innovative research, and differentiated offerings, rather than by engaging in detrimental price wars, the panel suggested.

The realm of augmented reality has also captured the imaginations of entrepreneurs and consumers alike due to developments such as the metaverse and the AI boom, but the uniqueness of different use cases makes the scaling of AR particularly difficult.

Xu Chi, founder and CEO of AR brand XREAL, shared that he feels it’s a pity that we haven’t seen the emergence of a definitive AR app for this era, in the same way that Angry Birds was a flag-bearer for the initial iPhone era. That situation motivates XREAL to actively experiment with forward-looking scenarios and collaborate with partner developers, Xu stated.

Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind innovation, growth, and shaping the industry. Their role is paramount in building a startup bigger from day one, as unique perspectives and entrepreneurial spirit are key factors driving the vibrant growth of new enterprises. On Friday, five leading entrepreneurs spoke at BEYOND EXPO about how they have succeeded in their careers, sharing valuable experiences and insights into entrepreneurship.

Below are highlights from the renowned entrepreneurs in conversation with Phoenix TV anchor Richard Ren at the expo’s Founder Forum session. Their comments have been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Justin Gong, Co-founder & Senior Vice President of XAG

Our goal is to make agricultural production more efficient, producing more with less. It’s an ongoing project, and in the short term, we want to introduce drones and autonomous technology to farmers, so they don’t need to worry about hiring people amid labor shortage.

In the long term, we want to utilize AI technology and robotics to help farmers manage uncertainties like climate environmental changes.

China is still a growing economy, and we have already proven to the world that we can produce world-class companies and startup companies.

For young entrepreneurs, my advice is to find a really good partner. Don’t trust yourself too much because you can sometimes be too positive or too negative. Find the right partner, but don’t trust them easily at the very beginning. For me, it took 10 years of working together with my partner to build a strong partnership. Now we are both best friends and partners.

David Lee, CEO & Co-founder of NEX

To start something, you always need to quit something. It’s always about making sacrifices and tough choices. Some are big choices. Leaving Apple was a pretty big choice for me as well, but it’s also about the lifestyle that you choose, it is your own personal pursuit of something that you really want to do.

I’m a very optimistic person, sometimes overly optimistic. I believe that I can change the world, do something really great, and solve significant problems. I have immense  confidence in what my team and I can achieve. However, I am also paranoid enough to avoid making critical mistakes. That’s why we have a company. That’s why for the past seven years, we have survived the pandemic, weathered economic downturns, and we’re still going strong.

We can use the funding to crystallize our vision into simple hardware that delivers the best possible experience for the mass market. Once we release the product, it is loved by users. We send samples to all major retail stores, and they all want to carry the product. Eventually, what attracted investors was having a product that users love, which basically demonstrates market fit. With a proven market fit, every conversation [with potential investors] becomes a little bit easier.

Carl Wu, Co-Founder and CEO of New Frontier Group

I think we were at the right place at the right time because China was aging quickly, and home care was a lot cheaper. The cost of home care is perhaps about a tenth of that in senior living facilities. That’s what Chinese families wanted, and it aligned with what the government wanted, which is  more than 90% of the people should age at home.

So, we were in the right place at the right time. We went from zero to providing 100,000 visits a day to homes. Today, we run the one of largest home health companies in China, offering everything from basic care and nursing care to managing diseases at home. We took the simple idea of addressing China’s aging population and built a home health service in a relatively short period of time.

Eric Cheng, CEO & Founder of Carsome

I think we have achieved a lot of success, especially in creating transparency in the region. Southeast Asia is not just one country, right? It comprises multiple countries like Indonesia with 600 million people, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, each with very different markets. However, you will find one common issue when it comes to looking for a used car and selling it; the whole market is fragmented and inefficient, partly because most of the trading process is offline. When we first set out to solve this problem, we focused on the customers’ pain points. 

For example, if you want to sell a car today, where would you go and what kind of pricing would you expect? We wanted to create a platform that could assess a car’s condition and match it to demand across the entire country. To do that, you really need to be able to develop digital tools to facilitate this matching process. We started very simple with one service – helping consumers sell their cars quickly. Everything could be done within an hour. We saw strong traction, for example, when we started operations in 2015, we sold 30 cars in the first month. 

Now we are selling about 15,000 cars per month, showcasing our ability to scale and grow, year upon year, from strength to strength. I think a lot of this success is due to our ability to understand the original technology, to build digital tools in between the whole process of trading and layer on top of it, which is something that has not been done before in many parts of the world. 

Chi Xu, Founder and CEO of XREAL

I don’t know what is a better fit for this industry. But to me, it feels like we’re in a brand-new industry, we need some other company. If you really want to stand out, you need to be disruptive, and that means all the technology isn’t there yet. That’s why having somebody who really knows the boundaries of different technologies is crucial, because this is a combination of optics, software algorithm, AI and hardware in general.

That’s why if you look at any AR company, you probably won’t find a single technology officer who knows all the different kinds of boundaries. Being an expert in most of these areas is definitely a plus because building hardware is really challenging, especially knowing the boundaries. And sometimes you need to push the boundary a little bit. This is the part where, I think, if you’re an expert, you really have a huge plus.

I think an entrepreneur is not trained. From my personal experience, I don’t want to be the CEO from day one, because I don’t think I’d ever be an entrepreneur. It would have been nice for me maybe to learn alongside someone but not lead from the start. An entrepreneur is always very lonely. Sometimes even if you have co-founders, you still feel lonely because you can’t tell them everything and you don’t expect them to share the same kind of workload and barrier as you do, so you have to be vision driven, you have to be very dedicated, you have to be very aggressive, and you have to have a very big heart and all of that. I don’t think one can ever be trained for it.

Distributed energy resources such as residential solar panels and electric vehicle batteries could play a bigger role in addressing climate change, as China hopes to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutral by 2060, renowned academics and industry veterans said on Friday.

The comments come as global climate finance has been stuck in a slow growth gear for several years, reflecting investors’ relatively low sentiment and gloomy prospects. “A lot of climate technologies are sitting in a laboratory somewhere and haven’t found a pathway to market,” Alexander Bent, managing partner at investment firm Undivided Ventures, said on Friday at the BEYOND EXPO 2024 tech conference in Macao.

Around $1.3 trillion was invested in the energy transition globally in 2021/2022, while the annual climate finance needed through 2030 has been increasing steadily from $8.1 to $9 trillion, according to estimates by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI). “This means that climate finance must increase by at least five-fold annually, as quickly as possible, to avoid the worst impact of climate change,” wrote the non-profit organization in a November report.

Experts emphasized that more joint efforts are needed to enhance investment activities aligning with a global net zero outlook and to step up the development of clean energy and climate tech amid rising uncertainty due to geopolitical issues. Here are some of the highlights from speakers on Friday at the event’s ClimateTech Summit co-hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a Colorado-based non-profit group focused on the transition to clean energy.

Distributed energy resources

The stark reality is that among all the emerging climate technologies that have the potential to enable a clean energy transition, less than half of them have been put to use at scale. “Most of the promising technologies for emission reductions or others are still in early stages,” said Lyu Lanchun, dean assistant of Sichuan Energy Internet Research Institute of Tsinghua University.

And yet, some of them have shown big potential for climate change mitigation. “Electric vehicles are usually powered by large battery packs which can actually act as an energy storage medium, and the volume is immeasurable,” Tian Yu, deputy general manager of China National Energy (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd, told the audience.

Distributed solar power, which usually refers to solar panels installed on the roofs of homes, are tipped to become another major source of renewable energy in China. “We calculated something like if we install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on all the available land and roofs in the Yanqing district of Beijing, it is possible to meet the energy demand for the entire city,” said Zhang Haoran, head of the Smart City Laboratory of Peking University.

In fact, an integrated solution comprising solar panels and EV batteries could be ideal for families looking to power their mode of transport by their own renewable energy source. People will be able to charge their electric cars with solar energy, “a safe, reliable, and cost-wise [affordable solution],” said Wan Xiaojun, a director of EVPS Anhui Co., Ltd, a Chinese lithium-ion power battery maker.

Collaboration or contradiction?

Despite a promising outlook, Chinese battery makers are facing challenges in growing their sales overseas. The European Union last year approved its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which will impose as much as 35% tariffs on imports of high-carbon goods based on the carbon dioxide emissions embedded in their production starting 2026. Wan called for more efforts to be made to launch a globally-recognized standard for measuring the carbon footprint.

“The launch of the carbon trading mechanism and various carbon emission pricing rules, such as the CBAM and the new EU battery regulation, are actually a form of international dialogue,” said Jie Yu, dean of Institute of Natural Carbon Sink (Qingdao). In this context, alignment with global standards is crucial. Yu also mentioned China’s National Climate Center is establishing a database for calculating the carbon footprint of batteries, which could help in negotiation or collaboration with other countries.

Founders from some of the most promising unicorn companies in Asia on Thursday shared their experiences and insights about dealing with challenges and achieving success at BEYOND EXPO 2024, one of the largest tech events in the region.

Below are highlights from the pioneering entrepreneurs in conversation with CGTN anchor Zheng Junfeng at the expo’s Founder Forum session. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

1. Carl Pei, CEO of Nothing Technology 

We started a new company called Nothing about three and a half years ago. We felt that the consumer tech industry got boring, and we needed to do something different. We saw an opportunity to focus on a specific target user segment. 

Our new product is called Nothing Phone 2a. The main difference is the industrial design of the hardware, as well as the software. Many people feel that Android is a bit ugly and difficult to use. So we wanted to elevate that experience.

This might sound naive, but I believe we have a chance to challenge Apple and Samsung. Based on where we are today and where we can go, there is much more we can do.

The most exciting part is that we all sit on the dawn of the new tech era: AI is coming. When we were younger, Nokia and Blackberry were the biggest brands. Then the smartphones came and they gradually shuffled away. Now AI is here, so there will be a lot of reshuffling and changes in the industry. 

Although we do not have as many resources as the bigger companies, this move has been replayed in the past. When the new tech cycle comes, the more innovative, smaller companies will come on top.

2.  Burt Guo, CEO and chief scientist of Aerofugia Technology

We are a startup making electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL). It is battery-powered and less noisy compared with traditional helicopters while getting more redundancy for emergencies in the sky. 

There will be three to five years to commercialize this technology as we will have two things to do. The first thing is to get the type certification for our products from the CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of China) and secondly, we should prepare for operations.

I believe the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will probably be the first region in China where we can put our products into the market because many passengers need new forms of public transportation. For example, a taxi from here [Macao] to Shenzhen will take one to two hours, but an eVTOl will take only around 15 minutes.

3. Wen Shuhao, co-founder and chairman of XtalPi

XtalPi was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015. It is an innovative research and development platform based on quantum physics, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), and driven by robotics. 

XtalPi’s goal is to accelerate drug discovery and market entry using AI technology.

In drug development, AI plays a crucial role through powerful computational capabilities and algorithms. While traditional medicinal chemists might only imagine a few hundred molecular structures, AI can explore possibilities in chemical space up to 10^60, a number greater than the stars in the universe. AI enables rapid and extensive molecular design and screening, surpassing human capabilities.

XtalPi can now analyze protein structures in just a few months, a task that used to take 10 to 20 years in the past. The combination of AI design capabilities and robotic automation significantly shortens the drug discovery process for molecular compounds. Additionally, AI application during clinical trials also helps reduce the time required from 5-10 years to 2-3 years.

4.  Reeve Kwan, co-founder of GogoX

We started the company 11 years ago in Hong Kong with five co-founders and then expanded to Singapore, Korea, Vietnam, and 300 cities in mainland China. Since we operate in so many different countries, the challenges vary in each market, but we create value by providing simple logistics services to users powered by information technologies.

Usually, we build a custom software system for small and medium-sized companies — our main clients — allowing them to fully leverage our supply of transport services, ranging from motorcyclists to container trucks.

In some cities, you can use drones to deliver (goods). We have explored indoor robots, but the bottom line is to improve the efficiency on the delivery side. For example, in China, express companies and couriers have to call you and make sure you are home, and ask if they should leave it on the doorsteps or anywhere. These problems apply everywhere. By implementing these robots, we hope to reduce time wastage for the couriers.

5.  Kamarul A Muhamed, founder and Group CEO of Aerodyne

We are based in Malaysia and have operations in many countries. We solve industrial problems with drones, ranging from dangerous problems to labor issues. One of the main issues we are dealing with is logistics issues. Since much of the work for gas companies is offshore, using our drone could save more than 60% of the cost than using helicopters.

Integrating advanced sensors into drones also allows us to see and predict problems with agriculture in particular seasons. Meanwhile, it took three to five years to complete inspection activities for mining, but now we can do that with drones as quickly as five minutes.

6. Fredrik Hjelm, CEO and co-founder of Voi

In six years we have around 110,000 e-scooters and e-bikes in more than 100 cities in Europe, and we are profitable. Our technology is quite similar to aircraft technology, but we have a smaller vehicle on the ground. 

We develop our IoT (Internet of Things) technologies in the eastern Chinese city of Changzhou, neighboring Shanghai, and we do many things with our bikes, including data analytics and machine learning.

We have swappable batteries in our bikes and scooters, as well as people driving around for swapping the batteries. With battery technologies making progress now, they can run three to four days before we swap them. We aim to expand our fleet to 1 million, which may take a few years, but I am confident we will get there.

Renowned Japanese technology companies including Sony and Fujifilm on Thursday showcased their latest products and business solutions at the BEYOND EXPO 2024 tech conference in Macao, voicing their expectations for the future of collaboration with China.

The public appearances at one of Asia’s largest tech events is the latest example of the world’s fourth-largest economy looking to not only continue its legacy of tech innovation but also evolve into an entrepreneurial and startup destination.

“Japan has implemented a range of policies designed to support overseas startups and these include substantial subsidies for research and development,” said Yuya Makino, Japan’s Guangzhou consulate-general, during the event. With a gross domestic product of more than $4.2 trillion, the Asian economy has also witnessed a dramatic increase in venture capital investment over the past several years, according to Makino.

“I think we’ve been eclipsed by China and markets like India and Southeast Asia over the last 15-20 years or so, but now there’s enough momentum to boost Japan’s innovations both from the private and public sectors. That’s the big thing that we’re starting to see in Japan,” Akio Tanaka, partner at investment firm Headline VC, told the audience.

Meanwhile, many big Japanese corporations are looking to keep up investments in China in order to retain a presence in the country, with its huge population and big potential, said Jie He, China office representative of Global Brain Corporation, a Tokyo-based venture capital firm. For instance, some are looking to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) as a business possibility because of its huge population, said Kenichi Okada, Japan’s Hong Kong consulate-general.

Below are some of the innovative efforts presented by companies at the Japan Tech Forum during this year’s BEYOND EXPO, held in Macao between May 22-25.

Sony introduced a project using haptics technology for entertainment that was materialized in the form of a floor, and said walking on the floor would provide users with realistic and captivating sensations of various walking terrains. The company’s engineers packed sensors and motors in the floor to accentuate the experience. It can be made to emulate desert and ice and create immersive and interactive experiences for theme parks, art museums, and livehouses.

The company has had an extensive and in-depth research and development plan for China, ranging from entertainment to mobility and elderly care, according to Takenaka Mikio, a vice president of Sony (China) Limited.

Fujifilm shared the company’s story of technological innovation with an open mindset. The Japanese company established an open innovation hub in 2014 in hopes of creating value that “would illuminate the future with its business partners,” said Yonghua Shi, corporate communication director at FUJIFILM (China) Investment Co., Ltd. One of the examples from the hub was a joint development effort between Fujifilm and Daikin. With the use of ventilating soundproofing material from Fujifilm, Japan’s air-conditioner manufacturer managed to reduce operating noises of its products by over 20%.

A similar entity was also established in Shanghai in 2020, followed by the launch of Fujifilm’s innovation program in China for the first time last year in partnership with ReGACY Innovation Group, in order to accelerate its technology-driven business development.

Tokyo-headquartered chemical maker Asahi Kasei presented a new optical transparent resin called AZP, which has optical characteristics not possible with existing transparent resins. It is widely expected to serve as a next-generation material that can take the place of optical glass. The AZP lenses can be used in VR (Virtual Reality) headsets to provide a larger field of view by polarization-based optical folding, allowing more compact headsets. The technology boasts reduced ghosts and flares, as well as improved contrast, making possible a clear field of view by minimizing the effects of birefringence, a phenomenon of double refraction.

Jason Ho, the Co-founder of BEYOND Expo, invited Jon Creyts, the CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), to discuss the urgent need for global cooperation, investment, and innovative technology to address climate change on Wednesday at the BEYOND Expo 2024 opening ceremony.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Jon Creyts. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

1. Jason: Looking ahead, what key policy changes or initiatives do you believe are essential for driving technology and the adoption of different solutions globally?

Jon: When we think about climate change, it impacts more than just the environment. This is about health, livelihoods, and thriving communities. When we think about SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), they’re all interconnected. We have to address climate change in ways that enhance all aspects of society and tackle all the SDGs simultaneously.

We’ve talked a lot about EVs here. Certainly, when you look at a place like Delhi, the current health issues related to pollution are largely the result of vehicular traffic. Today, in Delhi, driving an EV costs only 1/4th of what it does to operate an internal combustion engine vehicle. However, the system isn’t set up to support that right now. You actually pay three times the interest rate on an electric vehicle compared to an internal combustion engine vehicle. However, if we make this transition, we can actually save significant amounts of money, minimizing local air pollution, and creating new economies and abilities to grow.

This is true not just in India but throughout the global South, like in Nigeria. If you switch to two- and three-wheeled electric vehicles, you wind up saving about $1,000 for one person over the eight-year lifetime of that vehicle. That’s a massive boost, almost half a year’s worth of pay in Nigeria that you’re saving, by shifting and embracing some of these new technologies.

2. Jason: How can we ensure climate tech innovations are accessible and affordable for people in need in these developing countries?

Jon: This is not just a challenge, this is an opportunity. When we think about it, the scale of the investment that is required here is approximately $100 trillion over the next 25 years. Right now, that investment is massively skewed when we look at the overall geography. For instance, the United States, as a country, invests about 60 times more than Africa as a continent. We have to rectify that, we have to shift and introduce some strategic interventions that effectively redirect capital flow within the system. 

That capital has to accomplish three major objectives. Firstly, there are carbon-intensive assets out there that cannot run to the end of their life cycle. We have to shut them down before they become economically viable as we can’t afford to release all that carbon into the atmosphere. We need to create mechanisms like carbon trading and other supportive measures to help support that transition. Initiatives like the Just Energy Transition partnerships in regions like Indonesia and Vietnam are currently helping to create some of the funds and financing mechanisms to support these countries in their transition efforts. 

We have to do two other things. We have to accelerate innovation, especially in hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement, aluminum, heavy freight, shipping, etc. These ideas are going to come from all over the world, and we need to ensure that there is alignment between venture capital, equity investment, and bank financing to support these innovations. 

Thirdly, we have to scale existing solutions. This is the area where significant reform needs to happen so that we can mitigate the risk associated with project pipelines, throughout the global south, where projects are necessary to enable leapfrogging, as Siddharth mentioned earlier, to achieve new economic paradigms. That has to be done through coordinated multilateral bank support to de-risk projects alongside private capital investment. This ensures initiatives like mini-grids, microgrids, solar energy, and electric vehicles are rapidly deployed in  the places that need them the most, which are the fastest-growing areas of the world requiring that support.

3. Jason: What role do you see for public and private partnerships in scaling up investment and developing climate tech solutions?

Jon: Public-private partnerships are at the core of how this whole energy transition needs to happen. When we think about scaling, I was here yesterday at the Southern China Hydrogen Energy Association, a group in Guangzhou, that is focused specifically on how to bring a hydrogen economy into being. For that to happen, you have to align research, you have to align capital, and you have to ultimately get whole sets of infrastructure to jump at the same time to a wholly different cost space. When you start doing that as a system, you end up actually creating the conditions for something new to thrive, grow, and compete.

That doesn’t happen on its own. It requires an independent nonprofit or a collaboration between the government, for-profit and civil society institutions to align all the different stakeholders. That’s true for hydrogen, that’s true if you want to realign the global aviation industry, and that’s true if you want to deal with global shipping. You need to get the industry, the customers, the financiers, and the policymakers together to build the ratchet mechanism that then allows everything to move just a little bit differently. And then, ultimately, you’re able to transform.

We’re seeing that happen in aviation and some of the leadership related to staffing. We’re seeing that happen in shipping and in some of the new work that the IMO is doing to move toward zero-carbon fuels. Going forward, we will be seeing that happen in steel. where you will see buyers aligning on different aspects of what exactly constitutes low carbon steel and how to certify it, track it, and trace it. These are all necessary impacts, but they are made easier when you actually have some coordination, and entities like the UN, and the South China Hydrogen Energy Association, are working to help bring about change in the whole system.

4. Jason: If you could have any superpower to combat climate change, what would it be?

Jon: Fossil fuels have gotten us to where we are today. But I wish I could just snap my fingers and have everybody forget and stop believing that they are the source of safety and security in the world. Because the truth is, when we look at where we are today, the conflicts, the concentration of wealth, the air pollution, the climate pollution that we’re seeing, fossil fuels are not serving us well anymore. In fact, when we look at renewable sources, wind and solar are the cheapest new forms of energy for 95% of the people on the planet.

When you start combining that with some of the innovations that are happening in batteries that we heard Robin (CATL CEO) talk about earlier, we can see our pathway to a much cleaner, more sustainable, and secure energy future. We can just let ourselves believe that it can happen and drive toward it, rather than believe that we have to constantly go back to  trusting that fossil fuels are more secure.

As emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to renewable energy, show potential to tackle global challenges, they are also shaping the vision of the world’s largest electric vehicle battery manufacturer. 

Robin Zeng, founder, chairman, and CEO of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, shared his vision at the BEYOND EXPO 2024 opening ceremony, one of Asia’s largest tech events.

His remarks have been edited for brevity and clarity. 

I am happy to visit Macao, again, and attend the BEYOND EXPO. 

CATL has been the No.1 [battery maker] in the world over the last seven years. Still, something important to us is how far battery technology innovations can go beyond passenger cars, commercial trucks, and airplanes. We are thinking about how to make airplanes electrified.

There are three uncertainties that matter to me and CATL. 

One thing is the uncertainty in the future. There are a lot of things taking place on the technology side. For example, AI is coming. I just talked to colleagues about what AI can do, what AI for science can do, and how much they [AI for science] can improve the efficiency of innovations. Can we make some revolutionary innovations from AI? That is where we are technology-wise, and that is why we put a lot of research and resources there, looking for the future. 

Secondly, to be economically wise. We are in a time of transition from the traditional economy into the new economy. We call it a technology-driven economy. 

Then, there are geopolitical issues.

Innovation is the key word for everyone, especially in the technology industry. For example, today when you drive an EV, there is the problem of range, the problem of charging, and the problem of low-temperature performance. You may think: ‘Can I have one charge and then drive my car for 1,000 kilometers?’ So that is why we keep innovating new technologies, which can ease the concerns of our consumers at the end of the day. We have to do that to differentiate ourselves and satisfy consumers’ needs with their EVs. 

We have invested around $10 billion in research and development in the last 10 years. We have used the most advanced materials to make the battery electrochemical systems more optimized for their needs. We also have a lot of innovations in battery structure, such as CTP (Cell-to-Pack). Why put a cell into a module and then into a pack and not just put a cell directly into a pack? Why do we need a pack? We can put the cells into the vehicle chassis, which can dramatically reduce the components of the whole pack and, therefore, be very energy efficient.

Also, we are looking for very fast charging, and that is what we provide with our Shenxing batteries. You can charge it for 10 minutes and then go 400 kilometers. It is similar to a gasoline engine car already. Next step, we are going to have what we call the “6C charging,” which will be down to six minutes. So quicker and quicker. Faster and better.

Another thing I want to emphasize is the cycle life and the storage life of the battery. Today people still do not fully explore the battery’s function. 

So you bought a car. Every day, the driving range might be only 50 kilometers. But this is a 600-kilometer-range car, so you have a 550-kilometer equivalent battery that is wasted and sleeping. Why not put this battery (power back) into the grid? The battery is there the whole day. They can help the grid.

Energy storage is so important. Today, because of energy storage, we can store energy in the morning and use it in the afternoon and night. We can even store energy for the whole year. That is why there is more freedom for energy use, which can create a lot of new businesses and that is the reason we want to get into this. 

On the other hand, renewable energy is not stable because of climate change. There needs to be ways to stabilize them and create electricity, which can help the industries. That is another reason why we are stepping into this.

We recently unveiled TENER — the world’s first mass-producible 6.25 MWh energy storage system with zero degradation in the first five years of use, which would make a zero-carbon society easier. We already have five zero-carbon factories, and we want to extend our capabilities into more industries and society. 

As the world’s temperature continues to increase, we need to react faster — not only to ease the concerns about climate change but also to adapt our economies to this new trend.

Siddharth Chatterjee, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China, said that technology, innovation, and big data can help overcome some of the critical challenges among 70 ongoing conflicts worldwide. He made the remarks while addressing the opening ceremony of the BEYOND EXPO 2024 on Wednesday.

Below is the transcript of Chatterjee’s conversation with Jason Ho, co-founder of BEYOND EXPO. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

Jason Ho: UNSDG is the sustainable development goals proposed in 2012. Looking ahead, what key policy changes or initiatives do you believe are essential for driving technology and the adoption of different solutions globally? 

Siddharth Chatterjee: I think we have gotten completely off track with the UNSDG. In the last three years with COVID-19, where the UN secretary-general was calling about rescuing SDG, what is clear is that for the first time post-Second World War, we are seeing an interlocking crisis. We have seen a crisis of health with the COVID pandemic, which has shown the fragility of human health and health systems. 

The second is a crisis of the climate, which is hanging like a sword over humanity — whether it was the hurricane in Florida, which upended lives and livelihoods, or the floods we have seen in Europe and China, and today in Pakistan, 60% of the country was under water. So it is a major challenge. 

Then we have ongoing conflicts. It’s not just Ukraine and Gaza. We have 70 ongoing conflicts. It is really a polycrisis. 

But quite clearly, climate affects everybody. Therefore, we have to look at avenues where technology, innovation, and big data can help us overcome some of the critical challenges. How do we make sure that we stay faithful to the Paris Agreement? 

Therefore, to me, events like BEYOND EXPO — and big credit to you for doing that — are how we harness new partnerships. 

We have been talking about green tech, EV, where China already has 60% electric vehicles across its cities. I think what we need to do now is find a new multilateral space for bringing nation-states — and not just nation-states — but public-private partnerships to give velocity to the climate agenda because quite clearly that 1.5 degrees Celsius rise may become completely unachievable unless we get together to deal with it. We are going to see extreme temperatures. 

The secretary-general has already warned that we have gone from global warming to global boiling. So that is something we have to remain mindful of.

Jason Ho: You often talk about multilateralism from the UN’s standpoint or your perspective. How can we further global development?

Siddharth Chatterjee: Back in 2022, I wrote a piece that if the U.S. and China collaborate, they can save the world when it comes to the current planetary crisis we are witnessing. I was very happy that much more exchanges have happened in 2023. The key point is we will need the leadership of China, and it will need the leadership of the United States. We will need the leadership of the European Union. It is because together they have the bandwidth, the intellectual capital, and the resources to be able to make a leapfrog moment. 

We need a leapfrog moment, which means that countries have to remain faithful toward the commitment. In particular, developed countries have to remain faithful to their commitment to putting in that $100 billion a year for climate change adaptation. We are happy to see the Loss and Damage Fund is coming. I am much more optimistic now than I was in 2022 because then, ultimately, the U.S. and China did get together in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. It was a reasonably good result. So I think I am seeing progress there. 

We have to put our politics aside when it comes to the climate because everybody is affected. 

And here is something very interesting about why the multilateral space is so crucial. Previously when Beijing used to get sandstorms, it used to come from Inner Mongolia. I would encourage a lot of people to go visit the Kubuqi Desert, the seventh-largest desert in China. It is an agricultural wonderland. It produced 3.2 gigabytes of electricity from solar and wind. The solar panels and the wind panels are so high that they have utilized the real estate below these panels, and it is a complete convergence of technology and innovation. 

That place has a per capita GDP higher than the national average. Now, this is the kind of knowledge of combating desertification with the advent of technology and innovation that we can bring to bear in places like sub-Saharan Africa. If you do not have the sandstorms stopped in Inner Mongolia, you will continue to get sandstorms in Beijing. 

So the key is you have to have a multilateral space in the climate agenda — air pollution. Now Beijing has cleared up its air. I run half marathons every month in Beijing. It has perhaps one of the best AQI levels. But what happens when the climatic conditions or pollutants from other parts of China come into Beijing’s space?  

We will have to look at the whole and therefore the community of nations has to come together. The secretary-general has been faithful to his call to action that we have to deal with the climate agenda. 

And here, again, I want to commend President Xi for the clearest articulation on the climate agenda, when he said China will go for carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Now the UN is working with the Chinese government to look at what kind of innovation and big data and technology can be used. But at the same time, what I am urging the government to do — and working with my counterparts in other countries — is what kind of knowledge can we share with them from this experience. 

Jason Ho: How can we ensure the climate tech innovations are accessible and also affordable for people in need in these. I this is not just a challenge. This is an opportunity, right?

Siddharth Chatterjee: How did China make this leapfrog within itself with per capita GDP at $180 in 1979? It was about scale and volume and achieving economies of scale. This is precisely why we need high technology to get very cheap, but consumption will be huge. Now, that is the opportunity that opens up.

I have served half my life in Africa. Africa needs a leapfrogging into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It does not necessarily have to go through the typical rise of Europe, China, and the rest of the world. They can jump into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

I tell this to many partners in Beijing: I say that by 2050, Africa will have 2.5 billion people, and they will have 900 million young people. They will be the future of consumption and production. If you invest now, you will have a huge return on investment in the future. 

This is one area where China can define a way forward in this climate transition that is there because of the amount of innovation, the amount of knowledge that is, the place where the world has to come together to look at how we become more efficient at carbon capture. Now, that is one place where we are way behind. 

And while technology is moving forward, we have not been able to diagnose that space. Can you imagine if we could look at an entire continent like Africa for carbon capture? It could be a solution to many of the challenges that we are already confronted with. 

So I think this would need, again, the resurrection of multiculturalism. And that is why the secretary-general is hosting the summit of the future. It is a once-in-a-generation, a lifetime opportunity to look at how we reposition multilateralism so that at least we can converge around the issues that challenge us in health, climate conflicts, inequalities, and economic disruptions. 

These are the places where people can come together because the aspirations of an African parent are no different from the aspirations of a Chinese parent or that of an American parent. The future is really to make sure that the climate impact is now sustained because one thing is clear — it is impacting food security, it is impacting health. Today, 800 million people are going to bed hungry every night because of droughts, famine, and instability. 

Volkswagen’s premium brand Audi said on Monday it would strengthen its partnership with China’s SAIC to develop a new electric vehicle platform, a move that would enable the German automaker to reduce time-to-market by over 30% in the Chinese market. The first models built upon the so-called Advanced Digitized Platform will cover the B-class and C-class vehicle segments and hit the market in 2025, according to a statement. SAIC, a state-owned manufacturing partner of Volkswagen and General Motors in China, in July announced a deal with Audi to license EV technologies under its IM Motors luxury lineup. Volkswagen has been working with Xpeng Motors in a similar effort for its namesake mainstream brand. [Reuters, SAIC statement, in Chinese]

China’s Gotion High-tech on May 17 unveiled a Tesla-like yet cheaper cylindrical battery as well as a more common prismatic battery with ultra-fast charging among its latest products.

Additionally, the Volkswagen-invested battery maker announced its participation in the global race to make all-solid-state batteries, as China looks to catch up with rivals in producing an alternative battery success story. Speaking to reporters during its annual technology conference, Gotion’s management stated that the company would continue its global expansion despite uncertain geopolitical conditions.

New batteries

Gotion is aiming to begin mass production of its new larger-format 4695 cylindrical battery – which is 46 millimeters in diameter and 95 millimeters in length – in the fourth quarter of this year. Shipment will then begin first to overseas markets, said Cheng Qian, president of the firm’s Asia-Pacific business unit.

The nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) battery cell targets producers of luxury vehicle models that look to provide their owners with an unbeatable driving range and charging speed. It has an energy density of 285 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), charges from 10% to 70% in nine minutes, and maintains at least 70% capacity for 2,500 cycles at room temperature, said Gotion. 

A vertical integration strategy is behind the battery’s cost advantage over rivals, according to Gotion. The Chinese battery maker has reduced dependency on external sources for raw materials including for its cathodes and anodes, ensuring relatively stable production in eastern China’s Anhui province. It also handled 300,000 tons of old batteries last year in an effort to make the most of recyclable metals including nickel and cobalt.

Gotion also announced it has begun making at scale its so-called “G-Current” battery, which could provide a 5C charge rate and allow it to recharge from a low state of charge to 80% in less than 10 minutes. The prismatic rectangular batteries will be available to customers for various battery chemistries including NCM and cheaper lithium iron phosphate (LFP). 

The G-Current is expected to meet surging demand for ultra-fast charging in the Chinese market, not just for battery-powered EV owners but for those driving plug-in hybrids. At least “several” gigawatt hours (GWh) of the capacity will come into force later this year for batteries supplied to clients with their PHEV models, Cao Yong, vice president of Gotion’s Engineering R&D Institute, told reporters (our translation).

The company also gave updates about an LFP product containing manganese. It plans to supply two international clients as early as the third quarter of this year with the product, with more than a dozen carmakers testing the LFP. A 140 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack, first unveiled to the public last year, could power an EV for more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) on a single charge.

All-solid-state battery 

Gotion is hoping to start trial production of all-solid-state batteries by 2027 and is aiming for volume production by 2030, it was revealed, with the company publicly sharing its progress in the key emerging technology for the first time. The prototype battery cell has 30 Amp-Hours (Ah) of capacity and an energy density of 350 Wh/kg. The pack is set to reach 280 Wh/kg at a systemic level, giving it a driving range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) on a single charge. 

Like its Japanese rivals, China’s fifth largest EV battery maker by shipment is matching sulfide-based solid electrolytes, which theoretically gives the battery a high ionic conductivity, with silicon-based anodes, a non-toxic and promising active material, according to Pan Ruijun, a technical lead at Gotion. The company said the 3000-charge battery maintains thermal stability at 200°C above operating temperature.

Pan expects Chinese companies to shape the future of solid-state batteries globally, not only because the government is ramping up support for their development, but also because China is a major source of key raw materials. Japan is by far the leading force in this innovation, with Toyota aiming for deployment as early as 2027. Chinese auto and battery majors such as GAC are playing catch up. 

Overseas expansion

Gotion management also defended the company’s strategic supply of the American market, saying tariffs on Chinese battery imports would have little impact on the company’s US business operations. 

The Chinese battery maker plans local battery production, geared towards energy storage (one of its major exports to the US), in 2026, said Chen Ruilin, vice president of international business. The Biden Administration has said it would increase the tariff rate for Chinese non-EV lithium-ion batteries from 7.5% to 25% in 2026. Gotion’s raw material factory in Michigan is set to begin operation by the end of this year, and it is aiming for volume production of battery cells at a $2 billion plant in Illinois by the middle of 2025, according to Chen. 

Gotion, headquartered in the eastern city of Hefei, has ambitiously proposed a plan to have 100 GWh of capacity in each of its major overseas markets, namely the Americas, Europe and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region, by 2030. It already makes batteries in Thailand, as well as at one of its European factories. The Illinois plant is expected to begin production this year, according to the state governor’s office.

On May 17, Huawei released the Star Edition of its Nova 12 Ultra smartphone, featuring the Kirin 9010L processor, an upgrade on the standard Ultra model which is equipped with the Chinese tech giant’s Kirin 9000SL processor. Tech bloggers and smartphone buyers have stated that the Nova 12 Ultra Star Edition displays “equipped with Kirin 9010L processor” when the device is set up. In terms of specs, the 9010L processor in the Star Edition features a combination of two high-speed cores running at 2.19GHz, four mid-range cores at 2.18GHz, and three power-efficient cores operating at 1.40GHz. Compared to the previous Nova 12 Ultra model, the Star Edition sees an improvement in performance, according to local media outlet IThome. The 512GB storage variant is available for RMB 4,799 ($664) and the 1TB storage option is priced at RMB 5,599 ($774). [IThome, in Chinese]

Chinese e-commerce player JD has escalated the country’s on-demand delivery battle as it rebrands its retail service and promises to deliver purchased items in as little as 9 minutes. The company announced the upgrade on Monday on its official WeChat account. The brand new business integrates JD’s previous one-hour delivery service and JD Daojia, and is now named JD Miaosong, meaning products delivered in seconds. The dedicated section for Miaosong is located on the homepage of JD’s main app, with shoppers able to select and buy flowers and cakes, coffees and medicines and with orders of RMB 29 ($4) and over eligible for free shipping. JD’s rivals generally promise delivery within half an hour with their on-demand services at present. [JDJD, in Chinese]

TikTok is testing an option for users to upload videos as long as 60 minutes, although the short video platform told tech media outlet TechCrunch that it does not have immediate plans for a wider launch. The ByteDance-owned app has built its name and popularity on the back of seconds-long videos in recent years, pushing longer form-focused rivals including YouTube and Meta to launch similar features in an attempt to retain their user bases. The 60-minute-long video feature is a signal of TikTok’s challenge to YouTube, and is intended to attract content creators to share more by loosening the time limits on videos on the platform. [TechCrunch]

Chinese game developer Game Science has announced that the standard PC edition of Black Myth: Wukong will launch in China on August 26 at a price of RMB 268 ($38). Based on the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West, the highly anticipated action game is widely seen as having the potential to be the very first AAA title from a Chinese developer. The price, which supports refunds, cloud saves, controllers, and does not include in-game purchases, according to the information on the game page, has therefore been met with a generally positive reaction from Chinese gamers on social media, with some even suggesting that the game feels underpriced. Judging by comments on Chinese social media, most players in China are hoping the game becomes a big critical and commercial success. [Game Science Weibo, in Chinese]

The first electric vehicle model of NIO’s lower-priced, family-oriented sub-brand Onvo finally made its debut in Shanghai on Wednesday, the International Day of Families, after three years of development. The coupe-style sports utility vehicle was surrounded at its unveiling by not only hundreds of journalists but also Chinese parents who took their children to the event, and who the company hopes will form the very first owners of the long-anticipated car.

The Chinese EV maker on Wednesday began taking reservations for the Onvo L60 at a pre-sale price tag of RMB 219,900 ($30,471), cheaper by RMB 30,000 than the entry-level Tesla Model Y but with a longer driving range and a roomier interior space, among other advantages. The SUV, scheduled for launch in September, is expected to be priced at under RMB 200,000, and come with NIO’s Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) program, in which customers buy a car and pay for a battery rental service, similar to the company’s scheme for NIO branded cars.

Confident in the strong competitiveness of its offering and a large customer base in China, NIO management said it has “high expectations” for Onvo, which is short for “on voyage” in English. Its Chinese name Ledao translates as “path to happiness.” Speaking to reporters after the debut on Thursday, William Li, founder, chairman, and chief executive of NIO, shared additional details about NIO’s ongoing partnerships for battery swapping with some of China’s most established car manufacturers, including Geely, Changan, and GAC. 

First Onvo EV

NIO’s first mainstream crossover, with a similar shape to its more premium siblings, competes with Tesla’s Model Y, the world’s top-selling electric SUV, from nearly every perspective. The entry-level L60 comes with a driving range of 555 kilometers (345 miles), a bit longer than that of the rear-wheel-drive Model Y (554 km), while the other two variants travel more than 730 km and 1,000 km on a single charge, respectively. 

The company also said that the L60’s outstanding wind resistance, measured by a drag coefficient of 0.229, increases its effective range, while a 900-volt electrical system reduces energy loss to heat, giving it a longer range. The total energy consumption of the car is 12.1 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per 100 kilometers, compared with the 12.5 kWh achieved by the Model Y, according to NIO. 

Li said that NIO will make a “pretty decent” gross margin from the L60, by focusing on core values that matter to Chinese families, rather than producing a vehicle with a dazzling array of unnecessary specs, a move that keeps the car’s overall costs under control. Cost savings also come from NIO and Onvo sharing research and development costs, among other synergies.

The Onvo L60 embraces the vision-based approach advocated by Tesla, which uses cameras and artificial intelligence and gets rid of lidar sensors for autonomous driving. It also uses a smaller and more affordable lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery pack from BYD, according to Reuters.

Battery swaps

NIO also provided details about its extensive power infrastructure network, which is claimed to be the largest of its kind in China with more than 2,415 battery swapping stations as of Wednesday. It has long been a loss-making effort for the company but is now emerging as an attractive option for charging availability and cost reduction for a growing list of Chinese auto giants. 

Onvo owners will only be able to use the company’s newer swap stations (the third- and fourth-generation ones) and will share the facilities with NIO’s partners. Each of the newer swap stations, which can hold more than 20 battery packs of different sizes, can offer more than 400 swaps per day, with each pack being used roughly up to 20 times. Li mentioned the company’s plan to charge partners a service fee of roughly RMB 20-30 per swap. NIO itself completed nearly 70,000 battery swaps per day as of May 8. 

Meanwhile, NIO owners can “refuel” their vehicles at any swap shop, giving them more charging availability and a premium user experience. The company said it is on track to build 1,000 battery swap facilities on its own this year and expand the network for NIO and Onvo from the 2,316 stations available as of the end of last year, while its partners are also set to provide additional resources. 

Li added that he envisaged there being six to seven EV battery sizes at most over the long term, with partners set to use batteries of the same kind as Onvo. NIO currently uses batteries in four sizes with an energy density ranging from 70 to 150 kWh.

READ MORE: Drive I/O | Big bets on battery swaps

TSMC will not utilize ASML’s most advanced High NA EUV (high numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet) lithography machine for its latest A16 (1.6nm) process, a move that contrasts with that of Intel, which recently announced the assembly of the industry’s first commercial High NA EUV machine. Intel has secured all of ASML’s High NA EUV machine capacity for this year, sources said. The Taiwanese chip manufacturer is expected to use its current EUV equipment for several more years, as the price of High NA EUV equipment exceeds 300 million euros, according to TSMC’s vice president of business development Zhang Xiaoqiang. Zhang claimed that TSMC’s existing EUV machines can support its chip production until the end of 2026, at which time the A16 process technology is expected to be mass produced. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

China’s JD beats market expectations for both revenue and profit in the first quarter of 2023, as earnings grew 7% to RMB 260 billion ($36 billion) compared to a year earlier, and net profit amounted to RMB 7.1 billion, a 12.7% increase. A low-price strategy and continuous discount campaigns throughout the year helped bring the retailer a revenue rebound. During an earnings call on Thursday, CEO Sandy Xu said general merchandise “had a great quarter,” with quarterly growth of 8.6% down in large part to the supermarket segment. Xu revealed that supermarket items recorded double-digit GMV and revenue growth in the first three months of this year, and said she expected it to remain an “important growth driver” for JD in the long run. JD Retail’s operating margin fell 0.5% year-on-year to 4.1%, signaling that the price wars have not significantly impacted the company’s main business. JD’s CFO told investors that the company believes business growth and profitability are “more reinforcing than contradictory.” [JD]

Huawei demonstrated its large model’s text-to-image capability at a press conference on May 10, where an interruption occurred during the demo when Ctrl-C was pressed, revealing a piece of code that included “time.sleep(6).” Some netizens suspected that the generated images were not produced by the model but were manually output as local images after waiting for 6 seconds. This led to widespread discussion about the authenticity of the demonstration on the Chinese social platform Weibo. In response to this incident, Huawei stated on Thursday that the images were generated in real time using an open-source large model. The “time.sleep(6)” code indicates a command to wait for the external open-source model to generate the images in real time, rather than retrieving preset images, according to Huawei. The code used in the demonstration is authentic and will be available on the Huawei Ascend community platform, where developers are invited to use it and provide valuable feedback, the company said. [TechWeb, in Chinese]

TikTok owner ByteDance has surprised the artificial intelligence industry with the ultra-low cost of its Doubao model, which the company said is capable of processing 2 million Chinese characters, equivalent to 1.25 million tokens, for RMB 1 ($0.14). OpenAI’s most advanced multimodal model, GPT-4o, also unveiled this week, comes in at $5 per million input tokens handled.

“A good model works well and is affordable to everyone,” Tan Dai, president of Volcano Engine,  ByteDance’s cloud computing services unit, said at an event on Wednesday. “Large usage polishes a good model and dramatically reduces the unit cost of model inference,” he added.

Why it matters: The radical pricing, which Tan explained is achieved through model structuring and hybrid scheduling of cloud computing power, is likely to initiate a price war in China’s AI field after a battle on parameters.

Details: ByteDance’s Doubao large model family consists of nine versions, ranging from a “lite version” to the advanced Doubao Pro, which is able to deal with up to 128,000 token inputs. The range also includes models centered on generating pictures and virtual characters.

• The company did not disclose how many parameters it used to train its most powerful Doubao Pro model.
• The Doubao LLM family shares the same name as ByteDance’s ChatGPT alternative, a free AI bot that the company says has 26 million monthly active users.
• The Doubao model is now open to external developers and other interested parties for cooperation via Volcano Engine, though this comes months after tech rivals Alibaba and Tencent gave enterprise customers access to their models last April and September, respectively.

Context: Earlier this year, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming criticized employees for not being “sensitive enough” to the emergence of new technologies like ChatGPT in an internal meeting, saying that discussions among staff over ChatGPT only started in 2023. His remarks came after the company had already launched the Doubao chatbot in the second half of last year.

On Wednesday, Chinese telecom giant Huawei released the new MateBook 14 at its summer product launch event. The device is the first Huawei laptop to support a stylus. Powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, the MateBook 14 offers 40W TDP (Thermal Design Power) in its slim 14.5mm body and up to 32GB of memory. The new laptop features TÜV Rheinland eye-protection certification, a low blue-light display, 1920Hz high-frequency PWM dimming, and a 2.8K OLED screen that measures 14.2 inches, with a high screen-to-body ratio of 91%. In terms of AI capability, the device integrates AI models from Huawei’s partners including Baidu’s ERNIE Bot, iFLYTEK’s Spark, and Zhipu AI, enabling various AI-assisted user scenarios including office work, learning, and software development. The price of the MateBook 14 ranges from RMB 6,099 ($845) to RMB 8,499 ($1,178) for different storage configurations. [IThome, in Chinese]

Two Chinese chip-makers, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Wuhan Xinxin, are at the early stages of producing high bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors essential for artificial intelligence chipsets, according to a report by Reuters published on Wednesday. China’s leading DRAM (Dynamic Random-Access Memory) manufacturer CXMT has partnered with chip packaging and testing company Tongfu Microelectronics to develop sample HBM chips and has showcased them to clients, Reuters said, citing sources familiar with the matter. Documents from the corporate database Qichacha indicate that Wuhan Xinxin began constructing a factory in February of this year, which is intended to have the capacity to produce 3,000 12-inch HBM wafers per month. CXMT and other Chinese chip firms have also been meeting with semiconductor equipment firms from South Korea and Japan to purchase tools for the development of HBM, sources added. [Reuters]

On Tuesday, Chinese tech giant Tencent released its earnings report for the first quarter of 2024, which ended on March 31. Tencent’s revenue from the international gaming market increased by 3% year-on-year to RMB 13.6 billion ($1.88 billion) during the period, while revenue from the domestic gaming market decreased by 2% year-on-year to RMB 34.5 billion ($4.77 billion). Tencent attributed the domestic year-on-year decline to the impact of deferred revenue.

Why it matters: Over reliance on older hits such as Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite may have led Tencent Games to stagnation, reduced player engagement, and increased its vulnerability to competitors launching new, innovative games. The lack of new hit titles from Tencent may risk diminishing the firm’s long-term growth and revenue potential in a rapidly evolving gaming market.

Details: Tencent’s gaming revenue totaled RMB 48.1 billion ($6.66 billion) in the first three months of 2024, marking a 17.6% increase quarter-on-quarter and a 0.41% decrease year-on-year. A yearly revenue drop but a quarterly rise may signal seasonal trends and indicate the company’s recent improvement in performance despite broader market challenges, including intensified industry competition, economic instability, and declining consumer demand.

• “During the first quarter of 2024, several of our leading games in China and internationally started to benefit from team reorganizations we put in place,” Tencent CEO Ma Huateng said in the financial report, “resulting in an increase in games’ gross receipts and creating a foundation for our games revenue to resume growth in future quarters.”
• In the first quarter, Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite, two of Tencent’s flagship games, experienced a year-on-year decline in revenue. Tencent blamed this on a high base from the Chinese New Year period last year for the former, and weaker commercial content in the second half of 2023 for the latter. However, both games saw a year-on-year revenue increase in March.
• During the quarter, several domestic games achieved their highest-ever gross totals, with titles such as Fight of the Golden Spatula, CrossFire Mobile, and Arena Breakout leading the way, according to the company. Recently released overseas games, including VALORANT and Lost Ark, both exhibited robust growth, the firm said.
• Supercell, a Finnish game development company that Tencent acquired in June 2016, experienced growth in both usage and gross receipts in the overseas gaming market during the reporting period. The multiplayer online battle arena shooter game Brawl Stars’ daily active users more than doubled compared to the previous year, while gross receipts more than quadrupled year-on-year internationally for the title.

Context: In the first quarter, Tencent’s total revenue reached RMB 159.5 billion ($22.08 billion), reflecting a 6% year-on-year increase, while adjusted net profit amounted to RMB 50.27 billion ($6.96 billion), showing a notable 54% year-on-year growth.

• In the first quarter of 2023, Tencent’s revenue from games reached RMB 48.3 billion ($6.9 billion), up 11% up year-on-year. Tencent’s domestic gaming revenue during the period rose 6% year-on-year to RMB 35.1 billion ($5 billion), while its overseas gaming revenue rose 25% to RMB 13.2 billion ($1.8 billion).

Tencent’s profit jumped 54% to RMB 50.3 billion ($7.1 billion) in the first quarter thanks to the Chinese tech giant’s so-called “high-quality revenue streams,” chairman and CEO Pony Ma told investors during the firm’s earnings call. The referred to streams include advertising in Video Accounts and WeChat Search, and e-commerce technology service fees. Quarterly revenue landed at RMB 159.5 billion, representing a 6% year-on-year increase. Specifically, online advertising generated RMB 26.5 billion during the period, a 26% increase that made it the company’s most successful unit in terms of revenue growth during the quarter. However, Tencent’s chief strategy officer James Mitchell said ad growth in subsequent quarters of this year is expected to be “less rapid” than in the first quarter. Time spent on WeChat’s TikTok-like video service is now over twice that spent on its social feed Moments, according to Tencent, with users spending 80% more time than last year on their WeChat video accounts as the company battles for attention from China’s vast online population with rivals Douyin (TikTok) and Kuaishou. [Tencent]

Chinese search engine giant Baidu said on Wednesday it expects its key robotaxi business to break even in the fourth quarter of this year and aims to be the first autonomous ride-hailing project to profit by 2025, as planned. The country’s top search engine unveiled its sixth generation self-driving car, a battery-powered multipurpose vehicle costing RMB 204,600 ($28,316), a fraction of its original price. The RT6, a four-seated all-electric van boasting a spacious cabin, manufactured by partner Jiangling Motors, measures 4.8 meters in length with a wheelbase of roughly 2.8 meters. It is powered by a swappable battery pack and equipped with dozens of sensors, including cameras and lidar units, to allow driverless operations. French market intelligence company Yole Développement estimated in 2018 that robocars would have to be priced at no less than $200,000.

Baidu said it plans to deploy 1,000 such vehicles by year-end in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where it now operates a fully autonomous fleet with hundreds of robotaxis over 3,000 square kilometers (1,158 square miles). The Beijing-headquartered tech company, dubbed “China’s Google,” does not provide a full breakdown of its research and development costs, but chief executive Robin Li told Bloomberg in April 2021 that the firm spent RMB 20 billion on vehicle autonomy in 2020. Li added that the company was determined to invest hugely in self-driving technologies over the next 10-20 years. The latest move comes after news that the Chinese government would allow Tesla to test and operate robotaxis, an idea proposed by its boss Elon Musk during his visit to the country last month, according to a report by China Daily on May 9.

“With decreasing costs and increasing orders, Apollo Go’s unit economics (UE) is nearing break-even, expected to achieve balance in the fourth quarter of 2024 and turn profitable by 2025,” Baidu said in a press release. [TechNode reporting]

Note: This article has been updated to include an announcement released on May 15, which highlighted the unit economics (UE) of Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing platform Apollo Go, not the company’s self-driving car business, is nearing break-even.

China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba reported an 86% profit slump in the March quarter despite revenue growing 7% from a year earlier, largely due to changes in the valuation of equity investments. Value of goods sold on Taobao and Tmall saw double-digit growth, as did order numbers on the two platforms, driving revenue of the company’s domestic marketplace up 4% to RMB 93.2 billion. Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said he believed that the strategy of “offering good merchandise at a competitive price while supporting excellent service” had helped the firm’s online GMV growth rate back to double digits. “Increasing customer purchase frequency and enhanced user experience is our number one objective this year,” Wu said on a Tuesday earnings call. The group recorded RMB 221.87 billion in revenue for the three months ended March 31. Within Alibaba’s cloud computing unit, AI-related revenue was a major highlight for the firm with triple-digit growth year-over-year as companies across multiple industries continue to integrate artificial intelligence into their businesses. [Alibaba]

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD will finally roll out its first electric pickup truck, named the Shark, in Mexico on Tuesday, marking its entry into the growing segment and firing the starting gun on a new race with established rivals from Ford to Tesla on the global stage.

The Shark is set to be a high-end offering and is the latest model in the company’s expanding Ocean family of EVs, which target younger and tech-savvy consumers compared with its Dynasty family. It also shares the company’s latest EV platform with the Bao 5, a luxury off-road sports utility vehicle under its Formula Leopard marque, or Fangchengbao in Chinese pinyin. Holding a dominant position in the home market, BYD is ramping up efforts to pursue global opportunities, and the launch of the Shark will be the latest attempt by a Chinese automaker to push upmarket and create a global brand.

With the BYD Shark framed by some as a serious threat to the Ford F-150 Lightning, below are some of the most important details about the pickup ahead of its official launch at 10:30 a.m. (UTC -6) today.

#1 The Shark will share the latest DMO (dual-mode off-road) plug-in hybrid EV platform with the dual-motor Bao 5 SUV, which uses a 1.5/2.0-liter high-performance petrol engine and delivers a combined output of more than 500 kW. BYD will also likely use high-quality materials and modern equipment in the truck to provide a high-spec cabin similar to that of its sibling, featuring the likes of advanced LED displays for infotainment and a large-sized head-up display unit to provide real-time information to drivers. 

#2 It also seems inevitable that a range of BYD’s in-house technologies will be incorporated into this strategically important model, including “blade batteries,” which boast improved thermal stability and strong resistance to collisions, as well as the DiSus, an electric-powered body control suspension system. In addition to featuring an adjustable suspension system powered by artificial intelligence algorithms, the Shark will also be able to power other vehicles as well as electronic devices with its bidirectional charging capability, which could be a useful and attractive function for camping expeditions. 

#3 Both PHEV and all-electric Sharks are expected to be available to global consumers, in line with BYD’s other international offerings. The PHEV will likely have a driving range of 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) on a full charge and full tank of gas and could be charged from 30% to 80% in just a few minutes, if the performance of the Bao 5 is repeated for the pickup, as seems likely. It may also provide low energy consumption similar to the Bao 5 which reports an impressive fuel consumption of 7.8L/100 km.

#4 The BYD Shark will probably focus on the overseas markets for the foreseeable future, as there have been restrictions on commercial vehicles including pickups in China. Some local governments have prohibited pickup trucks from being driven in their downtown areas, including Beijing, Hangzhou, and Chengdu. Nevertheless, the new model will be produced at BYD’s Chinese plants, at least for now. The company is looking for a location in Mexico to build a factory, BYD Americas chief executive Stella Li told Reuters early this year.

#5 BYD’s first pickup truck will compete against the Ford F-150 Lightning, the Tesla Cybertruck, as well as the Great Wall P series, at an expected price tag of around RMB 300,000 ($41,460). Rival Great Wall Motor was the top-selling brand of pickup truck in China in 2023, posting sales of 143,851 units globally and accounting for roughly half of the domestic market in the category last year. Ford reported a 6.8% growth in the US in the first quarter of 2024, thanks to strong demand for its pickup trucks.

Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) has again recorded a quarterly drop in revenue but a boost to its profits, with a 3.4% earnings drop to RMB 6.77 billion ($937 million) and a 23.9% net profit increase to RMB 1.42 billion in the first three months of this year. This marks the third straight quarter of declining revenues for the Chinese entertainment giant. Revenue from social entertainment services, including livestreaming, slumped by nearly half to RMB 1.76 billion from a year prior, which in turn largely drove the cost of revenues to decrease by 14.8%. The company recorded 113.5 million paid users during the period, a 6.8 million boost in membership that it said was its “largest quarter-over-quarter net increase to date.” In its earnings filing, TME also mentioned it has introduced AI large audio models with the aim of increasing the accuracy of the music promoted to users. [TME]

Chinese phone brand Vivo on Monday unveiled it new flagship model the X100 Ultra, with a 200MP telephoto camera co-developed with Samsung. The X100 Ultra is the first smartphone in the industry to come with a 1/1.4-inch telephoto sensor, the company said, featuring an f/2.67 aperture and an 85mm equivalent focal length. The device also comes with Zeiss T* coating and Zeiss APO (Apochromatic) certification, which are expected to enhance clarity and reduce colour fringing, which can occur along edges of high contrast in an image. In terms of other specs, the X100 Ultra is equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, 6.78-inch E7 LTPO AMOLED display, 5,500 mAh battery, and two-way satellite communication in China. The new phone is priced from RMB 6,499 ($898), which comes with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. [IThome, in Chinese]

China’s biggest short video platform Douyin will stop influencers who post content involving politics, economics, law and healthcare, letting third-party advertisers upload commercials to their channels. According to the TikTok sister app’s latest notice to short video channels, the rule will take effect on Wednesday. A U-turn on a previous decision to allow influencers to authorize PR personnel to update their channels, the decision will have a visible impact on channels, and mean influencers make less money than before. ByteDance-owned Douyin said the change “does not affect creators’ other cash or monetization capabilities nor does it end influencers’ creation on the above serious topics” after the rule was misunderstood by the public as meaning the platform no longer supported coverage of political and financial issues. [Jiemian, in Chinese]

Retail employees from China, Australia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore flew to Apple’s headquarters in California last week for a four-day training session on demonstrating the mixed-reality Vision Pro headset, according to sources from Bloomberg. Apple is expected to expand distribution of the Vision Pro after this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) from June 10 to June 14, although its exact release date in international markets has not yet been announced. Apple earlier reportedly slowing shipments of Vision Pro in the US market amid declining customer interest due to its $3,499 price tag. Apple has yet to disclose international pricing. [Bloomberg]

Fast fashion retailer Shein is refueling its IPO ambitions by pivoting to a London listing, as its US listing remains in limbo, according to a Reuters report which cited two sources. However, the China-connected company, which moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2022, is said to still prefer a public debut in New York.

Why it matters: The choice of London as a listing venue is being seen as the second best option for Shein, whose potential US IPO continues to be viewed as a bellwether for the geopolitical state of play between the US and China.

Details: Shein reportedly said it would update China’s securities regulator over any change in its listing aim, and file with the London Stock Exchange as soon as this month, according to Reuters.

• Political headwinds Shein faces in the US, its largest market by revenue, show no sign of diminishing. Republican Senator Marco Rubio in April asked Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to investigate Shein and Temu on claims that ultra-low prices on the two platforms are a result of “a combination of” intellectual property theft, trade exploitation, strong backing from the Chinese government, and alleged use of forced labor. 
• The push follows a February letter in which the senator urged the SEC to block Shein’s IPO unless the company disclosed more details on “business practices and risks to their business.”
• In 2023, Shein emerged as the third-biggest online fashion retailer by net sales in America, after Amazon and Walmart, data conducted by ECDB and Statista showed.
• A source quoted by Reuters said that China’s securities regulator told Shein early this year it would not recommend a US listing due to supply chain issues. Shein’s rise globally is largely thanks to its huge pool of China-based suppliers that lower costs and enable a fast turnaround on new item production.

Context: Last year, despite stronger scrutiny of its business operations, Shein recorded over $2 billion in profits – a figure that had more than doubled from the previous year. The company sold a total of approximately $45 billion worth of merchandise globally during the period, according to a Financial Times report.

• As part of Chinese regulations issued in February 2023, China-based companies, including those incorporated offshore, are required to go through an official review process if they seek to list overseas.

BYD is continuing to expand its Ocean family of electric vehicles, seeking government approval to bring out a smaller version of its Seal sports sedan, according to information revealed by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on May 11. The compact hatchback will measure 4.6 meters in length and 1.5 meters in height with a wheelbase of roughly 2.8 meters, making it significantly larger than its siblings including the RMB 99,800 ($13,795) Dolphin and lower-priced Seagull. The new Seal variant has a lightweight and nimble feel with short overhangs and athletic lines, and could be named the Seal 06 GT, Seal 05 EV, or Seal MiNI, pictures published on the MIIT website showed. China’s biggest EV maker sold 127,323 plug-in hybrid and all-electric Seal vehicles last year, bringing it into fierce competition with rivals’ models including the Zeekr 007 from Geely and IM LS6 from SAIC. [TechNode reporting, MIIT release, in Chinese]

Taiwan-based chip manufacturer MediaTek may partner with US chip giant Nvidia to develop an AI PC processor based on ARM architecture, according to Taiwanese media outlet Economic Daily News, aiming to complete the tape-out in the third quarter of 2024. The new chip may cost as much as $300. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is scheduled to visit Taiwan on June 2 for the COMPUTEX (Taipei International Information Technology Show), and MediaTek will also announce details of its collaboration with Nvidia on the AI PC chip next month, the report added. Additionally, ARM, the British semiconductor and software design company, is reportedly planning to launch its own AI chip prototype and establish an AI chip division next spring before entering mass production by handing it over to contractors next fall. [Economic Daily News, in Chinese]

Chery Auto on May 9 introduced the first midsize electric crossover under its mainstream luxury Exeed lineup with both all-electric and plug-in hybrid versions, which the Chinese automaker said would compete with the Tesla Model Y and Audi Q5L. With a starting price of RMB 189,800 ($26,236), the extended-range version of the Sterra ET accelerates from 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) in 7.8 seconds and travels up to 1,518 kilometers (943 miles) on a full charge and full tank of gas. The all-electric variant of the five-seater, with an 800-volt electrical system and priced between RMB 229,800 and RMB 319,800, has a driving range of up to 760 km and boasts a 475 km additional range on 12 minute fast charging. Chery said the five-meter-long sports utility vehicle could now function by itself on Chinese highways and will be capable of navigating on more sophisticated urban roads in some cities by June. The state-owned automaker has previously hired Tesla’s former lead machine learning engineer, Gu Junli, to lead the development of its advanced driver assistance system. [TechNode reporting, Chery release, in Chinese]

The regional German court has ruled that Chinese tech company Lenovo and its subsidiary Motorola infringed on the patent rights of US firm InterDigital. The court in Munich prohibited both companies from selling devices supporting 4G/5G networks (smartphones and tablets) across Germany. InterDigital is a technology research and development company providing wireless and video technologies for mobile devices, networks, and services worldwide. InterDigital had hoped to provide licensing on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms, but said Lenovo failed to comply. “Following the court’s finding that Lenovo’s behavior constitutes a hold-out, we hope Lenovo reverses course and finally takes a fair and reasonable license,” commented Josh Schmidt, the Chief Legal Officer of InterDigital. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

Alibaba on Friday opened its new global headquarters in Hangzhou, a combination of office and leisure facilities that total nearly 1 million square meters. The new complex nods to the e-commerce giant’s roots and demonstrates its commitment to its home city of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, Chinese media outlets reported. It features gardens, a football field, a 400-meter running track, basketball and badminton courts, and several gyms, and is also equipped with barrier-free facilities, according to the company’s official statement on WeChat. Alibaba’s new campus in Beijing officially went into operation on the same day, with the complex providing work space for 19,000 employees. [Alibaba, in Chinese]

Shanghai-based chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) on Thursday unveiled its first quarter financial results, revealing that the state-owned company achieved a revenue of $1.75 billion, representing a 19.7% year-on-year increase. This result marks the first time that SMIC surpassed both United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) and GlobalFoundries in quarterly revenue, with the two Taiwan-based firms reporting revenues of $1.71 billion and $1.549 billion respectively for the same period.

The ranking does not include IDM (Integrated Device Manufacturer) companies such as Intel and Samsung.

Why it matters: Amid US sanctions on Chinese chip development, SMIC’s growth signals China’s efforts to strengthen its domestic semiconductor capabilities and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers.

Details: Its first quarter financial results place SMIC second among the world’s wafer foundries, albeit with a considerable gap to TSMC, which reported a revenue of $18.262 billion for the same period.

• In the first quarter, SMIC shipped 1.79 million units of 8-inch wafers, a 7% increase compared to the previous quarter. The company’s capacity utilization rate reached 80.8%, up by 4% quarter-on-quarter.
• Revenue distribution across chip-related business segments is as follows: smartphones account for 31.2%, computers and tablets for 17.5%, consumer electronics for 30.9%, IoT (Internet of Things) and wearables for 13.2%, and industrial and automotive for 7.2%. 
• Revenue from China makes up 81.6% of the firm’s total, while the US contributes 14.9%, and the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region accounts for 3.5%.
• However, SMIC’s net profit for the quarter plummeted by 68.9% compared to the previous year, to $71.8 million. The semiconductor industry as a whole witnessed a substantial decline in profits in early 2024 due to product price drops and inventory backlog, according to local media outlet Jiemian. SMIC told Jiemian that this net profit decline was primarily due to shifts in product assortment, depreciation, and diminished investment returns.
• SMIC CEO Zhao Haijun disclosed that the company received urgent orders from customers in the smartphone and computer sectors in the first quarter, the same Jiemian report said. Efforts are underway to coordinate orders from lower-priority customers for delayed processing, and the 12nm chip production line is almost at full capacity, Zhao said.

Context: Thanks to the AI-related needs of Nvidia and AMD, orders of TSMC’s advanced packaging capacity, including Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) and System-on-Integrated-Chip (SoIC), have been fully booked for 2024 and 2025, according to an Economic Daily News report from last week. TSMC predicts a compound annual growth rate of 50% for AI chips over the next five years. By 2028, AI chip orders are expected to contribute over 20% to the company’s total revenue.

China’s second-largest short video platform Kuaishou is planning to open an office in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, soon, according to a report by the South China Morning Post quoting Kuaishou’s chief financial officer Jin Bing. In addition to the Middle East, the TikTok rival is also eyeing expansion in North Africa and Brazil, where Jin said the company has a “great opportunity,” with people there sharing similarities with Kuaishou’s users at home: “people love to watch good quality content, engage with each other, and purchase products or services online.” The report noted that Kwai, Kuaishou’s international version outside of China, has more than 20 million monthly active users in the Middle East and North Africa region at present. The move comes as TikTok, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, continues its legal efforts to overturn a US law requiring the hugely popular short video app to be sold or face a nationwide ban. [SCMP]

BYD on Friday launched the first midsize battery sport utility vehicle named after a marine animal, targetting young Chinese customers with its flashy design and seeking to compete with Tesla’s Model Y at a price range between RMB 189,800 and RMB 239,800 ($26,268-$33,188). The entry-level Sea Lion 07 EV will have a driving range of 550 kilometers (342 miles) and charge from 10% to 80% in 25 minutes. BYD said its latest EV platform will enable a charging power of 240 kilowatts with most chargers. The vehicle can reach speeds of 225 kilometers per hour (140 mph), powered by what the company claims is the world’s fastest electric motor for production cars, spinning at up to 23,000 revolutions per minute (rpms). The hatchback crossover is similar in size to its sibling, battery sports sedan Seal, in overall body and wheelbase length, but larger than the Dolphin and Seagull battery sedans. [BYD release, in Chinese]

Baidu’s PR head, Qu Jing, has left the search engine giant after her controversial remarks on work culture exploded on Chinese social media. The surfacing of a series of videos made by Qu has led to the public casting doubt on the company’s corporate values.

“I’m not even obligated to find out if you cried or had a quarrel [with your boyfriend or husband], which does not serve my concern as a supervisor. I’m not your mother-in-law, also not your mum,” Qu commented in one of a series of short videos posted on Douyin, China’s TikTok sibling. 

All four of Qu’s controversial videos on the platform have since been deleted, but clips can still be found on Chinese social platforms and her comments have sparked a firestorm of attention and debate. 

Why it matters: The incident has escalated into Baidu’s biggest PR crisis in years. The company, which is facing a declining search engine share and is seeking an AI-centric transformation, has looked to calm public outrage in the wake of Qu’s comments.

Details: News of Qu Jing’s departure was reported on Thursday night, just hours after she apologized in a post on WeChat Moments from her personal account.

• That apology letter did not mention Qu’s impending exit from the company, but saw her clarify that the videos “do not represent Baidu’s stance.” It stated that Qu did not obtain consent from the company before making the videos public.
• Qu Jing became the vice president and chief of communications at Baidu in 2021, after leading public and government affairs at Huawei and her previous work as a reporter for China’s state-backed Xinhua news agency, according to her  Wikipedia page. 
• In one video, Qu criticized a Baidu employee who refused to take a 50-day business trip during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when China imposed strict travel restrictions across the country. “How dare you tell me that your husband can’t stand it and needs you back [home]? I’m 10 or 20 years older than you and have two kids, [but] I feel neither bitter nor tired,” she said.
• Another video that went viral late Wednesday added fuel to the fire of public opinion, and bringing into question Qu’s ability as a PR chief. In the short video, Qu was recorded smacking a small paper figure with the letters SCMP written on it, widely regarded as referring to the South China Morning Post. The incident is suspected to be Qu venting her anger over a January report published by the newspaper linking Baidu’s ChatGPT rival ERNIE Bot with China’s military. However, TechNode has not been able to independently verify when the video was taken.

Context: Baidu, along with other major tech companies in China, has faced repeated scrutiny and criticism over its so-called wolf work culture in recent years. In one of the most notable examples, in 2019, Alibaba founder Jack Ma came under fire after he referred to the practice of “996”, working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, as a “huge blessing”.

Chinese lithium-ion battery maker CATL and French shipping company CMA CGM will set up a joint venture to explore the potential of creating an all-encompassing solution for greenhouse gas reduction, according to a statement published on Wednesday by CATL. The two companies said they will work closely on various topics related to achieving carbon neutrality, including the development of electric boats and commercial vehicles, as well as logistics and warehousing, without providing specifics. The move is the company’s latest effort to diversify its business beyond battery manufacturing for electric vehicles and to tap into the maritime and aviation transportation sectors. The world’s top battery supplier has been producing semi-solid state batteries to power both civil aircraft and EVs for the past several years. CATL chairman Robin Zeng, who traveled with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his first state visit to Europe in five years, attended a signing ceremony on Tuesday in France. [CATL announcement, in Chinese]

Jiang Hairong, Chief Marketing Officer of Honor China, announced on Thursday that sales of Honor X50 smartphones have exceeded 10 million units in the Chinese market 10 months after the device was launched. The X50 is the first Android device introduced since 2023 to surpass 10 million sales in China, according to Honor. Launched last July, the mid-ranger features the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 processor and drop-resistant materials, and is priced at RMB 1,399 ($194). In the first quarter of 2024, Honor led the Chinese smartphone market with a share of 17.1%, according to data released by market intelligence firm IDC, which reported around 69.26 million units shipped in total across all brands. [Honor Weibo, in Chinese]

Word has spread in a Huawei app forum that Huawei HiSilicon’s chairman He Tingbo and Huawei Terminal Business Group’s chairman Yu Chengdong issued an internal letter “To Comrades” in which a contingency plan entitled “Tashan Battle” for PC chipsets was revealed. The letter allegedly urged HiSilicon and the Terminal Business Group to bring about swift and high-quality launches of PC products equipped with the self-developed Kirin X series chipset by the end of the year. In response to an inquiry by a Cailianpress reporter on Thursday, Huawei staff said that no such internal document had been received. On Tuesday, the US revoked licenses allowing Huawei to buy PC-related chips from Qualcomm and Intel, according to overseas media, a move that will further tighten export restrictions on the Chinese telecom equipment maker. [Cailianpress, in Chinese]

BYD will introduce to Europe a low-cost electric vehicle, which will be priced at no more than €20,000 ($21,550), based on its Chinese Seagull model, the company’s regional managing director Michael Shu said on Thursday. The Seagull, which currently costs between RMB 69,800 and RMB 85,800 ($9,661-$11,875) and can travel between 305 and 405 kilometers (190-252 miles) on a single charge, was the top-selling small car in China, recording sales of nearly 240,000 units last year. Shu also mentioned the company’s plan to establish a second car factory in Europe in 2025, aside from the first one for passenger EVs currently under construction in Hungary, as BYD aims to “be in a leading position” in the regional market by 2030. The comments come as Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first trip to Europe in five years during May 5-10 and as French finance minister Bruno Le Maire on Monday publicly wooed BYD to invest in car manufacturing in the country. [Reuters]

An increasing number of automakers are looking to make their vehicles compatible with the battery swapping standard NIO is pushing for in China, as GAC Group said on Wednesday it will partner with NIO to expand swapping infrastructure for electric vehicles across the country. 

Why it matters: The collaboration highlights increasing efforts by carmakers, along with various stakeholders such as battery suppliers and energy firms, to tackle the issue of range anxiety – fear of an EV running out of power – which has hindered greater EV adoption. The move is also expected to allow NIO to cut expenses further as it opens the money-losing power network to other automakers. 

• GAC and NIO have a collaborative history that dates back several years. They set up a joint venture for EV manufacturing in April 2018 with a registered capital of RMB 2.5 billion ($350 million), although the following few years brought lackluster sales results for their joint brand Hycan. NIO completely retreated from the JV in the summer of 2022.

Details: According to a Wednesday release, the two automakers plan to develop a standardized battery module that would facilitate the roll-out of swap station-compatible passenger EVs from both sides. 

• They also expect to establish scale advantage by creating an extensive, unified power infrastructure network, as well as capture more value from repurposing used EV batteries throughout their lifespans. 
• Although a detailed timeline has not yet been released, owners of both brands’ vehicles will be able to use their own apps to access and pay for charging at a fast charger from either company by the end of this month. 
• ”With this as a starting point, we hope to build more battery swap stations with which our GAC Aion users will have a better swapping experience,” said Feng Xingya, president of GAC Group. 

Context: Guangzhou-headquartered GAC is the latest Chinese automaker to announce that its EV owners will have access to NIO’s nationwide infrastructure network, following deals with Changan, Geely, JAC, and Chery, as well as the company’s link-ups with state-owned utilities Wenergy Group and China’s Southern Power Grid. 

• State-owned manufacturer GAC, a manufacturing partner of Toyota and Honda in China, said it operated a network of roughly 1,000 battery refueling facilities nationwide as of December, of which dozens were swap stations. It has sold an undisclosed amount of Hyper-branded EVs with swappable batteries. 
• NIO operates 2,413 battery swap facilities as of Wednesday, already the country’s biggest network of its kind, and 3,828 charging outlets mostly for non-NIO cars. The company’s upcoming brand Onvo, with plans for an official debut on May 15, will share its latest-gen battery swap stations with those partners. 
• Battery heavyweight CATL and ride-hailer Didi are also jointly building battery swap stations in a move to answer Beijing’s call to further increase EV penetration, especially in lower-tier Chinese cities and the country’s rural areas. International carmakers are reportedly embracing Tesla’s EV charging system or forging their own alliances meanwhile.

READ MORE:  Drive I/O | Big bets on battery swap

Chinese e-commerce platform JD is set to kick off its mid-year shopping event at 8 p.m. on May 31, with the company branding it under the theme of “quality and affordability” as price remains a sensitive factor for local consumers. JD has also dropped its presale period for this year’s 618 festival, in a similar move to rival Taobao, with the two online retail giants looking to follow common competitor Pinduoduo’s more straightforward shopping experience. In an announcement made by the Beijing-based company, the shopping spree will kick off with a “10-billion yuan discount day,” and low price-focused activities will continue throughout the sales promotion period, which will last for more than two weeks. [JD, in Chinese]

On Wednesday, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun shared on the social media platform Weibo that the company has promoted Xu Fei and Zhang Jianhui to senior executive positions at the group. Notably, this marks the first instance where the Chinese phone maker has appointed two female executives simultaneously. Xu Fei is appointed as Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, while Zhang Jianhui takes on the role of Vice President and Chair of the Procurement Committee. “They are both employees who joined Xiaomi at the beginning of its entrepreneurship, and have grown together with Xiaomi for more than a decade,” said Lei in the Weibo post. Additionally, Xiaomi will establish a Group Strategic Marketing Department to oversee the brand, public relations, and marketing-related work of the company, as revealed by an internal appointment email. [Lei Jun Weibo, in Chinese]

Alibaba hopes to spur e-commerce growth in Mongolia via a joint platform built with local tech company Intelmind, aiming to bring “millions of” China-made goods to consumers in the landlocked country. The partnership will be between Alibaba’s wholesale platform 1688.com and Intelmind-owned retail marketplace Shoppy under the auspices of a new platform, ShoppyHub.mn, according to Intelmind. The company has said it will enable Mongolian shoppers to consolidate multiple purchases into a single order, with packages deliverable within seven to ten days. Alibaba’s expansion into Mongolia comes as it faces challenging circumstances at home and is pouring investment into other potential markets globally. [GoGo Mongolia]

The US has taken the step of revoking licenses that previously authorized companies such as Intel and Qualcomm to supply chips used in laptops and handsets to Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer Huawei, according to Reuters. Sources said some of the companies received notifications on Tuesday that their licenses were revoked with immediate effect. The US Commerce Department confirmed the revocation of certain licenses earlier in the day, but it refused to specify the companies involved. A spokesperson for Intel declined to comment, while Qualcomm and Huawei did not respond to a request for comment. The action comes after the debut of Huawei’s first AI laptop, the MateBook X Pro, which was launched last month and runs on Intel’s latest Core Ultra 9 processor, the Reuters report said. [Reuters]

On Tuesday, MediaTek held the MediaTek Dimensity Developer Conference (MDDC) 2024 in Shenzhen, where the Taiwan-based semiconductor company unveiled its latest flagship 5G chipset, the Dimensity 9300+. With a theme of “AI Empowers Everything,” MDDC 2024 delved into the applications and advances in artificial intelligence technology across various domains, and the possibilities it brings to terminal devices.

Why it matters: MediaTek introduced the Dimensity 9300+ less than two months after the launch of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. Amid slow growth in the smartphone industry, MediaTek is aggressively competing for Qualcomm’s market share of mobile chipsets. 

Details: The Dimensity 9300+ chipset and generative AI were the main highlights at MDDC 2024.

• The Dimensity 9300+ has adopted TSMC’s third-generation 4nm process technology, according to MediaTek. The new chip boasts big-core CPU architecture, housing an octa-core CPU comprising four Cortex-X4 ultra-large cores clocked at up to 3.4 GHz, and four Cortex-A720 large cores operating at 2.0 GHz.
• MediaTek claims that the full big-core CPU ensures low power consumption across varying application loads and enables smartphones to deliver sustained high performance over extended periods by combining high speed with energy efficiency.
• The Dimensity 9300+ supports on-device LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) Fusion and NeuroPilot LoRA Fusion 2.0 technology that allows developers to quickly introduce new generative AI applications with text, voice, imagery, and music, the company said. This translates to smartphones equipped with the Dimensity 9300+ chip offering enhanced AI functionalities.
• The flagship processor integrates a 2nd-gen hardware ray-tracing engine with an Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU, delivering 60 frames per second (FPS) ray-tracing and console-grade global illumination effects for gamers, according to the official website. MediaTek HyperEngine technologies further enhance the gaming experience, according to the company, with MediaTek Adaptive Gaming Technology optimizing power efficiency for longer battery life. Furthermore, HyperEngine’s Network Observation System improves dual-network concurrency and offers up to 10% power savings and 25% cellular data savings.
• During the event, MediaTek unveiled the Dimensity AI Pioneer Program for global developers, collaborating with industry partners such as Alibaba Cloud, Baichuan Intelligence, Transsion, Oppo, Honor, Vivo, and Xiaomi. The program aims to offer resources, technical support, and business opportunities for global developers to create innovative generative AI experiences on Dimensity-powered devices.
• At the same time, MediaTek partnered with Alibaba Cloud, Baichuan Intelligence, Huya, Kugou Music, Oppo, Tencent AI Lab, and Vivo to jointly release a Generative AI Smartphone Industry White Paper. The white paper defines Generative AI smartphones as devices utilizing large-scale, pre-trained generative AI models to achieve multi-modal generation, context awareness, and evolving human-like capabilities.
• The white paper signals a strong integration trend in generative AI for smartphones and explores the AI strategies of various chip manufacturers, phone makers, large model developers, and developers in the generative AI ecosystem. Industry analysis firm Counterpoint forecasts rapid growth for generative AI phones in the coming years, with a global user base of around one billion expected by 2027.

Context: In the fourth quarter of 2023, MediaTek maintained its lead with a 36% share of the global smartphone chipset market, followed by Qualcomm at 23% and Apple at 20%, according to data provided by Counterpoint‘s Global Smartphone AP-SoC Shipments & Forecast Tracker by Model.

• On March 18, California-based chip firm Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, the company’s latest flagship chipset, equipped with several on-device AI capabilities. The new 4nm chipset arrives as a more affordable version of the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip launched last October.

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan’s Hong Kong-focused platform KeeTa led the territory’s food delivery market in terms of order volume in March, with its 44% share of total orders surpassing rival Foodpanda for the first time, according to data from third-party analysis platform Measurable AI. However, when calculating overall sales volume, KeeTa’s 36% market share is still slightly lower than Foodpanda’s 39% during the period. The results have encouraged Meituan to “actively evaluate opportunities in other markets,” CEO Wang Xing said in a recent earnings call, following a Bloomberg report that the company is mulling a potential entry to Riyadh, one of richest cities in the Middle East and the capital of Saudi Arabia. [Caixin, in Chinese]

In response to criticism by the European Commission, China’s biggest automaker SAIC said it has “fully cooperated” with the latest EU anti-subsidy investigation launched by the agency. The state-owned manufacturer, along with peers BYD and Geely, was earlier accused of not supplying sufficient information. The comments come as the Commission warned the three automakers that they had failed to satisfy investigators considering whether the bloc would impose higher import duties on Chinese electric vehicle imports, according to a May 3 report by Reuters. SAIC told Reuters it had complied with World Trade Organization and EU rules, but that “commercially sensitive information – such as battery formulation – should not belong to this category.” The China chapter of the EU Chamber of Commerce said the European Commission had used regulatory powers to lay out a series of demands, including multiple rounds of questionnaires and on-site inspections, and query the companies on sensitive corporate issues related to their supply chain. [Reuters]

TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance launched legal action against the US government on Tuesday after it passed sell-or-ban legislation targeting the short video app. TikTok argues that the law signed by president Joe Biden in April that forces its Chinese owners to divest in nine months violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution. According to the lawsuit, TikTok said “for the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” while arguing that Congress had failed to offer any evidence that TikTok poses the “types of risks to data security or the spread of foreign propaganda that could conceivably justify the Act.” [TikTok lawsuit filing]

Chinese self-driving car startup Momenta is exploring a US initial public offering this year that could raise as much as $300 million, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Momenta, backed by auto giants including General Motors, Toyota, and BYD, has engaged China International Capital Corp., Goldman Sachs, and UBS to assist with its plan, but has not yet confirmed its listing location, the report said. The Suzhou-headquartered company is reportedly making the advanced driver assistance systems Toyota is set to incorporate in its Chinese models. Momenta raised $300 million from General Motors in 2021 and has been working with BYD through a joint venture set up later that year. [TechNode reporting, Bloomberg]

Alibaba’s marketplace Taobao has dropped its presale period for the upcoming 618 shopping festival, a promotional mechanism that it had been using for a decade to stimulate sales. Previously under the strategy, consumers were required to pay a deposit in advance, and then pay the final amount within a specified date range, but would not receive the goods until after the latter had cleared, leading to longer delivery times than usual. 

Why it matters: Alibaba is expected to focus on optimizing user experience during the mid-year shopping bonanza in an effort to offer more straightforward shopping steps akin to rival Pinduoduo. 

Details: According to local media outlet LatePost, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu finally made the decision to cancel presale promotions after employees “overwhelmingly supported” the proposal in internal debates.

• The report added that presale deals would still appear in e-commerce livestreams, a major channel for presale items, mostly in the makeup category.
• The presale mechanism was seen as limiting for shoppers who wanted goods to be delivered immediately after placing their orders, a situation that has emerged as one of the sources of dissatisfaction during China’s largest shopping festivals. Taobao and Tmall have announced that they will kick off the country’s second-largest festival on May 20 this year, offering discounts for almost a month until June 18, or 618.
• Alibaba has also recently sharpened its focus on optimizing Taobao’s web-based platform, LatePost reported, after website version had been played down for years due to the popularity of mobile phones. Compared to the comprehensive shopping experience on mobiles and especially in app, Taboo’s website offers fewer features and consistently directed shoppers to download the app instead.
• “The only thing we’re doing at the moment is trying desperately to make up for some of the experiences we’ve lost in recent years,” said Zhao Kun, head of Taobao’s website, on Alibaba’s internal forum according to LatePost. The media outlet quoted his post as saying the team has launched more than 60 new features in less than two months. 

Context: The changes are in line with Alibaba’s newly revived “user first” approach, one of the two key strategic areas emphasized by Eddie Wu, who currently also holds the chief executive position at the tech giant’s domestic e-commerce group and its cloud computing unit.

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD and its peers have received a warm welcome from France as French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said on Monday the government is open to the possibility of the companies establishing their factories in the country. “France welcomes all industrial projects. BYD and the Chinese auto industry are very welcome in France,” Le Maire said at a meeting with a group of automotive business leaders in Paris on the sidelines of a two-day state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a meeting with French leader Emmanuel Macron on Monday, Xi said claims that state subsidies for electric vehicles provided by Beijing are creating distortions in global markets and trade are false. “China’s new energy industry has made real progress in open competition and represents advanced production capacity. It not only increases global supply and alleviates the pressure of global inflation, but also contributes significantly to global climate response and green transition,” said Xi. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also joined the two leaders for a meeting, saying Europe “will not waver from making tough decisions needed to protect its market.” Brussels’ anti-subsidy probe into Chinese EV imports, initiated last September, is expected to conclude within the coming weeks. [Reuters]

At the social platform Weibo, tech blogger Digital Chat Station revealed on Monday that Vivo will unveil its latest phone models on May 13, including the Vivo X100s, X100s Pro, and X100 Ultra. The X100s and X100s Pro will feature the Dimensity 9300+ chipset, while the X100 Ultra is expected to sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, according to sources. The flagship boasts a 200-megapixel Zeiss APO (apochromatic) super telephoto lens, labeled as the industry’s largest 1/1.4 bottom telephoto, with an f/2.67 aperture, 22.48mm physical focal length, and the capability to output resolutions of 12,888 x 16,320 in high-pixel mode. Storage options for all X100S models range from 12+256GB to 16+1TB. [Digital Chat Station, in Chinese]

Based on information from the Xiaomi HypeOS source code, Xiaomi is preparing to launch the CIVI 4 Pro Disney Princess Edition in the coming weeks following the release of the standard CIVI 4 Pro version on March 21. This unique edition, inspired by Disney characters, will feature a Disney-themed UI (User Interface) and two exclusive camera watermarks named Snow White and Evil Queen. The Disney Princess Edition will share the same specifications as the standard version, including the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, a 6.55-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1,236 x 2,750, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 3,000 nits. Currently, it is expected to be available only in China. [IThome, in Chinese]

Tesla’s senior vice president, Tom Zhu, a longtime head of its China operations and once deemed as the top internal candidate to replace chief executive Elon Musk, is to reprise the position as the vice president of Greater China he held until last August. Multiple bloggers have contended that Zhu has recently resigned from his roles with Tesla in North America and Europe, and expected the Musk’s close associate to boost the US automaker’s growth in the world’s most competitive EV market. Tesla is facing mounting pressure to tackle the challenges from a slew of Chinese big players such as BYD, Geely, and Huawei. It sold 132,420 vehicles to local customers during the first three months of this year, even several thousand units fewer than what it achieved over the same period last year, figures from the China Passenger Car Association showed. The company is also stepping up to localize its so-called “Full Self-Driving (FSD)” advanced driver assistance software, as Musk made an unannounced visit to Beijing on April 28.[TechNode reporting, IT Home, in Chinese]

Sales of Chinese electric vehicle makers Li Auto and Huawei-backed Aito dropped sharply in April as rivals Zeekr and NIO managed to post major improvements, in the latest indication of how competition in the country could be impacted by price cuts and new model launches. 

Why it matters: The latest sales figures in April showed the world’s largest EV market is slowly recovering from a sales slump due to an economic downturn and inclement weather early this year. Some potential EV buyers are still waiting on the sidelines for possible stimulus measures and for new cars shown at this year’s Beijing Auto Show to make it to market, experts say. 

READ MORE: Global carmakers take on Chinese giants in EV showdown at Beijing Auto Show 2024

Details: GAC’s Aion, Li Auto, and Huawei-backed Aito – which are among the biggest Chinese EV makers – all reported double-digit declines in EV deliveries in April from a month earlier. Huawei saw sales of Aito-branded EVs fall 21% last month, with monthly deliveries of the redesigned M7 falling to 10,896 units from its peak of nearly 30,000 units. Aion and Li Auto delivered 28,113 and 25,787 EVs in April, 13.6% and 11% fewer than a month earlier, respectively. 

• All three EV makers have launched new cars and ushered in steep price cuts for their existing models in order to maintain demand throughout 2024. Huawei said on Monday it had secured 11,000 reservations with non-refundable deposits for the Aito and Luxeed lineups over the recent five-day Labor Day holiday, while there were more than 41,000 pre-orders for Li Auto’s L6 range-extended hybrids between April 18 and May 5. GAC is currently putting the redesigned versions of its Aion V and Hyper HT battery crossovers on display in its showrooms nationwide. 
• In the meantime, Zeekr achieved record deliveries of 16,089 vehicles in April, up 24% month-on-month and 99% from a year earlier, mostly driven by a strong performance for its revamped 001 shooting brakes. NIO also saw sales hitting 15,620 vehicles, up from 11,866 a month earlier, as the company’s multiple sales pushes started to pay off. The EV startup has been offering a RMB 10,000 ($1,386) price reduction for those who trade in their old, gas-powered vehicles for a NIO car since the beginning of April. 
• While bringing attention to its rivals such as Zeekr and NIO for their similar offerings, Xiaomi posted impressive April sales to officially start its career as an electric car maker. The smartphone giant handed over 7,058 SU7 battery sedans to customers in its first delivery month and secured nearly 89,000 reservations with non-refundable deposits as of April 30. Chief executive Lei Jun expects the company to achieve an annual delivery target of 100,000 cars this year, with its production ramp-up already underway at its Beijing factory. 
• Xpeng Motors saw a slight recovery in April sales, delivering nearly 2,000 units of its first multi-purpose vehicle and bringing the total deliveries of the RMB 359,800 van to almost 10,000 units in the four months since its launch. The Volkswagen-backed EV maker has been under pressure from larger rivals, and declined to give detailed figures for the rest of its models. Sales of its G9, G6, and P7 models dipped to less than 1,700 units in March, figures compiled by Chinese auto service platform Dongchedi showed.

Context: China’s new energy vehicle sales in April are expected to be on par with March at roughly 720,000 units, partly because wait-and-see sentiment has grown among Chinese customers, the China Passenger Car Association said in an April 25 post.

READ MORE: ​ Explainer: How a new round of price cuts are reshaping China’s EV market ​

Luckin Coffee reported a negative operating margin of 1% in the first quarter this year as the escalation of a price war in China’s coffee industry dragged the company down despite its 41.5% revenue growth compared to the same period in 2023. The Chinese coffee chain posted its first quarterly loss in two years, with a RMB 83.2 million ($11.5 million) net loss, versus RMB 564.8 million in profit a year prior. Luckin saw a 68.8% increase in its total operating expenses, with the company attributing the growth to its “business expansion,” including the opening of new stores and investments in branding and promotional activities. Rival Starbucks meanwhile recorded a decline of 11% in comparable store sales in China during the period. [Luckin Coffee statement; Starbucks earnings]

Nvidia and AMD have secured TSMC’s advanced packaging capacity for Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) and System-on-Integrated-Chip (SoIC) technologies for the next two years as they focus on the high-performance computing (HPC) market, according to Taiwanese media outlet Economic Daily News. HPC’s computational power is essential for AI tasks, with TSMC expecting revenue from AI processors to more than double this year. TSMC predicts that the compound annual growth rate of AI chips over the next five years will reach 50%, accounting for over 20% of the chip foundry’s revenue by 2028. Global cloud service providers Amazon AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are actively engaging in the AI server race, leading to a high demand for products from AI chip manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD, the report said. [Economic Daily News, in Chinese]

Universal Music Group (UMG) will bring its artists back to short video platform TikTok via a new deal, the two companies said in a joint statement, three months after UMG-owned music was removed from TikTok due to the parties having failed to renew a licensing agreement. Shou Chew, chief executive of TikTok, said music was an “integral part” of the platform’s system, and his counterpart in UMG said the new chapter with TikTok would focus on “the value of music, the primacy of human artistry and the welfare of the creative community.” Entertainment giant Universal, home of artists including Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, previously noted that TikTok revenue only “accounts for 1%” of its total revenue, which UMG claimed was “little.” [Universal Music Group]

The battery casing for the iPhone 16 series will be switched from aluminum-plastic film to stainless steel, with materials supplied by Chinese firms, according to The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ report suggests that the all-steel casing will utilize laser welding technology to enhance battery lifespan by increasing the number of charging cycles. Earlier sources disclosed adjustments in battery capacities for the iPhone 16 series models, as reported by local media outlet IThome. The standard iPhone 16 may bump up from its last generation’s capacity of 3,349 mAh to 3,561 mAh, while the Pro Max version is expected to see an increase from its former capacity of 4,422 mAh to 4,676 mAh. However, the Plus model may decrease from the previous 4,383 mAh to 4,006 mAh. Currently, it remains uncertain whether the adjustments in battery capacity are linked to the change in battery casing. [IThome, in Chinese]

Tesla claimed on its Chinese app on Monday that it would be rolling out its full self-driving (FSD) system “very soon” rather than the previously stated “a bit later” (our translation). The development comes as the US automaker reportedly received tentative approval from Chinese authorities to deploy its advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) in the world’s most competitive electric vehicle market following a surprise visit to Beijing by chief executive Elon Musk. 

Local customers have expressed mixed views about the potentially game-changing technology finally coming to their country, although many Tesla owners and loyal fans welcomed the long-overdue launch on social media. The technology may not yet work well in Chinese urban driving scenarios, despite costing RMB 64,000 ($8,838); most competitors such as Xiaomi promise to offer similar functions free of charge, Li Yang, a Model 3 owner in Shanghai, told TechNode on Tuesday.

Major Chinese EV players Huawei and Xpeng Motors, who specialize in autonomous driving, have responded in a relaxed way to what is seen by many as a major win for their US rival. 

“We are confident that Huawei’s intelligent driving system is the best in the world,” Richard Yu, Chief Executive of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, said at a press event last week as the company introduced the redesigned Aito M5 crossover. Aware of Tesla’s release last month of the no-longer-in-beta FSD software, Yu said the company has closely studied its competitor’s technology by taking test rides in San Francisco, among other US cities. 

A long-awaited battle: Experts told TechNode that the US and China have been in a neck-and-neck race to develop “end-to-end neural network” technology, seen by experts as the biggest difference between Tesla’s FSD v12 software and earlier versions.

• Tesla chief executive Elon Musk stated publicly in November that its most updated, end-to-end FSD uses machine learning rather than rules crafted by programmers to absorb driving behaviors from large datasets. The approach reduces the carmaker’s reliance on coding, expensive sensors, and high-precision maps for exact road information.
• “It is more of a 1,000 flowers blooming type of situation here in China, while the US market is guarded by a sole player,” Paul Gong, head of China autos research at UBS, told reporters on Monday in Beijing, referencing a Chinese idiom. Both the US and China are at the forefront of the technological trend, followed by Europe and the rest of Asia, Gong added.
• Although Tesla has huge amounts of data, Chinese firms have the potential to quickly catch up by ramping up their test fleets, according to Song Chaozhong, CEO of Chinese self-driving car startup eCHIEV. Song cautioned that real, “human-like” autonomous cars are still far away, despite the technology likely being a positive driver for vehicle sales. 

A booming segment: Analysts expect Tesla’s imminent launch of the FSD software in China to not only help restore Beijing’s image among foreign investors in general, but also help China extend its lead in the adoption of driver-assist technologies worldwide, and enhance its reputation as a rising powerhouse of next generation cars. 

• China has become a source of innovative engineering for global automakers, as they are now leveraging the capabilities of Chinese companies to design global vehicle offerings, Gong said when asked his view of this year’s Beijing Auto Show. He added China’s push to open its industries to greater foreign investment and competition has been “underestimated.”
• Tech-literate Chinese EV makers are poised for explosive growth thanks to growing interest from Chinese consumers in intelligent driving features, as Elon Musk earlier predicted a “ChatGPT moment” was coming for his company. Huawei on April 24 estimated that more than 500,000 cars on Chinese roads will feature its advanced driving system by year-end. 
• Xpeng is scheduled to launch its affordable brand MONA in June with the first model expected to feature an autonomous driving system without the integration of lidar and aiming for annual sales of 100,000 units. Global shipments of vehicles with ADAS features, known as Level 2 plus autonomy, could more than double to 4.5 million units this year, with China leading the game, research firm Canalys wrote in December.

Context: Tesla’s China breakthrough comes after US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on April 25 called on China to provide a level playing field for American businesses during his second visit to China in less than a year, Reuters reported. 

• The US automaker has reached a deal with Baidu to localize its driver assistance solution with map and geographical information from the Chinese tech giant, according to Bloomberg.

Chinese AI startup Shengshu Technology, in partnership with Tsinghua University, unveiled the country’s latest text-to-video model Vidu last weekend, which it said could generate videos no longer than 16 seconds with 1080p resolution. Vidu is “the first video model globally to make a major breakthrough” since the release of OpenAI’s Sora in February, the Beijing-based company said on its official WeChat post, while adding that Vidu’s performance “fully matches” that of its international counterparts. Shengshu Technology is the latest AI firm touting its ability to build a Chinese program akin to Sora, which is able to produce 60-second-long videos based on prompts. OpenAI has yet to make the program available to the public. [Shengshu Technology, in Chinese]

China’s Ministry of Commerce has expressed serious concerns in response to the Japanese government’s announcement of plans to implement export controls on semiconductors and related items, in an answer to a journalist’s inquiry on the governmental department’s website. A ministry spokesperson highlighted that the semiconductor industry’s global nature and decades-long development have created an interconnected ecosystem. Such measures, which stem from an over-generalization of national security concepts, risk disrupting global supply chains and violating principles of free trade, the spokesperson said. The statement added that China’s Ministry of Commerce urges Japan to reconsider these actions, as they are expected to affect trading relations between Chinese and Japanese companies. [China’s Ministry of Commerce, in Chinese]

Taiwanese semiconductor company MediaTek announced on Tuesday that the Dimensity 9300+ flagship chipset will be unveiled at the MediaTek Dimensity Developer Conference 2024, scheduled for May 7. The Vivo X100S smartphone will be among the first devices to be powered by the flagship chipset, although its specific release date is currently unknown, according to local media outlet IThome. On benchmarking platform Geekbench 6.2.0, the new device achieved a single-core score of 2,229 and a multi-core score of 7,526. The CPU for the Vivo X100S consists of one core clocked at 3.40 GHz, three cores clocked at 2.85 GHz, and four cores clocked at 2.00 GHz, the platform info revealed. The Vivo X100S is expected to feature a 6.78-inch 1.5K 8T LTPO OLED display, IThome reported, and be available in four colors: white, black, green, and silver. [IThome, in Chinese]

Chinese lifestyle sharing social media platform Xiaohongshu has dismissed as “untrue information” reports by local media outlet IPOzaozhidao that it is in the midst of a new round of fundraising that values the company at $20 billion. A previous report by tech outlet The Information in September 2023 said Sequoia China had acquired a Xiaohongshu stake from existing investors, in a deal that valued the firm at $14 billion, a 30% discount compared to the social media app’s $20 billion valuation in 2021. The move saw the well-known venture capital firm join Alibaba and Tencent in betting on Xiaohongshu’s prospects. The social app, now popular among younger users with its search function and sharing features, has stepped up its efforts in e-commerce and advertising services to boost revenues in recent months. [IPOzaozhidao; Shanghai Securities News, in Chinese]

Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) revealed on Monday that it is committed to the research and mass production of solid-state batteries, with the aim of achieving small-scale production by 2027, according to local media outlet Jiemian. However, overcoming challenges related to cost is essential for realizing large-scale production, the company said.

Why it matters: Presenting a promising solution to conventional lithium-ion battery limitations, producers maintain that solid-state batteries offer enhanced safety, higher energy density, improved performance, increased durability, and reduced environmental impact. They have the potential to transform various industries, including electric vehicles, portable electronics, and renewable energy systems.

Details: The company’s current level of research on solid-state batteries stands at 4, on a scale of 1-9 for technical and manufacturing maturity, CATL’s chief scientist Wu Kai disclosed at a battery technology seminar. CATL plans to achieve a rating of 7-8 by 2027, the year the company plans to be able to produce solid-state batteries on a small scale, Wu told Jiemian.

• Compared to liquid lithium batteries, solid-state batteries demonstrate better performance in terms of energy density. Currently, liquid lithium batteries can reach 350 watt-hours per kilogram, while solid-state batteries are expected to achieve up to 500 watt-hours per kilogram, according to the chief scientist.
• The technological pathways for solid-state batteries primarily include polymers, oxides, and sulfides. Wu claimed that CATL is currently investing more in research and development of the sulfide option, likely to be the first in mass production.
• Sulfide electrolytes exhibit high conductivity and good process ability, but they are also prone to generate toxic gasses when exposed to water and involve high costs due to complex production processes, Wu further explained.
• Wu stated that CATL is striving towards the goal of solid-state batteries representing 1% of the global battery market share. Tech challenges remaining include solid-solid interfaces, lithium metal anodes, solid-state electrolytes, and other manufacturing processes, the scientist added.

Context: Last September, Japanese automaker Toyota announced a development plan for solid-state batteries. Toyota plans to bring electric vehicles equipped with solid-state batteries to market as early as 2027, enabling them to drive around 1,200 kilometers on a charge of under 10 minutes.

ByteDance has fired 61 employees for violating laws and company policies, citing reasons including bribery and leakage of internal information, according to Chinese media outlets that quoted sources from the tech company. Four individuals face investigation due to illegal acceptance of income from external partners, while the company also found some staff had substantial reimbursement and taxi travel violations. The TikTok owner detailed the case of one of its employees, who lent his worker card to an outsider who then used it to eat at the company’s staff-only cafeteria 14 times, “misappropriating RMB 490 of ByteDance’s assets.” ByteDance said it has always maintained a “zero-tolerance” attitude towards corruption and bribery. In February, Tencent published more than 70 cases of corruption that it had investigated last year, with the company firing more than 120 employees in relation to these incidents. [Jiemian, in Chinese]

Chinese e-commerce platform Temu has set a $60 billion sales goal for this year that would more than triple the roughly $18 billion it brought in in 2023, and is the most ambitious sales goal among its Chinese counterparts, according to a LatePost report. If achieved, the aggressive target set by the Pinduoduo sister app would largely narrow the gap with fast fashion giant Shein, which outpaced Zara in revenue last year by making $45 billion and is chasing 40% growth to $63 billion in 2024. The US market, which accounted for 60% of Temu’s overall transaction volume in early 2023, now makes up 40%, on par with the platform’s European market, as the cut-price goods site ramps up its presence in more countries, according to the LatePost report. [LatePost, in Chinese]

The National Press and Publication Administration of China (NPPA) on Friday released 95 approval licenses for domestic games for April, including 94 mobile games, seven PC games, and one PlayStation console game. April’s 95 licenses are a decrease compared to March’s 107 approved titles, and the 111 and 115 given the green light in February and January respectively. The much-anticipated games in the latest round of approvals include Tencent’s Carbon Island, NetEase’s Broken Land, Sony China’s Lost Soul Aside, Archosaur Games’ Dragon Raja: Gate of Cassell, and Kingnet Network’s The Lost Tomb. Additionally, NetEase’s Diablo: Immortal and Lilith’s Farlight 84 added PC versions on the same day, according to updates on changes in license information from the NPPA. [NPPA, in Chinese]

BMW announced on Friday it will invest RMB 20 billion ($2.8 billion) to expand a production facility in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, as the German auto major aims to begin assembling its upcoming “Neue Klasse” electric vehicles locally in 2026. The amount, which brings BMW’s total investment in its largest manufacturing hub to RMB 105 billion, represents an acceleration of the company’s efforts to prepare for greater EV demand in China, where domestic manufacturers continue to capture market share from their global rivals. Construction of a RMB 10 billion battery plant in Shenyang is also underway, which is set to begin operation with 2,000 new jobs in 2026. BMW reported a 138% year-on-year surge in sales to nearly 100,000 EVs in China last year, which accounted for nearly a third of its total EV sales worldwide. [TechNode reporting]

China’s food delivery giant Meituan is hiring Arabic- and English-proficient talent for its likely entry into Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the company puts expansion beyond China on its agenda as domestic consumption falls. 

Meituan is set to launch KeeTa, the food delivery brand which it launched in Hong Kong last year, in its first Middle East destination in the coming months, Bloomberg reported on Friday. 

Why it matters: Meituan’s first expansion outside of China comes at a time when a string of Chinese companies have turned to overseas expansion amid uncertainty about the prospects of recreating the high growth situation that the tech sector has enjoyed at home for much of the past two decades. 

• “I think it may take us another 10 years to make a significant impact in overseas markets, and we are not in a hurry to do that,” said chief executive Wang Xing last month. “We will be evaluating very carefully the opportunities for that and the ways to get into the market,” he added.

Details: CEO Wang took direct control of the Beijing-based company’s global business in a February overhaul. He told investors on a fourth-quarter earnings call that Meituan is “very actively evaluating opportunities in other markets” after its Hong Kong entry saw “positive results.”

• Meituan executives, including Wang and Head of Strategic Overseas Investments Zhu Wenqian, visited Saudi Arabia for meetings with local government ministers and members of the Saudi royal family last May, according to a report by Chinese tech media outlet 36Kr, when they tried to assess whether the country was suitable for a food delivery pilot scheme.
• Meituan expects to compete directly with well-established platforms such as Delivery Hero, Deliveroo, and Jahez in the Middle Eastern country, where the online food delivery market is projected to grow at 5.62% annually, data from Statista shows.
• High subsidies from the company in order to provide customers with discounts have played a key role in Meituan’s initial success in Hong Kong under KeeTa since it landed in the region in May 2023. Last year, the platform captured a 21% market share by GMV in the territory, rapidly eating into rivals’ shares. 

Context: After recording its lowest stock price in a year in February, at slightly over HK$60, Meituan’s shares are slowly recovering. The company’s stock price is still just a quarter of its value at its peak in mid-2021 however.

Chinese consumers are being offered at least RMB 7,000 ($986) in subsidies to trade in their old, less environmental-friendly vehicles for new and more energy-efficient ones, in the latest measure by Beijing to boost car sales amid slowing demand. The new rules will run until the end of this year and apply to those who replace fossil fuel cars that don’t comply with the so-called China-4 emissions standards for new ones with a 2-liter or lower petrol engine. Meanwhile, buyers who trade in such cars or electric vehicles registered before April 2018 for new energy vehicles will get RMB 10,000, seven top government departments jointly announced on April 24. The ministry did not reveal the total budget for the new initiative, but China has roughly 16 million “state-three” cars running on fossil fuels and 2.6 million NEVs registered until 2018, according to estimated figures obtained by Caixin. China posted domestic sales of nearly 3.3 million cars in the first three months of 2024, a 6.2% growth from a year ago, official figures showed. [Caixin, government document, in Chinese]

Air China announced on Friday that it has signed an agreement with Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) to purchase 100 C919 aircraft. The 100 aircraft are planned to be delivered in batches from 2024 to 2031. The total price of the 100 C919 aircraft is around $10.8 billion, according to the latest catalog prices provided by COMAC. The actual transaction price of the deal was lower than the catalog prices, as COMAC offered Air China a significant discount after negotiations, local media outlet IThome reported. State-owned Air China will provide funds for the transaction through its own capital, commercial bank loans, and other financing methods, the report added. [IThome, in Chinese]

Global carmakers from Volkswagen to Toyota are introducing new models at the Beijing Auto Show 2024 with the help of Chinese tech companies in an effort to defend market share amid a major shift to electric vehicles led by local car giants. 

The biannual trade event, which on Thursday witnessed a return to pre-pandemic attendance levels after a brief pause in 2022, also represents another landmark moment for the Chinese EV sector where domestic players are once again on the offensive with an array of new models. A similar event in Shanghai a year ago reportedly prompted the industry’s legacy players to either increase their efforts or rethink their brands in order to adapt to the changes.

Below, TechNode provides a summary of some of the biggest releases from both international and Chinese automakers, including BYD, GAC, Geely, Honda, Toyota, and Volkswagen. There are also some notable updates from younger players such as Xiaomi, NIO, and Xpeng, which might give a clue as to where the most competitive EV market in the world is heading. 

BYD

China’s biggest EV maker on Thursday unveiled a higher-end variant of its Qin vehicle, the top-selling compact sedan in the country last year. The new car is scheduled for launch in the second quarter with an expected price tag of RMB 120,000 ($16,560). The Qin L measures 4.8 meters in length and spans a 2,790-millimeter-long wheelbase, placing it between the Qin Plus and the Han in terms of size. It features the company’s next-generation plug-in hybrid platform DM-i 5.0, which could suggest an improvement in range and fuel efficiency. The company also introduced the Seal 06, a plug-in hybrid EV under the Ocean lineup which is about the same size as the Qin L but loaded with more stylish design language to attract younger customers. 

GAC

Aion, the third best-selling EV brand in China last year after BYD and Tesla, showcased its first global model, replete with modern technologies and angular styling, as its state-owned parent beefs up its strategy to woo customers worldwide. GAC said its all-new Aion V, scheduled for launch in July, will maintain a driving range of over 750 kilometers (466 miles) even when the mercury dips to -30 degrees Celsius, and offers a large interior space comparable to the likes of the BMW X5. The all-electric sports utility vehicle, which incorporates traditional Chinese dragons into its design, can navigate varied urban environments worldwide with features such as lane switching by utilizing advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to process sensor data instead of high-precision maps, the company said.

Geely

Volvo’s parent showed its ambition to become a disruptive force in the global automotive industry with the debut of what it described as the world’s first production model with two sliding doors and front swivel seats. Geely has taken a radical approach to how EVs are put together, giving the 4.7 meter-long Zeekr Mix an extended wheelbase of three meters achieved through a more compact electric motor, shorter front overhangs, and repositioning of the air conditioning system, among other components. This, along with the front seats that can rotate 270 degrees, would allow kids to play or families to dine together in a 1.5 square meter interior flat space. The five-seater multi-purpose vehicle, offering a 1.5 meter width opening area for passengers, targets three-generation Chinese families, especially those with elders and pregnant mothers.

Honda

Japan’s Honda on Thursday began selling its second all-electric model with time-limited discounts in China in the company’s latest effort to boost sales. The move comes after entrenched rivals such as BYD and Tesla recently rolled out more price cuts amid slowing growth. The e:NP2 SUV has a driving range of 545 km at a price tag of RMB 159,800, providing buyers with a RMB 30,000 reduction compared to its original plan, according to Li Jin, a deputy general manager of Honda’s China joint venture with GAC. Honda also debuted the Ye, a new series of all-electrics with technologies sourced from Huawei and iFlyTek among other Chinese tech firms, as part of its plan to sell only EVs in China by 2035.

Toyota

Toyota said on Thursday it will integrate lidar sensors into its two upcoming models under the “Beyond Zero” (bZ) all-electric series, as the world’s top-selling automaker looks to provide consumers with the same level of assisted driving technology as Huawei and Xiaomi. The bZ3x and the bZ3c compact crossovers will be able to automatically change lanes, and enter and exit Chinese highways when they go on sale within the next 12 months. Toyota also announced it is exploring the uses of generative AI in collaboration with Tencent, as Chinese consumers expect their future vehicles to be more capable and personalized. This follows reports that the Japanese giant is using Huawei components to enable autonomous driving functions on its China-made EVs. 

Volkswagen 

Germany’s biggest carmaker participated in Auto Beijing 2024 with major global debuts including the ID.Code concept – which offers a glimpse into its upcoming, China-specific all-electric lineup ID.UX – as well as the Audi Q6L e-tron, the first production model based on its PPE electric platform. The coupe-styled ID.Code will be equipped for highly autonomous driving and come with a sophisticated AI assistant with contributions from local designers, as Volkswagen plans to introduce the first model under the new series later this year. In addition to partnerships with Xpeng and Horizon Robotics, the automaker confirmed it is working with Chinese tech giants including DJI, as its latest Tiguan L SUV now features an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) sourced from the drone maker.  

Xiaomi, NIO, and Xpeng

Xiaomi was the center of attention on Thursday when the Chinese smartphone giant said it had secured 75,723 reservations with non-refundable deposits for the SU7, its first EV, with a competitive price range between RMB 215,900 and RMB 299,900. Chief executive Lei Jun expects monthly delivery to exceed 10,000 units in June and the company is set to reach a milestone with 100,000 EV deliveries by this year, which would be a record speed for any Chinese EV brand. The 55-year-old entrepreneur is an icon in the Chinese tech and auto industries, with his visits to rivals’ booths becoming one of the hottest topics at this year’s Beijing Auto show.

Xpeng Motors could take on its major frenemy with the mainstream brand MONA, short for ‘Made of New AI,’ CEO He Xiaopeng told reporters during a press conference. 

Meanwhile, one of NIO‘s new affordable brands, called ONVO, is scheduled for launch in the second quarter of this year. The luxury EV maker on Thursday launched a redesigned version of its ET7 sedan with a starting price of RMB 428,000, which is RMB 20,000 lower than its original version launched three years ago.

READ MORE: Huawei, Xiaomi, and Geely’s new EVs have details leaked on Chinese government site

Alibaba Cloud’s Emote Portrait Alive (EMO) model, which is able to convert portrait photos into talking and even singing avatars is now available on its Tongyi Qianwen app, in a move the tech giant hopes will bring a wider user base to test its GenAI tool. The tool doesn’t currently support custom audio, but users can choose from more than 80 templates, including hit songs, and generate videos after uploading a portrait photo. In a WeChat post on Alibaba Cloud’s account, the company said EMO had become “one of the most popular AI models after OpenAI’s Sora” after it made EMO-related papers public in late February. The cloud computing unit of Alibaba also added that its audio-driven technology is expected to be applied to fields such as digital humans, movie production, and virtual accompaniment in the future. [Alibaba Cloud, in Chinese]

In the first quarter of 2024, the Chinese smartphone market hit shipments of 69.26 million units, marking a year-on-year growth of 6.5%, according to market intelligence firm IDC. Honor claimed the top spot with a 17.1% market share, while Huawei followed closely with a 17% share. Oppo (15.7%), Apple (15.6%), and Vivo (14.6%) ranked third to fifth, respectively. In the same period, the Chinese foldable smartphone market continued its rapid growth trend to reach shipments of 1.86 million units, which represented an 83% year-on-year increase. In the foldable market, Huawei secured its leading position with a market share of 44.1%, while Honor took second place with a share of 26.7%. [IDC, in Chinese]

Chinese game developer MiHoYo announced on Thursday that it is preparing a PC launcher for its gaming titles. Players will have the option to download and install the MiHoYo Launcher in the next few weeks, the company said. The PC launcher integrates four of MiHoYo’s games – Genshin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai: Star Rail, and Lost Ark – enabling players to download and start the games without the use of other platforms. The MiHoYo Launcher presents an opportunity for the firm to re-activate lapsed MiHoYo PC players by directing them to other games, particularly new releases. This new update may also pave the way for potential in-game purchases in the future, such as direct pop-ups through the MiHoYo Launcher, market research firm DataEye suggested. [DataEye, in Chinese]

ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent, would rather shut down the short video platform than sell, if legal action in response to US government pressure fails, Reuters reported on Friday, citing four sources. The app, with 170 million American users, pushes them a constant stream of popular videos based on proprietary algorithms that Bytedance is loath to sell, said the report, given their core role in the app’s success and company’s operations. Selling the app with its algorithms is seen as “highly unlikely” according to the sources Reuters consulted. Since 2020, China’s Export Control Law has required content-recommendation technology to go through approval before export. Beijing-based ByteDance on Thursday evening denied any intention to sell a majority stake in its US business without its algorithms after tech outlet The Information reported the news earlier. [Reuters]

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told the platform’s users that “we aren’t going anywhere” after US President Joe Biden signed the sell-or-ban bill targeting the app into law, giving TikTok’s Chinese parent company nine to 12 months to divest.

“The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail again,” Chew said in a video on Wednesday.

Why it matters: The passing of the bill after months of threats is a clear wake-up call for other Chinese apps that see the US as a top destination for their business expansion or have already entered the market there.

Details: The countdown to the forced sale of TikTok began when Biden signed the bill on April 24, but the short video app’s 170 million American users will continue to have access to it during this period. TikTok is expected to robustly challenge the move in the US courts.

• The law comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken begins his visit to China, where he expects to meet the country’s foreign minister Wang Yi.
• Former editor-in-chief of Chinese media outlet Global Times, Hu Xijin, who is known for his nationalist stance, wrote on X that TikTok should “fight to the end”, hours after the Senate ruled on the platform on Wednesday. He said he believes it will be “meaningless” if ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming “loses this career and only gets some money.”
• On Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented it had nothing more to add to the country’s stance on the TikTok ban as the government institution said it has already made clear its position that there would be “no fairness to speak of” if the US uses national security reasons to ban foreign companies.

Context: TikTok, along with its Chinese owner ByteDance, spent over $7 million on in-house lobbyists and digital ad campaigns this year in an effort to avert the bill passing, according to lobbying disclosure reports cited by CNBC.

On Wednesday, TSMC unveiled its A16 (1.6nm) technology for the first time at the 2024 North America Technology Symposium in California, with the Taiwan-based chip foundry announcing plans to begin mass-production with the new manufacturing process in 2026. TSMC claimed that its A16 technology will boost logic density and chip performance by combining advanced nanosheet transistors with backside power rail solutions. Compared to the N2P process, A16 offers an 8-10% increase in speed at the same operating voltage, a 15-20% reduction in power consumption at the same speed, and a density improvement of up to 1.1 times to support data center products, according to the company. [Economic Daily News, in Chinese]

Chinese game publisher NetEase said it will begin the beta testing phase for a mobile version of Octopath Traveler on May 16, with the game scheduled for release on June 30. Octopath Traveler was developed by Japanese firm Square Enix and released in 2018 as a role-playing game featuring retro-inspired pixel art and a unique HD-2D visual style. Square Enix released the second installment in 2023, and the overall series achieved global sales surpassing four million copies. The game features eight major professions: swordsman, dancer, merchant, scholar, apothecary, ranger, hunter, and astrologer. The mobile version is expected to adopt the 8-player team combat mode, allowing for strategic turn-based battles. [IThome, in Chinese]

Chinese universities and research institutions were still able to purchase servers equipped with the restricted GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) chips as of Feb. 28, despite US export restrictions on the chips being in place since October 2022 and tightened in November 2023, according to an exclusive report by Reuters.

Why it matters: The Reuters report reveals loopholes in the US export restrictions on high-performance GPU chips to China. The findings have raised concerns within the US government about the efficacy and enforcement of these regulatory measures.

Details: Ten Chinese entities acquired advanced Nvidia chips integrated into server products produced by Super Micro Computer, Dell Technologies, and Taiwan’s Gigabyte Technology after the US tightened licensing rules for chip exports on Nov. 17 2023, the Reuters review of tender documents revealed.

• In China, trading in GPU chips coming from the US is not illegal. Chinese retailers may have fulfilled orders using stockpiles acquired before the US tightened chip export restrictions in November.
• The buyers included the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shandong Artificial Intelligence Institute, Hubei Earthquake Administration, Shandong and Southwest universities, a tech investment firm owned by the Heilongjiang provincial government, a state-run aviation research center, and a space science center.
• Nvidia responded by stating that the relevant tenders were for products exported and widely used before Nov. 17 2023. Sales may have included inventory previously exported to Chinese distributors, and the documents did not indicate that any of its partners violated export control regulations, Nvidia said. The US chip giant added that it would conduct further investigations into the matter.
• Dell told Reuters it had not seen any evidence of servers containing restricted chips being shipped to China after the embargo was implemented. “If we become aware of a distributor or reseller that is not complying with these obligations, we take appropriate actions, including termination of our relationship,” a Dell spokesperson said.
• Gigabyte said in an email to Reuters that the company consistently complied with related laws and international regulations. It did not reply to inquiries regarding tenders that identified its products as a source of banned Nvidia chips.

Context: Last October, the US government announced new export regulations to prevent the sale of advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, impacting on sales for US companies such as Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, and Intel.

• Last December, Nvidia unveiled a Chinese version of the RTX 4090 graphics card to adhere to US regulations, in an effort to maintain its market presence. The Chinese version of the graphics card has a 12.8% smaller CUDA core (down to 14,592 from 16,384) and consumes 5.9% less power (425W from 450W) compared with the standard RTX 4090.

TikTok’s fate in the US appears doomed as the Senate passed a sell-or-ban bill on Tuesday with 79 to 18 votes. The bill, tied to the US’s foreign aid package, is waiting to be signed into law by President Biden. TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance still has the opportunity to battle the ban in court. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson did not remark on the latest political move regarding the short video app at today’s regular press conference, saying only that his counterpart in the Ministry of Commerce had previously stated China’s “principled position” that America should stop “unreasonably suppressing other countries’ enterprises” in the framework of a market economy and fair competition. Spokesperson He Yadong also said in March that “China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests”. [TechNode reporting]

Haomo.ai, a self-driving car company backed by Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, said on Tuesday it raised RMB 300 million ($41.4 million) in a Series B2 financing round involving a Chinese local government. The funding was raised from an investment fund formed by existing investor JZ Capital and the government of the Changxing county in the eastern Chinese city of Huzhou, and comes after it secured RMB 100 million from another local government-backed fund early this year. The company launched an autonomous vehicle platform based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride chips, according to a Tuesday announcement. [TechNode reporting, Haomo.ai announcement, in Chinese]

Beijing-based text-to-video startup AIsphere has raised over RMB 100 million ($13.8 million) in its latest A2 funding round from Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba, less than two months after the company raised more than RMB 100 million. According to Chinese media outlet LatePost, which cited people close to Ant, the Alipay owner has made the move as part of a strategy to add stand-out Chinese AI ventures such as ZhipuAI and Moonshot AI to its investment portfolio, while also developing its own AI foundation model. Founded last April by Wang Changhu, the former vision technology lead at ByteDance, AIsphere has touted plans to catch up with OpenAI’s Sora within three to six months. PixVerse, the firm’s Sora-like tool, has seen monthly traffic exceed 1.16 million following its launch in January, figures from third-party analyst platform SimilarWeb show. [LatePost, in Chinese]

Chinese startup Momenta will develop autonomous driving platforms based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride chips, which the companies said will bring the same advanced driving capabilities to mainstream models priced between RMB 100,000 and RMB 200,000 ($13,800-$27,600) as their more premium offerings. A number of gasoline cars and new energy vehicles will be capable of handling lane changes on Chinese highways and complex urban scenarios and driving themselves into pre-booked parking spots using the technology, according to a Tuesday announcement. The US chip designer has recently been partnering with auto majors including General Motors and Toyota, both of whom are among the major investors in Suzhou-headquartered Momenta. The Snapdragon Ride processor was designed to handle all assisted driving functions on a system-on-chip rather than on different chips, making it cost-competitive against Nvidia’s Orin chips, a mainstream choice for automakers. [TechNode reporting, Qualcomm announcement, in Chinese]

An avatar of JD founder Richard Liu participated in its third livestreaming show on Monday as part of a promotional event for this year’s World Book Day. Although the virtual Liu’s nearly 40-minute-long slot made for only a short section of the 11-hour-long e-commerce event, its appearance still suggests that the company sees use of the avatar as a headline- and hype-generating strategy as it looks to boost consumption on its platforms. 

Why it matters: As JD gears up for June’s 618 event, China’s second-largest shopping festival, the attempt to introduce highly life-like digital personalities as sales anchors aims to reduce merchants’ operational costs and compete against rival platforms’ more-established human-hosted livestreams.

• The e-commerce giant will reportedly offer free services to merchants to try avatar-based livestreams during 618.

Details: “I am ‘procurement and sales manager Brother Dong,’” the digital Liu stated as part of Monday’s livestream. The avatar’s latest appearance featured a multi-camera set-up and added an interactive session after previous shows were criticized for its mechanical pronouncements and a lack of interaction with audiences.

• Liu’s avatar introduced five sets of books during the show, including China’s four classical masterpieces, detailing his personal reasons for recommending the novels and highlighting their “price competitiveness” on JD. Each book set was priced at less than 50% of the regular price if viewers bought through links showcased on the left of the screen.
• JD has received “lots of” cooperation inquiries from merchants and brands after Liu debuted his livestreaming avatar last week, according to the chief algorithm officer of JD Cloud’s own large language model ChatRhino, which powers the virtual Liu. Some CEOs also plan to collaborate in bringing their avatars to live shows, the executive added in an interview with China media outlet Yicai.

Context: Earlier this month, JD announced a RMB 1 billion investment, awarded in cash, to incentivize content creators in short videos and livestreaming, aiming to drive the development of content creation on its platform.

Huawei on Tuesday launched a redesigned M5 compact crossover, the first model under the Aito lineup with manufacturing partner Seres. The Chinese tech giant billed the new vehicle as more spacious, better equipped, and with faster acceleration than the Tesla Model Y at a competitive price tag. The extended-range hybrid versions cost between RMB 249,800 and RMB 279,800 ($34,472-$38,612), putting them in the same price range as Li Auto’s newly-launched L6, but with a longer driving range of 1,440 kilometers (895 miles) on a full fuel tank and a full charge. The all-electric M5 is priced at RMB 269,800, nearly RMB 20,000 higher than the base-version, China-made Model Y. And yet, the company said it has a driving range of 602 km based on City Light Test Cycle (CLTC) standards, compared with the 554 km range achieved by Tesla. During a press conference in Beijing, Richard Yu, Chief Executive of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, also unveiled Stelato, a new electric vehicle brand together with Chinese carmaker BAIC, saying the first model, the S9, will be showcased at the city’s biannual auto show later this week. [TechNode reporting, Huawei release, in Chinese]

Tech blogger Digital Chat Station revealed on Chinese social media platform Weibo yesterday that Huawei’s next-gen flagship Mate 70 series smartphones will feature main cameras equipped with domestically-produced CIS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Image Sensor) chips from OmniVision Technologies. The standard version is expected to be equipped with the OV50H, while the premium version will feature the OV50K. The OV50K, a new image sensor produced by OmniVision this year, features a large 1/1.3-inch sensor and supports LOFIC (Lateral OverFlow Integration Capacitor) technology that enhances image quality by reducing noise and improving detail in low-light conditions. The Mate 70 series will debut the new Kirin 5G chipset and is set to launch in the latter half of this year, according to local media outlet Icsmart. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

TNGlobal is excited to announce the ORIGIN: Asia Tech Conference, themed “Unleashing Potential, Reimagine Future” to be held on May 23, 2024, at The Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, Florence Meeting Room . This landmark event signifies a significant expansion into the dynamic landscape of Asia, forming an integral part of BEYOND Week’s prestigious lineup of events. 

ORIGIN: Asia Tech Conference serves as a pivotal gathering, bringing together industry luminaries, investors, and trailblazers to delve into the vibrant tech ecosystem of Asia. With a diverse array of keynote speeches, panel discussions, the conference promises to deliver invaluable insights into the region’s most promising industries and emerging opportunities. As the conference expands its focus into Asia, it aims to embrace the opportunity to engage with the vibrant tech ecosystem in the region, forging new connections and uncovering untapped potential. 

Notable participants set to grace the event include exemplary venture capital firms, multinational corporations, unicorns, and innovative companies such as ATM Capital, Gobi Partners, East Ventures, Sunway Group, Genting Ventures, Malaysia Venture Capital Management Bhd (MAVCAP), FuturePlay, Kairous Capital, RHL Ventures, Hyundai Cradle, iFlytek, Carsome, Carousell, among others.

Distinguished lineup of guest speakers includes:

• Tony Qu, Founder of ATM Capital
• Matt van Leeuwen, Chief Innovation Officer of Sunway Group
• Angela Toy, Partner and COO of Golden Gate Ventures
• Quek Siu Rui, Co-Founder of Carousell
• Matt van Leeuwen, Chief Innovation Officer of Sunway Group
• William Zhou, Vice President, President Overseas Business of iFLYTEK open platform
• Edwin Loh, Founder of Imagine AI
• Jung-hee Ryu, Partner & CEO of FuturePlay
• Kamarul A Muhamed, Founder and CEO of Aerodyne

The conference features an array of compelling topics including:

• Southeast Asia – The Bright Spot for VC Investing Amidst Global Uncertainties?
• Outsiders’ Insights: Capturing the Southeast Asian Tech Wave
• Beyond Unicorns: Building Sustainable Growth
• Corporate Venture Capital: Navigating Innovation and Strategic Partnerships in the Digital Era
• How AI Is Sparking Disruptions & Innovations in Asia’s Various Industries

Who Should Attend?

Entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and policymakers are cordially invited to join ORIGIN: Asia Tech Conference and unlock the full potential of Southeast Asia’s burgeoning tech landscape.

Join us and register now at https://www.beyondexpo.com/registration/ to secure your place at the forefront of Asia’s tech revolution: https://technode.global/

About Macau Greater Bay Area Technology Exchange Association

Macau Greater Bay Area Technology Exchange Association is an organization dedicated to promoting the development and innovation of science and technology. Since its establishment, the association has been committed to organizing various activities, including seminars, lectures, and training courses, to facilitate the dissemination and exchange of scientific and technological knowledge and skills. The association hopes to further foster the development of the tech industry and support entrepreneurial innovation, playing an important role in the advancement of technology in society.

About TNGlobal

TNGlobal is a Pan-Asia tech platform offering premium tech news, industry insights, events, and tailor-made marketing solutions for startups, VCs, corporates, and other industry pioneers. With a vast network of partners in global innovation and entrepreneurship, TNGlobal facilitates cross-border partnerships and businesses. TNGlobal is a spin-off of TechNode, China’s leading innovation and entrepreneurship platform.

About BEYOND Expo

The BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo (BEYOND Expo) is Asia’s leading annual technology event. Serving as a dynamic platform since 2021, BEYOND Expo not only showcases global technological innovations but also provides a unique opportunity to foster innovation upgrades across diverse industries and regions. BEYOND Expo has attracted participation from Asia’s Fortune 500 companies, multinational corporations, unicorn companies, and emerging startups. Through a multifaceted approach involving expos, summits, and various activities, BEYOND Expo has successfully cultivated an innovative ecosystem, propelling collective development in the Asia-Pacific region and the global technology innovation industry.

TeTencent Games said on Monday it will launch a mobile version of Dungeon and Fighter on May 21, a game seven years in development, after the Chinese tech giant obtained approval from China’s National Press and Publication Administration in February. Developed by Korean company Nexon in 2005, multiplayer online action role-playing game Dungeon and Fighter is one of the most-played and highest-grossing video games of all time, with over 850 million players worldwide and over $22 billion in revenue as of June 2023, according to Nexon. Shares in Tencent rose over 4.5% on Monday morning. Tencent has now opened pre-registrations for the iOS version of the game. [Tencent Games, in Chinese]

Shares of Chinese electric vehicle maker Li Auto fell as much as 8.3% in Hong Kong on Monday and were nearly 5.6% lower on the Nasdaq, reflecting investors’ concerns that its first official price cuts will put pressure on profit margins. The company on Monday slashed prices by up to RMB 20,000 ($2,760) on its three extended-range hybrid vehicles, namely the L9, L8, and L7. Meanwhile, its first all-electric model, the Mega van, now costs RMB 30,000 lower at RMB 529,800 ($73,112), less than two months after its launch on March 1. Additionally, customers who just had their 2024 models delivered will also get the premium refunded, which could impact the firm’s cash flow as the startup delivered 80,400 vehicles during the first three months of this year. Tesla’s stock also tumbled 4% on Monday after its latest price cuts in several markets including the US, China, and Germany over the weekend. [TechNode reporting, Reuters]

Chinese electric vehicle brand Zeekr has grabbed the spotlight again after unveiling one of the finest luxury vans Chinese consumers can buy. The company says it is seeking to end the dominance of multinationals in the Chinese market, where dealers charge significant markups for similar offerings.

“This is among our top missions,” said Andy An, chairman of Geely Auto Group and chief executive of Zeekr, at a press event on April 19, calling the status quo “irrational” (our translation). An added that Chinese car brands now offer best-in-class luxury and safety as the market makes a transition to smart EVs. Dubbed “a royal suite” on wheels and a fully-electric answer to the Rolls-Royce Cullinan, the Zeekr 009 Grand costs only a fraction of the models that comprise BMW’s luxury lineup and costs less than the Toyota Alphard, one of its key competitors, at a price tag of only RMB 789,000 ($108,961).

The launch comes as Geely’s EV unit sees strong and continuous demand for its products on its home turf and is set to embark on a major push into global markets. The latest sales figures show that the Zeekr 001 has overtaken Tesla’s Model 3 as the best-selling battery-powered sedan in the Chinese premium car segment, as the company maintains its annual delivery target of 230,000 units for this year.

China’s answer to the Rolls-Royce Cullinan

The Zeekr 009 Grand boasts a combination of sophisticated craftsmanship and cutting-edge technologies and is geared towards the demands of Chinese celebrities and business leaders. Among the mesmerizing features include “curtain” glass that presents as pitch-black in less than two seconds and a single-click mode that deletes users’ travel history and contact data, designed to provide security and privacy. 

Zeekr is also upgrading its “giga-casting” technology, a technical term from Tesla that describes a process to diecast almost all vehicle underbody parts as one to improve car body stiffness. With the two rear seats coupled with die-cast vehicle frames in a C-shape formation, safety tests have concluded that the van’s interior remains intact following a rear-end collision by a 2.3-ton trailer at 50 kilometers per hour (31 mph), according to a video clip presented by the company. 

With only one variant, the 009 Grand has a driving range of 702 kilometers (436 miles) based on City Light Test Cycle (CLTC) standards, despite having more powerful motors than its original version.

The Chinese automaker says its four-seater outperforms the Rolls-Royce Cullinan in on-road performance with the adoption of artificial intelligence algorithms and adaptive dampers and air springs to smooth the ride, technology also embraced by BYD and Huawei. While Chinese carmakers from Li Auto to Great Wall Motor are carving out this increasingly important niche market, Zeekr said its special-edition 009 is winning customers over with its craftsmanship and quality materials, rather than with a more superficial luxurious design. 

Quest for growth amid slower EV uptake

Zeekr is emerging as one of the few Chinese EV makers bucking the trend of turning to plug-in hybrids in the middle of a bumpy transition to new energy vehicles (NEV), while aiming for strong growth despite an overall sluggish EV demand sentiment. The company just delivered more than 4,900 Zeekr 001 shooting brakes in the first two weeks of April, compared with roughly 2,100 units of Tesla’s Model 3 during the same period, according to figures compiled by Sun Shaojun, founder of Chinese consumer behavior research agency CarFans. 

Earlier figures also indicated sustained growth momentum as the revamped 001 pocketed roughly 30,000 non-refundable orders within 30 days of its launch on Feb. 27. BYD, Huawei-backed Aito, and Zeekr outperformed other brands in terms of new orders in the last week of March, Jefferies analysts said in an April 9 note. The companies have benefited from a spillover effect, as Xiaomi’s Porsche-alike sedan becomes a phenomenon, garnering huge attention for the smartphone giant as well as more established rivals. 

An told reporters during an interview that the long-term picture of the ongoing EV transition remains positive, with Zeekr maintaining a delivery target of 230,000 vehicles for 2024, almost double the nearly 119,000 units it achieved last year. It plans to enter dozens of countries in the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia this year, having started exports to Europe, the Gulf Bay area, and parts of Asia late last year. “In our view, Geely is at full steam for the EV race and overseas expansion with competitive NEV product offerings and an established global footprint,” Jefferies analysts said on March 27.

READ MORE:Interview: Zeekr executives on the 001 FR supercar, autonomous driving, and overseas plans

Alibaba’s cloud computing unit will offer free training, inferencing, and deployment services based on Meta’s new Llama 3 open-source model for a limited period to local enterprises and developers, Alibaba Cloud said on Monday in a WeChat post on its official account. The temporarily free solution will eliminate computational power costs for model development and invocation, according to the post, and be available on Alibaba Cloud’s Bailian, an application development platform launched last October at the Apsara Conference 2023. The move comes just days after Meta unveiled its newest foundation model last week. Alibaba’s “model-as-a-service” platform ModelScope has added Llama 3 “immediately”, the company said. [Alibaba Cloud, in Chinese]

Amid recovering demand and the end of inventory adjustments, global PC shipments increased around 3% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2024 to reach 57.1 million units after eight consecutive quarters of decline, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research. In the first quarter, Taiwanese PC maker Lenovo secured the top spot in terms of global PC shipments with a 24% market share, reaching 13.7 million units, up by 8% year-on-year. The other four leading brands were HP (21% market share), Dell (16%), Apple (14%), and Acer (11%). Counterpoint predicts that 2024 will mark the advent of AI PCs (including desktops and laptops), with 45% of new laptop shipments this year predicted to feature AI functionality. [Counterpoint Research]

The US House of Representatives voted 360-58 on an updated bill on April 20 to force Chinese firm ByteDance to sell its short video app TikTok or see it banned. The bill is now expected to go to the Senate this Tuesday. The TikTok bill is part of a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and other US allies, and extends the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok from six months to nine months compared to a similar bill passed in March. The short video platform said in a statement that the House is “using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill,” which would “trample free speech” for 170 million Americans. [TechNode reporting]

FIMI, a subsidiary of Xiaomi that specializes in producing drones and related accessories, recently launched the FIMI Mini 3 drone for the global market, featuring a Sony 1/2-inch 48MP CMOS sensor and a lightweight of 249g. Several third-party retailers have listed the domestic version of the Mini 3 drone on e-commerce platforms, priced at RMB 1,999 ($276) for a single battery and RMB 2,299 ($318) for dual batteries. The drone supports 4K videos at 60 frames per second, 8K time-lapse photography, and a maximum remote control transmission distance of nine kilometers. The three-axis mechanical gimbal guarantees stable and smooth shots, even in windy conditions, according to the company. Additionally, it provides advanced safety features such as GPS tracking for worry-free flying. [FIMI]

The development of modern computer science is marked by humanity’s relentless push towards the boundaries of computing efficiency: new technologies led to new applications, digital services expanded, super platforms emerged, internet traffic surged, energy consumption increased, fundamental technologies advanced, and eventually computational efficiency improved. Over the past 20 years, the global tech industry has largely been going through such a cycle.

Some argue that the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI) may break this cycle. According to the International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2024 report, after globally consuming an estimated 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022, data centers’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 TWh in 2026. This demand is roughly equivalent to Japan’s annual electricity consumption. Thus, should the future of AGI come at the expense of our planet?

I believe we cannot assess tomorrow’s challenges with today’s capabilities, but yesterday’s practices can inspire us and instill some confidence in what we do today. I started working in the tech sector around 2000, and since then, the industry has evolved through eras dominated by mainframe servers, minicomputers, distributed architecture, and cloud computing.

Each iteration of the computational infrastructure is a process of broadening the accessibility of digital services while also representing the evolution of software and hardware technologies to be integrated to improve computing efficiency. What remains constant, regardless of how business demands or computing methods evolve, is the industry’s unchanging pursuit of lower energy consumption and higher efficiency for computing tasks. Since the early days of Alipay, in our pursuit to strike a delicate balance among business expansion, continuity, and cost management, “green computing” emerged as a viable technology solution. 

Green computing is essentially a process driven by technology to sustain business viability. On the path to AGI, the exponential growth in energy consumption is now “the elephant in the room.” However, I believe the tech industry is fully aware of the severity and will, as always, drive innovations in software and hardware, as past breakthroughs have often emerged from seemingly impossible challenges.

Taking Ant Group’s experience as an example, during the “11.11 Global Shopping Festival” of 2010, our payment processing service was only four seconds away from crashing under peak loads. This compelled us to transition from relying on minicomputers to deploying distributed architectures to enhance computational efficiency. By 2021, we implemented green computing technologies at scale, using technologies like workload colocation, cloud-native time-shared scheduling, and AI-based auto scaling, which doubled our CPU server utilization compared to 2019. As a member of the technology team that made this possible, the most visible change for me was that we started from being on high alert in the project room, to eventually enjoying a can of Coke and letting the system handle the traffic peak by itself. 

In the era of intelligent computing, the energy consumption challenge is even greater, something we have experienced firsthand. Just like the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, large-scale campaigns provide the best testing ground for new technologies. For example, each year, Alipay will launch an annual Chinese New Year campaign called Five Fortune. In 2024, for the first time, we started to pioneer green computing technologies in this AI-powered campaign at scale. 

The 2024 Alipay Five Fortune campaign introduced several AI-powered features, attracting 600 million interactions over 12 days. To scale foundation model applications while controlling computing costs, continuous optimization of hardware performance is required, along with better software hardware integration and algorithmic efficiency improvements. Currently, Ant Group has built a heterogeneous cluster of over 10,000 acceleration cards, where hardware compute efficiency (HFU) exceeds 60%, and the cluster’s effective training duration accounts for over 90% of total time. The RLHF training throughput performance is 3.59 times higher than industry-standard solutions under equivalent model effects.

During these green computing pilots, we have gained two key insights:

• In the era of intelligent computing, companies must incorporate the green computing system into strategic planning from day one. The approach to technology infrastructure is no longer about patching or making incremental improvements to the existing system, but about refactoring. The old method of “letting the business run first, then considering energy consumption” is no longer viable. Companies that realize this sooner will have a head start.

• Green computing is no longer exclusive to large corporations. Previously, it was believed that because computation costs are proportional to scale, large companies had a greater need to drive green computing initiatives, while smaller companies felt less urgency to follow suit. However, in the era of intelligent computing, the high costs of computing power make energy efficiency a critical metric for companies of all sizes and types. Given the barriers to developing green computing and the limited R&D budgets of smaller companies, we believe a green computing market will form in the future, providing products and services to businesses of all sizes.

Looking ahead, as industries undergo digital transformation, a triangular challenge emerges: ensuring the secure flow of data across entities, protecting user privacy, as well as ensuring the business is commercially sustainable. In response to these challenges, we believe the future of smart computing will evolve into the era of cryptographic computing, where data will be processed in an encrypted manner across clouds, regions, and industries. This requires more complex computations and higher computing power, thus making low-cost cryptographic computing essential for companies aiming to capitalize on digital transformation. Ultimately, low-cost cryptographic computing will unlock the value of data circulation for instantaneous use, just like turning on the tap.

From the past era of general computing, through the current era of intelligent computing, and into the future of cryptographic computing, pushing for a green and efficient computational power system has been a common pursuit for the tech industry. We believe that breakthroughs in core technologies that integrate software and hardware are crucial, ultimately achieving an optimal balance of computing power, storage, and networks. To achieve this across sectors, companies need to manage their organizations through data-driven approaches to make targeted optimizations, and actively participate in open-source projects and promote the proliferation and application of green computing technologies.

Problems that arise during technological advancement can only be solved through further technological breakthroughs. Similarly, the issue of energy consumption, exacerbated by technology, can only be fundamentally resolved by technology. When we consider what kind of earth we want to leave for future generations, and when our children ask whether technology can truly bring a better future, the endeavors of our generation in green computing take on a more profound significance.

China’s Ant Group, Baidu, iFlytek, and Tencent joined US AI firms including OpenAI and Meta in working on two global GenAI and LLM-focused standards which were published by the United Nations on Tuesday. The “Large Language Model Security Testing Method” and “Generative AI Talent Development Framework” documents were presented during the 27th United Nations Science and Technology Conference. The four participating Chinese companies have all rolled out their own AI foundation models and are seeking to use the booming technology to transform businesses. The two documents represent the first international standards released by a non-profit organization in the area of large models, and signify collaboration between global AI companies on safety assessment and testing. [Ant Group, in Chinese]

On Thursday, Huawei unveiled a letter on the Chinese X-like social media platform Weibo to announce the Pura 70 Series Pioneer Program, a scheme for people to purchase devices from its latest mobile phone series without holding a launch event. The new range was launched with minimal marketing, in a similar approach to the one the Chinese tech giant took when launching the Mate 60 series last August. The Pura 70 Pro/Ultra models went on sale in China on Thursday, while the Standard/Pro+ models will be available on April 22.

Huawei’s flagship lineup is currently categorized into the Mate and Pura series. The Mate line focuses on high-end flagship devices and targets business users, while the Pura range leans towards imaging capabilities and aesthetic design.

Why it matters: Huawei intentionally chose April 18 to launch the Pura 70 series, as it marks the 12th anniversary of the launch of Huawei’s first Pura series device, the Ascend P1. The latest Pura series smartphones are equipped with Huawei’s self-developed Kirin chip, an effort to counteract US chip sanctions.

Details: Similar to the Mate 60 series, Huawei’s Pura 70 series hit the market without a launch event. The first batch of Pura 70 series products sold out within minutes on Huawei’s e-commerce platform. A number of tech bloggers have managed to acquire the Pura Pro and Pura Ultra models first hand for phone performance tests, but Huawei has not publicly disclosed the specific chip details of the Pura 70 smartphone series.

• The tech blogger Digital Chat Station revealed that the processors in the Pro and Ultra models are both identified as the Kirin 9010. The Kirin 9010 processor achieved a single-core score of 1,442 and a multi-core score of 4,471 on Geekbench, a cross-platform benchmarking tool used to measure and compare the performance of CPUs and GPUs across various computing devices. For comparison, the iPhone 12 Pro obtained a single-core score of 2,101 and a multi-core score of 4,936 on Geekbench.
• The Kirin 9010 adopts the same 2+6+4 architecture design as the Kirin 9000s (Mate 60 series), with two cores clocked at 2.30GHz, six cores clocked at 2.18GHz, and four small cores clocked at 1.55GHz. It seems to be a slight upgrade over the Kirin 9000s, the blogger said.
• The Pura 70 series features a distinctive triangular camera module on the rear, along with Huawei’s self-developed HarmonyOS 4.2 operating system. The premium Ultra model supports BeiDou satellite network functions, including text messages, image messages, and satellite calls. 
• The Ultra model also boasts a mightier camera setup with a 1-inch main sensor with retractable lens and variable aperture. Its camera system offers a 50MP 1-inch primary sensor, a 40MP ultra-wide sensor, and a 50MP macro telephoto shooter.
• In terms of pricing, the Ultra model comes in two storage variants: 16GB + 512GB priced at RMB 9,999 ($1,382), and 16GB + 1TB priced at RMB 10,999 ($1,520). The Pro model is available in three versions: 12GB + 256GB priced at RMB 6,499 ($898), 12GB + 512GB priced at RMB 6,999 ($967), and 12GB + 1TB priced at RMB 7,999 ($1,105). 
• Currently, the Pura 70 series phones are limited to sale in the Chinese market. The market intelligence firm TechInsights predicts that Huawei’s smartphone shipments in China will exceed 50 million units in 2024, with its market share increasing from 12% in 2023 to 19% in 2024. The Pura 70 series is expected to ship over 10 million units in 2024, positioning it as a major competitor to the iPhone 15 and 16 series, according to TechInsights.

Context: The Huawei P series was rebranded as the Huawei Pura range on Monday, with the Pura 70 series becoming the first device under the new name. Huawei did not explain the meaning of Pura. However, “Pura” in Spanish translates to “pure” or “clean”, and it can also mean “genuine” or “true” in certain contexts.

An industry-wide price war in the Chinese car market has escalated to an unsustainable level, which has been ongoing for more than a year and could pressure some automakers to slash prices by another 20-30% in 2024, according to the head of Bosch’s China operations. It is “unhealthy” that businesses are being drawn into repeated price cuts, which has elevated every company’s losses or squeezed their profits and could result in reduced efforts on new technologies, David Xu, president of Bosch China, told reporters in Shanghai on Thursday (our translation). The company is trying to make room for more price cuts in China following clients’ requests, but the situation can not last much longer, Xu added. The German parts supplier generated €91.6 billion ($97.7 billion) in revenue with an adjusted margin of 5.3% in 2023, and reaffirmed its long-term profit margin target of at least 7% during its annual press conference on the same day. [TechNode reporting, Bosch release]

China’s Li Auto on Thursday introduced its smallest model ever: an extended-range hybrid crossover that it hopes will contribute a large portion of its total sales this year. The move comes just weeks after the electric vehicle maker witnessed a disappointing launch of its first all-electric model. The L6 midsize sport utility vehicle measures 4.9 meters in length and spans a 2,920-millimeter-long wheelbase, while carrying an affordable lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery pack, which enables a driving range of 1,390 kilometers (864 miles) on a full charge and tank. By comparison, all its larger siblings, including the L7, L8, and L9, are powered by more energy-dense, cobalt and nickle-based battery packs, and most variants come with a 15.7-inch rear display which the company removed from the L6.

Priced from RMB 249,800 ($34,497), the five-seater targets younger and less affluent Chinese families, and could face big competition from the Aito M7 and the new M5, as it measures between the two Huawei-developed models in size and lands at a similar price. Huawei-backed Aito has delivered more than 120,000 units of the revamped M7 since it went on sale last September, and said on Wednesday it has received more than 10,000 reservations for the redesigned M5, which will officially hit the market next week. Li Auto expects the L6 to achieve monthly deliveries of more than 30,000 units, and has cut its annual sales target by 20% to 640,000 units at most for this year, after it got a poor reception for its Mega battery van. [TechNode reporting, Li Auto release]

China’s food delivery company Meituan has appointed Senior Vice President Wang Puzhong as CEO of its new core local commerce business, marking the first time the firm has had two chief executives. The core business integrates Meituan’s in-store and in-home business groups, as well as the main platform’s basic research and development operation, according to an internal memo signed by Meituan CEO Wang Xing on Thursday. The recent update marks the company’s fourth restructuring in less than three months and grants the consolidated unit, announced in February, its formal name. [Jiemian, in Chinese]

“Three, two, one! Show [shopping] link!” Richard Liu, founder of Chinese e-commerce company JD, debuted his livestreaming show on Tuesday – using an avatar in his likeness. The billionaire’s virtual doppelganger drove total sales volumes to exceed RMB 50 million ($6.9 million) in less than one hour, the company said.

Why it matters: JD is finally trying to capitalize on China’s online retail trend for combining content forms and shopping, with the firm making huge investment bets in new areas. Liu’s rare public appearance, albeit through an extremely life-like avatar, demonstrates the urgency of change for the company as it plays catch-up to rivals that have cultivated high-popularity influencers over many years.

Details: Liu’s avatar is powered by the company’s ChatRhino large language model, according to a WeChat post that JD published on Wednesday. The post added that its AI-driven virtual hosts now serve more than 4,000 brands.

• Liu appeared simultaneously in two live shows that lasted less than an hour each, showcasing a total of 13 products, including steak and milk. Although his virtual persona successfully replicated his habit of waving his hands while speaking, the segments where he introduced the products sounded mechanical, lacking interaction with the audience.
• Beijing-based JD experienced a sudden traffic explosion last November as its procurement and sales team joined livestreams as hosts to sell hot items including the iPhone 15 series at lower-than-market prices. Different from other e-commerce platforms, JD said its model has no additional costs such as advertising fees or commissions for invited hosts.

Context: JD’s revenue grew by 3.7% in 2023 to RMB 1,084.7 billion, significantly slower compared to its 27.6% growth in 2021 and a 9.9% increase in 2022, as the e-commerce space has been slow to recover post-pandemic due to belt-tightening by price-sensitive consumers.

In the first quarter, China’s chip production surged by 40% year-on-year to reach 98.1 billion units, a sign that China’s mature process chip capacity is rapidly expanding, despite constraints imposed by the US on advanced processes, according to the South China Morning Post. The National Bureau of Statistics announced on Tuesday that integrated circuit production in China increased by 28.4% in March alone compared to the same period last year, reaching 36.2 billion units. China’s integrated circuit production growth partly stems from strong demand in the new energy vehicles sector, the report said. In the first quarter, China’s production of new energy vehicles increased by 29.2% to 2.08 million units, while smartphone production grew by 16.7% during the same period. [South China Morning Post]

Volkswagen and Xpeng Motors have inked a deal to develop a high-performance electrical/electronic architecture that will underpin upcoming China-made, VW-branded models starting 2026, the companies said on Wednesday. The agreement is an expansion of a partnership that kicked off last year with a focus on the development of two new VW models featuring Xpeng’s autonomous driving capabilities scheduled for launch in 2026 in China. The China Electrical Architecture (CEA) set-up will feature 30% fewer electronic control units than Volkswagen’s previous systems, allowing the German automaker to lower the cost for its China-developed platform by 40% compared to its German-developed MEB platform. Volkswagen and Xpeng also said in February that they will start sourcing vehicle components together to reduce costs. Xpeng’s shares rose 3.8% as of Wednesday’s market close. [Volkswagen announcement]

Japan’s Honda Motor said on Tuesday it is introducing a new electric vehicle brand in China, and will use components from local companies including CATL, Huawei, and iFlyTek as it looks to adapt to significant changes in the highly competitive Chinese car market. The upcoming new models under the Ye series will be equipped with Huawei’s xScene liquid crystal display (LCD) panels and the two companies are exploring more potential collaborations, according to Igarashi Masayuki, head of Honda’s China operations, financial media outlet Caixin reported. The Japanese carmaker said it has also partnered with artificial intelligence firm iFlyTek in order to bring advanced conversational AI capabilities into its cabins, while being open to more joint efforts with Chinese companies in other fields such as autonomous driving. In a similar move, Toyota has reportedly reached a deal with Huawei to develop assisted driving functions built upon the latter’s computing platform for its Chinese models. The first two models under Honda’s Ye series will be launched later this year, followed by another four by 2027, and will target a more premium segment than the existing e:N lineup, as part of the firm’s plan to sell only EVs in China by 2035. The company’s sales declined 10.1% to roughly 1.2 million units last year and it is planning to cut vehicle output by 20% in China, Nikkei reported last month. [Honda announcement, Caixin, in Chinese]

Nvidia’s use of TSMC’s Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) packaging for its new Blackwell platform products has led to the Taiwanese manufacturer ramping up its production capacity for 2024. Nvidia’s latest Blackwell platform products include the new B200 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and the GB200, which integrates the Grace CPU (Central Processing Unit), and all use high-precision CoWoS packaging from TSMC. CoWoS packaging is a technology that integrates multiple chips on a single substrate to improve performance and efficiency in semiconductor devices. The GB200 is expected to ship more than one million units in 2025, representing around 40% to 50% of Nvidia’s high-end GPU shipments, according to supply chain sources. TSMC is currently increasing its CoWoS production capacity, with estimated monthly capacity expected to near 40,000 units by the end of the year, an increase of over 150% compared to 2023. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

BYD on Tuesday unveiled the first supercar under its premium off-road electric vehicle brand called Fangchengbao, which promises ultimate performance and luxury with bold design treatments — the latest example of Chinese automakers going upscale and competing in the high-end segment. The all-electric concept hypercar, called Super 9, features a space shuttle-inspired cabin with carbon fiber racing seats as standard, as well as a futuristic design without a windsheld, making the two-seater an open-top model. Wolfgang Egger, head designer at BYD and formerly a chief of design at Audi, said during a livestream event that the interior was “one of the best places in the world where you can experience the highest level of emotion and speed.” Further technical specs and pricing details were not disclosed at the event, although the automaker said it will showcase the full lineup including the Bao 5, and two other upcoming offerings — a flagship plug-in hybrid off-roader and an all-electric concept crossover — at this year’s Beijing Motor Show next week. China’s EV giant officially launched its first electric sports car, the Yangwang U9, at a price tag of RMB 1.68 million ($233,352) in February and is set to begin delivery of the vehicle by the middle of this year. [TechNode reporting, BYD announcement, in Chinese]

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (MIIT) has released industry standards for cross-platform interconnectivity in domestic smart home devices, effective from July. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, China Telecom, Alibaba, Honor, TCL, Midea, and Haier were consulted in the drafting of the new regulation. The standard specifies unified access process and technical requirements for smart home devices, in an effort to encourage cross-platform access and certification, according to a statement by MIIT. [IThome, in Chinese]

China’s search engine operator Baidu said Tuesday the number of users of its AI-driven ERNIE Bot has doubled to over 200 million in four months, declaring itself a leader in artificial intelligence, as competitors rush into the sector. The company also added that ERNIE now handles 200 million daily queries.

Why it matters: Baidu’s chatbot has revived confidence in the company’s monetization of AI, with its 200 million users offering new potential avenues for growth. 

Details: Co-founder and CEO of Baidu Robin Li expressed confidence that natural language will emerge as the new programming language in the future in his speech titled “Everyone is a Developer” at the company’s AI Create conference on Tuesday.

• Baidu released three AI development tools during the event – AgentBuilder, AppBuilder, and ModelBuilder, underpinning Li’s view that developing apps should become “as straightforward as making a short video.” According to video demos showcased during the talk, these tools can even help users without any coding skills build apps.
• More than 190,000 AI apps were created through Baidu’s Qianfan cloud platform by over 85,000 businesses, the company claimed in the latest figure.
• In the speech, Li explained the “fine-tuning and post-pre-train methods” based on ERNIE 4.0, the firm’s current most advanced foundation model, enable the creation of models with better results at a lower cost compared to models tuned directly from open source models, which is why Li said he thought open-source models would become “more and more outdated.” His earlier comment that open source models “make little sense,”  recently sparked contention on social media among Baidu’s counterparts. 
• Rival Alibaba developed an open source large language model last August, becoming the first Chinese tech major to do so. Others, including startup 01.AI, founded by Kai-Fu Lee and Baichuan built by Sogou’s founder, both chose to make their billions-parameter models open source soon after.

Context: China’s regulator approved 117 large language models for generative AI services on March 25, according to the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The scope of approvals signals stiff competition among tech companies scrambling to create potential from the technology’s commercial application.

• A recent chart finds Baidu, which was amongst the first batch to open its ChatGPT-like bot to the market last August, is being chased by rival company Moonshot AI-trained Kimi, which specializes in analyzing long text, in terms of total traffic. ERNIE Bot recorded 14.9 million clicks in March, while Kimi’s combined traffic surged by 321.58% to 12.6 million.

Chinese automaker GAC Group said on April 12 that it had broken through several obstacles regarding the durability and safety of “all-solid-state” batteries, and expected its future rollout of the technology to offer drivers a range of over 620 miles per charge by 2026. 

GAC, which made the announcement at its annual Tech Day, is among the few Chinese automakers to have offered specific plans in the race to market for next-generation advanced electric vehicle batteries. Toyota’s long-time partner has opted for a solid electrolyte system that sets it apart from the Japanese giant, by far the world’s leading holder of solid-state battery patents, according to Nikkei’s study. 

Why it matters: The development is the latest example of liquid-state lithium-ion pack leader China ramping up efforts to master the technology, as global auto giants expect solid-state batteries to give them an edge over competitors in the EV transition. 

• Global auto majors and battery makers have been adopting three highly promising solid electrolytes in place of a liquid one, a key element that allows the movement of lithium-ions between cathode and anode during charge and discharge cycles. Japanese and Chinese manufacturers primarily focus on sulfides and oxides, respectively, while Western makers are betting on both candidates and paying additional attention to polymers, according to market intelligence provider TrendForce.

Details: GAC claims its batteries offer better safety compared with not only liquid-based batteries but also solid-state alternatives, while achieving an energy density of 400 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), a roughly 60% rise compared with CATL’s highly advanced Qilin battery. It features a hybrid solid-state electrolyte based on both oxides and sulfides, among other materials. 

• The automaker said it developed a thin interphase film over the solid electrolyte surface, formed by a highly dense composite material in a special design that enhances structural durability and battery mechanics. This largely protects the battery from metal filaments known as “dendrites,” which may penetrate the solid electrolyte and eventually short the battery cell, allowing it to maintain thermal stability at 200°C above operating temperature. 
• GAC is also bringing out solid-state batteries with high-loading silicon anodes, adding that it has largely stopped extreme volume expansion and contraction of the anodes during electrochemical reactions, which harms solid electrolytes and often results in a poor overall battery cycle life. The latest prototype of GAC’s solid-state battery has undergone more than 100 charging cycles, retaining over 60% of its initial energy capacity, according to figures released by the company on April 12. 
• One of the major challenges for the large-scale use of oxide-based batteries is that their production is expensive and has fewer synergies with conventional manufacturing processes, according to an analysis published by Spanish research center CIC EnergiGUNE last May. And yet, the automaker said it can produce 30 Amp-Hour (Ah) battery cells while reducing costs in a push for volume production. GAC’s Hyper EVs are expected to travel more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) on a single charge in 2026, thanks to the technology.

Context: Experts say there is little agreement for now on which solid-state battery technologies will win out, and the timeline for their mass production and deployment remains uncertain. TrendForce generally projects that solid-state batteries may enter mass production between 2030 and 2035, with an energy density of 500 Wh/kg, offering a driving range two to three times greater than existing offerings. 

• Some early efforts at the game-changing technology are underway in other parts of the world. Toyota is aiming to market all-solid-state batteries as early as 2027, which could enable a range of 1,200 km and a charging time of just 10 minutes for its EVs, reported Reuters. Samsung SDI is looking at a similar timeline, saying last month that its plan for mass-producing such batteries in 2027 is well on track, while Nissan and BMW are aiming for 2028 and 2030, respectively.
• Several Chinese auto and battery majors, including Changan and CATL, are making semi-solid-state batteries, a more gradual alternative that uses a small amount of fluid or gel electrolyte in addition to a solid-state electrolyte. SAIC said last month that its upcoming EV under the Intelligence in Motion (IM) lineup will feature a semi-solid-state battery pack, with liquid accounting for 10% of the battery’s weight. The IM L6 sedan is scheduled for launch in May. 
• State-owned GAC has operated a plant to produce conventional lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for its Aion-branded EVs in its hone base of Guangzhou since last December, which is expected to have an annual capacity of 36 gigawatt-hours by 2025. It also invests in technologies such as autonomous driving and flying cars, planning to roll out an advanced driving system for city roads using cameras, rather than high-precision maps and lidar sensors, in 2026. 

Stellantis-brands Maserati and Alfa Romeo are among the potential partners to China’s Chery Auto in order to acquire advanced Chinese electric vehicle platform technology for their upcoming battery cars, a person with knowledge of the matter told National Business Daily, without revealing further details. The news comes a day after Chery’s chairman Yin Tongyue revealed during a livestream event on April 14 that the firm was in ongoing negotiations with two European premium car brands for licensing its EV platform, with one of them edging close to a deal. Yin also confirmed that the state-owned automaker has acquired a production facility in Spain hoping to become “a corporate citizen” in Europe. The Spanish government told Reuters last week that it was confident about reaching a deal in the coming days, which would allow Chery to produce vehicles at a former Nissan plant in Barcelona. Wuhu-headquarted Chery is already a manufacturing partner of Jaguar Land Rover in China. [National Business Daily, in Chinese]

On Monday, Huawei announced its new Pura 70 series smartphones, which were previously expected to be named the P70 series. The Chinese telecom giant has not yet disclosed the release date for the new devices, but tech media outlet IThome reported that a member of sales staff at a Huawei store in Beijing had claimed that the series is expected to arrive in store around April 18. The Huawei Pura 70 series smartphones feature a triangular camera island design on the rear, according to the company’s video of the new range posted to the X-like social media platform Weibo. The series will include four models: Pura 70, Pura 70 Pro, Pura 70 Pro+, and Pura 70 Ultra, according to Weibo tech blogger Digital Chat Station. [IThome, in Chinese]

In the first quarter of 2024, global smartphone shipments increased by 7.8% to 289.4 million units compared to the previous year, according to market intelligence firm IDC. This marks a third consecutive quarter of growth, signaling a recovery for the smartphone market after some tough years, the report analyzed. The top five smartphone brands in the first quarter are Samsung (20.8% market share), Apple (17.3%), Xiaomi (14.1%), Transsion (9.9%), and Oppo (8.7%). Xiaomi’s 40.8 million units shipped marks a 33.8% year-on-year increase, while Transsion’s 28.5 million units shipped can be considered a surge: up 84.9% year-on-year. However, Oppo saw a decrease in shipments to 25.2 million units, down 8.5% year-on-year. [IDC]

Open-source models “make little sense” according to Baidu CEO Robin Li in an internal company memo in which he argued that closed-source models have stronger capabilities, Chinese media outlets reported on Weekend. As one of the bases for supporting this statement, Li argued that open-source made it hard to understand “why the parameters are the way they are.” More importantly, Li said keeping the models closed was crucial for “a viable business model.” “Being closed source allows us to make money, and only by making money can we attract computational resources and talent,” Li said. Li’s comment comes as more models are made open source to the general public. [Caixin, in Chinese]

Intel is preparing to launch modified Gaudi 3 chips for the Chinese market when it releases the new generation AI accelerator chip this year, according to British technology media outlet The Register. Intel has disclosed the existence of the two China-exclusive models in its Gaudi 3 white paper, with HL-328 set to launch on June 24 and HL-388 on September 24.

Why it matters: Intel’s launch of customized Gaudi 3 chips for China is part of the American chip giant’s efforts to work within US sanctions on chip exports to China.

Details: Based on the information provided in Intel’s Gaudi 3 white paper, the Chinese editions of the Gaudi 3 models may ultimately require a reduction of around 92% in AI performance to comply with US export controls. 

• Due to US export restrictions, high-performance AI chips need a computing performance below 4,800 TPP (total processing power) to be eligible for export to China. This implies that the 16-bit performance of the Chinese editions of the Gaudi 3 chips will not exceed 150 teraflops.
• Similar to the Nvidia’s Chinese-edition H20 chip, the two modified Intel chips will offer a 148 teraflops of FP16/BF16 performance, just below the permitted limit.
• According to Intel, the original version of the Gaudi 3 chip can achieve 1,835 teraflops in FP16/BF16, formats used in computing to represent a balance between accuracy and efficiency for chips commonly used for AI to process large amounts of data quickly and efficiently. 
• Compared to the original version, the HL-328 and the HL-388 versions have the same 96 MB cache, 128GB of HBM2e memory with a bandwidth of 3.7TB/s, PCIe 5.0 x16 interfaces, and decoding standards. However, both models are capable of just 450 watts of thermal design power (TDP), while the original versions of respective models have a higher TDP of 600 watts and 900 watts.

Context: In the first quarter of 2024, Nvidia strategically re-entered the Chinese market with the H20 AI chip. In terms of performance, the modified-for-China H20 chip’s AI computing power is slightly less than 15% of the H100, the original version of the chip available in the rest of the world.

Chinese electric vehicle maker Li Auto said on April 13 that it has no plans at the moment to begin selling plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in Uzbekistan, adding that the images showing its executives signing agreements with a dealership are fake. The company has reported the case to the police and did not provide further details, pending the outcome of the investigation, according to a statement posted on the Chinese microblogging platform. Images circulated on Chinese social media also show a group of unknown people visiting Li Auto’s production facility in the eastern Chinese city of Changzhou and briefly posing for photographers at the gate of the factory. Li Auto told the Chinese media outlet Caixin in March that it has started hiring staff for its local sales and service teams in Dubai, with plans to begin direct sales and vehicle delivery in the Middle East in the fourth quarter of this year. A dedicated after-sales service network will be set up by June, as individual dealers have been reselling the company’s cars in the region. [Li Auto statement, Caixin, in Chinese]

Tencent Cloud said an 87-minute-long outage affecting customers in 17 regions worldwide last Monday was caused by cloud API anomalies, the latest among China’s internet giants’ cloud service crashes that impacted dozens of products. “The service failure was due to insufficient consideration of the forward compatibility of new versions of the cloud API service and insufficient gray-out mechanisms for configuration data,” Tencent’s cloud computing unit said in a statement posted on its official WeChat account on April 14. The frequency of cloud glitches, according to the local media agency Caixin, which cited an industry insider, is a result of layoffs in the sector over the last two years. Rival Alibaba Cloud suffered two consecutive disruptions in a month last November, each lasting more than two hours with wider impacts globally. [Tencent Cloud; Caixin, in Chinese]

Huawei announced today that the Huawei P series smartphones will be renamed to Huawei Pura, with the upcoming P70 expected to become the first product in the new Pura series. Launched in 2012, the Ascend P1 was the first smartphone model in the P series. The Pura series will carry on the tradition of the P series by offering aesthetic design and dependable imaging capabilities, according to the company. Last week, photos of the back of the Huawei P70 began spreading on the X-like social platform Weibo after Huawei’s spring product launch event, even though Huawei did not unveil it during the event. Photos from online sources revealed a triangular camera island design, equipped with one large and two small camera modules. [Huawei Weibo, in Chinese]

At Huawei’s spring product launch event on Thursday, Consumer BG CEO Yu Chengdong introduced the MateBook X Pro, a slim lightweight laptop featuring cutting-edge technology such as the Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and Pangu AI integration. Huawei did not disclose any information about its next-generation Huawei P70 flagship smartphone at the event however, despite it becoming a trending topic on Chinese social media in recent days.

Why it matters: The MateBook X Pro stands out from other laptops produced by the Chinese tech giant as the first PC to integrate its Pangu large language model. Huawei has collaborated with AI-model partners such as Baidu’s ERNIE Bot, WPS AI, and iFLYTEK’s Spark on the new computer.

Details: The MateBook X Pro is currently the sole laptop weighing less than one kilogram to be equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, according to Yu.

• The 2024 slimline model has a thickness of 13.4mm and weight of 980g. An image shown at the event indicated that the 14.2-inch design is lighter than the 13.6-inch Apple MacBook Air (1.24kg). 
• The new model comes in two chip variants: the first generation Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor and the Ultra 7 155H processor. These variants are paired with an Intel Sharp Graphics card, with options for 16GB or 32GB of RAM, and either 1TB or 2TB of NVMe PCI storage. Notably, the latest Intel Ultra 9 processor can enhance the device’s performance with up to 40W of power.
• The device supports the latest Pangu AI model, which provides artificial intelligence features including AI Minutes, AI Subtitles, and AI Eyes. AI Minutes can make rapid recordings, while AI Subtitles translates texts in real-time. AI Eyes is a photo enhancement software that can analyze and adjust images.
• The 2024 Huawei MateBook X Pro introduces a 14.2-inch OLED screen with a 3:2 ratio and a 3,120 x 2,080 pixel resolution. It boasts a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, a 120Hz refresh rate, and 1.07 billion color display.
• The MateBook X Pro is equipped with a 70Wh lithium polymer battery and supports fast charging at 140W. A 10-minute charge powers the device for up to three hours, the company claimed. 
• It is available in China in three configurations: the Ultra7 model with 16GB RAM and 1TB storage priced at RMB 11,199 ($1,658), the Ultra7 model with 32GB RAM and 1TB storage priced at RMB 12,499 ($1,727), and the Ultra9 model with 32GB RAM and 2TB storage priced at RMB 14,999 ($2,072).

Context: During the nearly two-hour launch event on Thursday, Yu did not once mention “far ahead,” a phrase that he had consistently used at previous product launches and which had gone viral on Chinese social media. Huawei has allegedly stopped him from using this term to describe products, according to local media outlet IThome. 

• Huawei President Ren Zhengfei has allegedly imposed a fine of RMB 10,000 for anyone from the company using the phrase “far ahead,” IThome reported. However, Yu previously denied the existence of such an order.

China’s National Radio and Television Administration has required short web dramas must submit to censorship before airing in online platforms, in a strict new regulation targeting the popular content format. Dramas that have not been filed are prohibited from distribution from June. 1, according to local media agency Caixin. Data from third-party data analysis platform iiMedia Research shows the market for short online dramas almost reached RMB 40 billion last year, and is expected to land RMB 100 billion a year by 2027. Months before the new rule was introduced, more than 25,000 of China’s short online shows were removed from public channels for reasons of violent or sexual content. [Caixin, in Chinese]

Huawei has slashed the prices of its Luxeed S7 electric sedan by as much as 7% only five months after the launch of the first joint model with partner Chery Auto, as the Chinese technology giant looks to lure back customers following delivery delays. The existing premium versions of the S7 will cost consumers RMB 20,000 less, giving them a price tag of between RMB 269,800 and RMB 329,800 ($37,279 and $45,569). The entry-level model’s price remains unchanged at RMB 249,800 with the driving range improved by 28% to 705 kilometers (438 miles). The companies have also introduced a new top-end car with a range of 751 km on a single charge, priced at RMB 349,800. The news comes after long-time rival Xiaomi has continued to garner attention with its first EV model at the competitive starting price of RMB 215,900. The model secured almost 89,000 reservations in the first 24 hours after its launch on March 28. During a press conference on Thursday, Huawei and Chery said they were now ready to begin vehicle delivery at scale, after customers voiced frustrations over unexplained and months-long delivery delays caused by a challenging production ramp-up process early this year. [TechNode reporting]

Meituan has pushed further restructuring in its core food delivery unit with an announcement on naming younger people to management level, in the company’s latest round of changes this year as it looks to adapt to increasing external competition. The Chinese food delivery giant has eliminated the direct-business division as part of the adjustment, bringing in a city-focused model to support operations development based on specific cities’ characteristics. Meituan has also established a separate department to better serve nationwide chain stores. The company recorded a 25.8% year-on-year rise in annual revenue to RMB 276.7 billion last year, with its average daily takeout order volume amounting to 55 million in 2023, which was significantly short of CEO Wang Xing’s goal of averaging 100 million units per day by 2025. [36Kr, in Chinese]

China’s commerce minister Wang Wentao talked with the heads of major car manufacturers including BYD and Geely on April 7 in Paris, as the companies scramble for solutions to an ongoing probe by the European Commission that could result in substantial tariffs on their imports of electric vehicles into the EU. 

Why it matters: The meeting comes as the EU prepares to publish its findings on whether Chinese automakers have benefited unfairly from state subsidies. Brussels could raise tariffs from the current 10% to at least 25% according to an estimate by European environmental lobby group Transport & Environment (T&E). 

• Chinese automakers have called for government support to push for a reduced tariff hike and to counter increased international political involvement in the industry, sources with knowledge of the matter told financial media outlet Caixin (in Chinese). Representatives of BYD, SAIC, and Geely were said to have accompanied Wang during his trip.

Details: At a roundtable discussion with the business leaders, Wang stressed the importance of Chinese automakers expanding overseas markets “in an orderly fashion” and embracing competition, according to a Twitter post by the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU (CCCEU)

• China also expects its manufacturers to bolster the integrated development of investment and trade, and maintain their commitment to technological innovation, Wang said. He added that claims that China’s EV competitiveness stems from state subsidies and comes with overcapacity issues in China are false and baseless. 
• During the April 7-9 trip, Wang also met with Franck Riester, France’s foreign trade minister, state broadcaster CGTN reported, as well as Renault chief executive Luca de Meo, acting chairman of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. De Meo suggested that Chinese automakers establish their supply chain locally, sources told Reuters.

Context: France has backed the Commission investigation, according to Reuters, and has recently changed subsidy rules in a way that effectively excludes Chinese EV models. 

• China has in return requested French cosmetics giants including L’Oreal and LVMH comply with its data security rules by reporting details related to manufacturing processes and ingredients. It also launched an anti-dumping investigation into EU brandy exports in January. 
• Wang’s trip comes ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to Paris and discussions on trade tensions with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, scheduled for May. This will be Xi’s first trip to Europe in five years, as tensions grow between China and the EU.
• The Commission reportedly carried out visits to BYD, SAIC, and Geely for verification work early this year, followed by the launch of a special custom registration process for China-made EVs, as imports rose by 14% year-on-year since formal investigations began last October. 
• Major Chinese automakers, including BYD, SAIC, and Chery, are also planning to construct their own car factories in Europe while also building vessels for shipments, as they look to capture a significant market share in the region with their affordable EVs.

China’s online marketplace JD will invest RMB 1 billion ($138 million) in cash in an attempt to incentivize short video creators and content agencies as the e-commerce player eyes the content form as a way to retain consumers’ attention on its shopping platform. Announcing the move, the company said it is in the process of “incubating top-tier influencers,” with plans to cultivate 100 star influencers by year-end. While rivals Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou have successfully cultivated highly-popular livestreamers, JD is a latecomer to the booming field. JD said qualifying influencers covering certain categories, including electronics, home appliances, fashion, and health, will be able to receive weekly bonuses of up to RMB 30,000. [JD announcement]

Blizzard China issued a letter to Chinese players on Wednesday confirming the restoration of their previous account data after announcing the return of Blizzard games to the Chinese market this summer. The company said technical preparations for its return would take some time, including rebuilding server facilities and recovering data. Players’ account data will be effectively recovered when the servers are activated, the company said. Blizzard players were warned against using unprotected accounts or engaging in data trading, the letter said. The Blizzard Chinese server has already opened reservations, and is preparing various e-sports events. [Blizzard China, in Chinese]

Jack Ma said in an internal Alibaba memo on Wednesday that the company he co-founded has “returned to healthy growth” since new chairman Joe Tsai and CEO Eddie Wu came to power. Ma also shared his support for the company’s continued reforms. In a 1,000-word post titled “To Reform, To Innovation,” Ma first thanked Tsai’s “courage and commitment” after the chair publicly admitted on a recent podcast that Alibaba had lost focus on its real customers in recent years. The famed entrepreneur also praised the new leadership for its “admirable courage and wisdom” to lead one of the biggest reorganizations in the e-commerce giant’s history. Ma’s memo comes after Alibaba canceled its cloud computing unit and logistics arm Cainiao’s public listing plans within the space of a year. He also urged employees to think about what e-commerce could look like in the next three or five years, emphasizing that “the AI era has just arrived.” [Jiemian, in Chinese]

On Wednesday, Xiaomi sub-brand Redmi hosted the launch event for its new Turbo 3 series and unveiled a new Redmi Turbo 3 Harry Potter Edition. It took nearly a hundred senior Harry Potter fans a year to develop the new Harry Potter Edition of the Turbo 3, Redmi claimed. The device features the Hogwarts school crest on the back, along with a Deathly Hallows boot image, customized magic-inspired charging animation, and wallpapers themed around the four houses of Hogwarts. The Harry Potter Edition boasts the same hardware configuration as the standard version, including the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset and 16GB+512GB storage. The special model, priced at RMB 2,699 ($373) on Xiaomi’s e-commerce platform, sold out during the pre-sale phase. Wang Teng, the brand manager of Redmi, revealed that restocks will be available on the first day of sale on April 15. Last year, the company launched the world’s first Harry Potter-branded phone, the Redmi Note 12 Turbo. [Redmi Weibo, in Chinese]

Moonshot AI, an artificial intelligence startup founded in China a year ago, has quickly narrowed the gap with rival Baidu’s ERNIE Bot in terms of users after upgrading its large language model Kimi to be able to handle text inputs of up to two million Chinese words in March.

According to a survey conducted by data website AIcpb, Kimi saw its combined website and app traffic top 12.6 million views last month, bringing its ranking up to second place behind Baidu’s chatbot, which received 2.29 million more views. 

Why it matters: The quadrupling of Kimi’s visit count in March meant the ChatGPT-like tool surpassed Alibaba’s competitor Tongyi Qianwen. Its ability to handle long texts is fueling Kimi’s popularity among users, raising hopes among its backers that it will soon break Baidu’s months-long hold on the top position in China’s AI sector.

Details: Moonshot focuses on longer textual inputs and outputs, a new battlefield for Chinese LLM companies. Alibaba opened up a free long-document processing feature that can handle 10 million characters following Kimi’s upgrade, while Baidu plans to support longer text conversations later this month.

• Less than 72 hours after Kimi claimed a technological breakthrough in handling 2 million Chinese characters, the chatbot experienced a service outage. The crash, which lasted at least two days, was blamed on “an abnormal increase in system traffic far exceeding the system’s capacity,” by the company, as users rushed to try out the new feature.
• In a recent interview with Tencent Technology, Moonshot founder Yang Zhilin noted that a focus on long texts was decided upon at the company’s inception. “It’s fundamental,” Yang said, noting that the core value of AI lies in personalized interaction, best achieved, he believes, not through fine-tuning but by supporting broader contexts.
• He also said that while there is “significant room” for expanding text length, focusing on the numbers alone is “meaningless.” Instead, reasoning, faithfulness, and clear instruction-following are what matters.

Context: Moonshot AI reportedly raised over $1 billion in funding earlier this year from existing shareholders such as Alibaba, Sequoia China, and Xiaohongshu, marking the largest single-round financing for a Chinese AI big model company to date. The company raised nearly RMB 2 billion ($277 million) last year.

Blizzard China announced today a renewed game publishing deal with NetEase to re-introduce Blizzard games to Chinese players. Blizzard China posted a new group photo on the microblogging platform Weibo, in which NetEase CEO Ding Lei, Blizzard President Johanna Faries, and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer were featured. Blizzard’s games will return to the Chinese market in the summer of 2024, while Microsoft Gaming aims to introduce NetEase’s new games to Xbox consoles and other platforms by forming a strategic partnership with the Chinese gaming firm. The renewed publishing agreement covers Blizzard’s flagship games World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Diablo and StarCraft. Last January, Blizzard and NetEase ended their 15-year relationship after a bitter dispute about intellectual property control. [Blizzard China, in Chinese]

Intelligence in Motion (IM), a premium electric vehicle brand launched by China’s biggest automaker SAIC and e-commerce giant Alibaba, has apologized repeatedly for an incorrect mention of vehicle specifications of the Xiaomi SU7 during a press event on Monday. The four-year-old EV brand was severely criticized on Chinese social media after taking aim at Xiaomi during the launch event for the IM L6, wrongfully claiming that the top-end SU7 uses cheaper IGBT transistor chips for its powertrains. In fact, the smartphone giant uses more energy-efficient silicon carbide transistors. In a statement published on the microblogging platform Weibo on Tuesday, IM said it had no intention of smearing Xiaomi maliciously, while admitting it was “incapable” of challenging the electronics brand which has created a “massive” volume of traffic for its first car. A day earlier, Xiaomi blasted at IM on Weibo, calling its comments “unreasonable, illegal, and shameful” and saying it had rejected an informal apology made by a senior IM executive. SAIC established the IM brand with Alibaba and battery maker CATL in 2020 and delivered 38,253 vehicles under the lineup last year. [TechNode reporting, IM statement, in Chinese]

Several Huawei stores in Beijing have informed Sina Tech that they have not received any notification regarding when the Huawei P70 series smartphones will be released. However, pre-orders for the Huawei P70 series have kicked off, with no deposit required for now. Customers can choose to register their information in advance, and they will be notified once the specific configurations and colors are available. The previous generation P60 series was launched on March 23, 2023. Speculations began circulating online about the delayed release of the Huawei P70 series this March; at that time, a Huawei insider responded that Huawei had not announced any release date to the public. [Sina Tech, in Chinese]

Chinese flying car manufacturer EHang has received a production certification (PC) for one of its passenger drones from local regulators, with plans to begin piloting its air taxis in the country’s southern cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai later this year. The production approval, issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), is the first of its kind in the global electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (eVTOL) industry, paving the way for serial production, the company said in an announcement. The news comes months after the Guangzhou-based startup secured an airworthiness “type certificate” from Chinese authorities for its EH216-S model flying taxi. This will help the company get similar certificates for commercial operations in overseas markets in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, CNBC reported in October citing chief executive Hu Huazhi. China has prioritized the so-called low-altitude economy as a strategic emerging industry and expects the sector to be worth RMB 2 trillion ($278 billion) by 2030 from last year’s RMB 500 billion, according to Han Jun, a deputy head of the CAAC. [EHang announcement]

The US Department of Commerce and the semiconductor foundry TSMC jointly announced on Monday that they have reached a preliminary agreement to provide the Taiwanese manufacturer with up to $6.6 billion in subsidies under the US CHIPS Act to support the construction of advanced semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Phoenix, Arizona. As part of the agreement, TSMC will also construct its third fab in Phoenix, bringing its total investment in the US to over $65 billion.

Why it matters: The agreement supports TSMC’s expansion in the US while also demonstrating a strategic partnership to strengthen advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the country as it concurrently looks to limit China’s development in the field.

Details: Following the subsidy announcement, TSMC revealed plans for a third fab in Arizona to introduce 2nm process chip technology or more advanced processes, with production beginning by the end of the decade.

• TSMC Arizona’s first fab is set to gear up for production of 4nm chips by the first half of 2025, while the second fab will produce both 2nm and 3nm chips in 2028.
• TSMC Arizona will establish a cutting-edge cluster, generating 6,000 direct manufacturing roles, over 20,000 construction jobs, and tens of thousands indirect employment opportunities in the next decade, according to the US Department of Commerce.
• With this new funding, TSMC’s total investment in the US has increased from $40 billion to $65 billion. This investment represents the largest foreign direct investment in Arizona history, and the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in US history, TSMC said in the statement.
• “Our US operations allow us to better support our US customers, which include several of the world’s leading technology companies. Our US operations will also expand our capability to trailblaze future advancements in semiconductor technology,” said TSMC Chairman Dr. Mark Liu. 
• TSMC is the fifth company to receive public subsidies from the US government since the enactment of the CHIPS Act in 2022, and the only foreign entity to date, according to Chinese media outlet Jiemian. The other four companies are BAE Systems, Micron, Qualcomm, and Intel, which received subsidies of $35 million, $162 million, $1.5 billion, and $8.5 billion respectively.
• TSMC holds over 60% of the global orders for advanced process chip manufacturing, with nearly 70% of its clients coming from the US, the same Jiemian report said. According to TSMC’s previous financial conference calls, the focus of the Arizona factory is to serve clients in the US.

Context: The current construction of two fabs by TSMC in Phoenix is experiencing delays due to issues such as a shortage of skilled workers, as revealed by Chinese media outlet Icsmart.

• Fab 1’s production of 4nm technology has been delayed from 2024 to 2025, while Fab 2’s 3nm production, initially planned for 2026, is now scheduled for 2028. The two fabs are intended to produce over 600,000 wafers per year, potentially generating a market value exceeding $40 billion annually.

Meituan Select and Duoduo Maicai, the two main players in China’s community group-buying field, have both seen narrowed losses last year as cost-reducing measures continued. According to the local media outlet LatePost, the two participants have shifted their priority goals to profitability instead of chasing market share, as the possibility of achieving significant growth like in past years has diminished. The report said Meituan Select plans to limit losses to between RMB 10 billion and RMB 12 billion in 2024, while for its part, PDD’s grocery unit hopes to cut labor costs in half to around RMB 2 billion. [LatePost, in Chinese]

Toyota has reached a deal with Huawei on the use of key components from the Chinese tech giant’s mobile data center (MDC) platform for enabling autonomous driving functions on its locally-made electric vehicles, people familiar with the matter have told Chinese media outlet Xinliu Car. The partnership will be limited to the Chinese market only and will not involve global sales, with BYD Toyota Technology Co., Ltd (BTET), a 50-50 joint venture established betwen Toyota and BYD in mid-2020, owning the project, sources said on Tuesday. The Japanese automaker was previously reported to be considering incorporating Huawei’s self-driving technologies into its global models, and the two companies may announce that plan as early as the Beijing Motor Show later this month, according to a report by Tencent News. Meanwhile, autonomous driving startup Momenta will reportedly provide software services for the project. The company is a major supplier to BYD and raised $500 million in a Series C funding round from auto majors including Toyota announced in March 2021. [Xinliu Car, Tencent News, in Chinese]

Alibaba Cloud has slashed prices of its core computing, storage, network, database, and big data products in international markets by as much as 59% amid surging AI demands, the company announced on Monday. The cuts come just one month after it offered similar discounts for users in China, as the cloud service provider attempts to lure customers to build large language models and applications based on its products. “We will continue to reduce cloud computing cost as the world is at a critical juncture in the transition from traditional computing to AI computing, where the vast majority of computing takes place on public cloud platforms,” said Yuan Qian, president of Alibaba Cloud’s smart international division. Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai revealed in a recent interview that the US’s curbs on advanced chips may still “hurt” the company’s cloud business and its ability to offer high-end computing services in the medium term. [Alibaba Cloud, in Chinese]

Note: The article was first published on TechNode China written by Penghui Li and translated by Zinan Zhang.

The global humanoid robot market is expected to reach a peak of $154 billion by 2035. Much like the emergence of generative AI, this rise of robots – not to mention the combination of these two fields – may well pose several questions and spark considerable debate beyond mere tech circles. 

Unitree Robotics, which started with quadruped robots and quickly became a global leader in the humanoid robot industry through its general humanoid robot H1, undoubtedly has plenty to say on this.

Here, Chen Li, co-founder of Unitree Robotics,  offers a range of insights into the rapidly developing robotics industry.

1. How has the explosive growth in generative AI impacted the robotics field?

Unitree’s development of humanoid robots can be seen as seizing the opportunity. General artificial intelligence (AGI) has made significant progress and breakthroughs. AGI now needs the most suitable carrier to take it forward, and general robots are bound to be one of the future development directions, with humanoid robots being the most straightforward candidate to become general robots. Therefore, we firmly believe that once general artificial intelligence and general humanoid robots are combined, robots can truly enter daily life in the future.

2. What are the biggest challenges in the development of quadruped and biped robots?

Hardware reliability, self-developed complete machines, motion control, sensors of quadruped or humanoid robots, and how to integrate the data obtained from sensors into motion control — such as combining perception and terrain to dynamically adjust leg height in real-time, and then swiftly and stably traversing unstructured terrain… these are all challenges.

As Unitree has a good relevant accumulation of knowledge in quadruped robots, our progress in humanoid robots is relatively faster than others. We started the project on February 23 [2023], and then on August 15, we developed and released the humanoid robot (H1), which took about half a year.

We can make humanoid robots at any time because the core components of Unitree’’s quadruped robots are self-developed. Transferring the relevant technology of quadruped robots to humanoid robots is relatively straightforward for Unitree.

The joint motors, electronic control technology, control algorithms, and other aspects of our humanoid robots are inherited from Unitree’s previous accumulated technology in quadruped robots. Then, in terms of control algorithms, we also draw from the control technology of quadruped robots, using model predictive control.

3. How is Unitree responding to the increasingly complex and dynamic external environment?

The biggest difference between Unitree now and before is the areas we are currently focusing on. Robotics has always been our focus, and it remains our most important direction. However, at the same time, we are also paying more attention to directions related to general artificial intelligence models, considering how to integrate these latest artificial intelligence technologies with robotics to take robot functionality to the next level more effectively. To face a more complex and dynamic external environment, what Unitree needs to do is to keep doing its current job first, and then, driven by research and development, to deliver excellent products and serve our customers well.

4. Some experts have suggested that with the gradual heating up of the robotics race in recent years, the year 2024 will be the “inaugural year” for the robotics industry, especially humanoid robots. How do you view this statement? 

If we look solely from the perspective of societal attention to the product, the year 2024  is indeed the inaugural year of the robotics industry. However, 20 or 30 years ago, humanoid robots had already appeared overseas — including in Japan and the United States. We need to look at it from two perspectives.

Of course, I prefer to say that 2024 could be the Year of Humanoid Robots. But this milestone is not policy-driven. In 2023, there were significant breakthroughs and developments in large-scale models and AGI. General artificial intelligence could be applied in various scenarios in the future. In such a scenario, general artificial intelligence would require a carrier. Based on this, humanoid robots have started to gain traction.

Then, what are the necessary conditions for the emergence of the Year of Quadruped and Humanoid Robots? I think, on the one hand, it is the empowerment of AI, and on the other hand, it is the stability, reliability, cost-effectiveness, consistency in production, and the maturity of software and hardware technologies of the products themselves. 

5. Unitree also has several quadruped robot products listed on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, making futuristic products accessible. Could you discuss some observations you have on the domestic quadruped robot market?

Yes, we have listed some quadruped robots on e-commerce platforms, and people can find two consumer-grade quadruped robot products, Go2 AIR and Go2 Pro. Whether it’s in terms of product performance, cost-effectiveness, reliability, or playability, I believe the features and functionalities of Go2 are very relevant to daily life.

Currently, the consumer-grade quadruped robot market hasn’t fully opened up for several reasons. The first reason is the price, which is still relatively high. With leading companies like Unitree, our current market price for products is around RMB 10,000. However, there is hope to lower the price to a few thousand yuan in the future.

The second reason is interaction. When facing individual consumers, we need to consider how to make quadruped robots have more functions to increase user stickiness. This is something Unitree has been investing in for the long term. If it’s just a remote-controlled robot or robot dog, consumers may lose interest after playing with it for a few days. So we need to give the robot dog more features — such as interaction, interactive AI dialogue, etc. Only in this way can we turn the robot dog into a true electronic pet.

6. Apart from the price difference, what are the most obvious distinctions between Unitree’s consumer-grade and industry-grade robot products? 

The most obvious distinction between our consumer-grade and industry-grade robots lies in their performance or functionality. For example, the Go2 AIR and Pro versions of our quadruped robots are consumer-grade. In comparison to our industry-grade B2 robot, the difference lies in their functionality — such as payload capacity. The B2 can handle up to 50 kilograms, while the Go2 AIR is approximately five to eight kilograms, resulting in a significant gap.

The second difference lies in the protection level. The highest protection level for the B2 can reach IP68, which is the highest level of waterproof and dustproof protection, allowing it to be immersed in water for a long time. However, the Go2 is not waterproof. The third difference is in their mobility or obstacle traversal capabilities. Due to the smaller size of the Go2, compared to the B2, their leg lengths differ, affecting their obstacle traversal performance. For example, the B2 can climb up to 1.2 meters of stairs, while the Go2 can currently only climb 16 centimeters, which is a significant difference.

The fourth difference lies in their battery life. The Go2, with its long-life battery version, can walk continuously for about two hours. However, the B2 can walk continuously for over five hours. Of course, there are also other differences in software and hardware, so the distinction is quite significant.

In terms of application scenarios, consumer-grade robots mainly lean toward home use, including performances, interactive entertainment, and family companionship. The industry-grade B2 is geared towards work. For example, it can be used for inspections, patrols, emergencies, and rescues in industries such as energy, electricity, oil, chemicals, and coal, as well as for police, firefighting, and various arduous, labor-intensive, dangerous, and repetitive tasks that can be replaced by industry-grade robots.

7. What are some unexpected use cases that you’ve come across for these products?

Since many of our Unitree employees have backgrounds in robotics or artificial intelligence, users come from various industries and often propose application scenarios based on the characteristics of our robots, many of which we hadn’t previously considered. I think this is a very positive thing — it broadens Unitree’s product capabilities, and we also work closely with users to develop solutions for these scenarios.

For example, the application of robot dogs in firefighting emergencies is something we hadn’t thought of before. This scenario was suggested by firefighting and rescue personnel. They mentioned that these robot dogs are quite capable — they can climb stairs, traverse mountains, and handle rugged terrain without much difficulty. In their firefighting emergency scenarios, which often involve high-rise rescues — such as in many of China’s tall buildings — when a fire breaks out, elevators are typically shut down, leaving only staircases. However, entering from the staircase can be quite dangerous for firefighters. In such situations, they proposed the idea of sending in robot dogs first to gather relevant data using various sensors. After assessing the situation, firefighters could then proceed with the rescue operation, thereby reducing casualties.

8. Unitree has expanded its business into the fitness equipment field based on its robotics technology. What made you leap into that sector?

The idea of the fitness pump product was conceived in 2018, but at that time, most of our time and resources were dedicated to robotics, so we didn’t pursue it actively until recent years. We’ve always been contemplating whether we could utilize these related technologies to create new products that cater to a broader consumer base. This idea has always been there, so we decided to develop the fitness pump.

Unitree’s core competitiveness lies in the complete self-research and development of our products. The core components and motion control algorithms are all developed in-house. This is our most fundamental competitive advantage.

9. You initially launched the fitness pump on Amazon and Unitree’s overseas business accounts for about 50% of its total revenue. What factors contributed to your confidence in going global? 

Yes, around 50% of our business comes from overseas. I think there are several reasons. Firstly, before starting this venture, I worked in a hard-tech company handling overseas markets. So, I had some insights and perspectives on overseas markets. Secondly, products like robots or humanoid robot products, especially consumer-level robot dogs, have a broader customer base overseas. Especially in developed countries like the United States and Europe, purchasing power is stronger and profits are better. Thirdly, some of our research clients purchase our robots for secondary development. Many of these research clients are from universities, and many of these universities are in Europe and the United States. Of course, many excellent schools in China are also developing projects very well based on our robot dogs or humanoid robots.

As for the inspiration these successes brought to Unitree’s progress in the domestic market, I think firstly, on the market side, it is crucial to prioritize the market, to quickly prepare and promote the market. Then, the sales business should follow up quickly, distribute goods rapidly, and provide excellent customer service, allowing customers to receive our products as soon as possible. Thirdly, service must keep up — both pre-delivery and post-delivery technical support are crucial tasks, where they continuously provide pre-sale, during-sale, and after-sale training and support to customers. Once such a chain is formed, whether in the domestic or overseas market, companies will have a very solid development foundation.

10. What challenges did you face when going into foreign markets?

It is not easy to expand into overseas markets – there are marketing expenses and communication costs on the business end, and you have to deal with time zone differences and cultural aspects. As for the right choices made by Unitree, I believe the first one is the first-mover advantage. During the initial phase of establishing brand influence, it’s crucial to act swiftly with strategies tailored to robot dogs or humanoid robot products. For customers, it’s challenging to judge product functionalities without physically interacting with them. In such cases, it’s essential to rapidly launch the product and then establish brand or product awareness in the minds of consumers. Additionally, it’s not enough just to launch; there must be subsequent promotions. For example, our product was featured in the 2023 Super Bowl in the United States, and various influencers both domestically and internationally reviewed our robot dogs. These efforts greatly benefitted Unitree’s brand promotion.

The most challenging aspect, I believe lies in the gap that exists between marketing promotions and subsequent customer engagement during business transactions. There may be disparities in product performance, pricing, and applicable scenarios, which require continuous customer nurturing and communication to manage their expectations effectively.

Another challenge might be localization. Currently, Unitree doesn’t have a dedicated overseas team for localization; instead, it’s managed through business trips abroad. Additionally, in terms of team building, I believe that selecting suitable individuals is paramount. A suitable colleague can be more valuable than having 10 or even 20 employees with average abilities.

11. In a recent B2 round of financing totaling nearly 1 billion yuan completed by Unitree, you mentioned that in the coming years, the company will continue to break through technology barriers and promote the integration of AI with general-purpose robots. How should we understand the integration of “AI+ general-purpose robots”? 

At the beginning of our entrepreneurship journey, Unitree was a relatively traditional robotics company, but now we are gradually transforming into a company that integrates “AI+ general-purpose robots”. In between, we have done a lot of strategic thinking. Taking the household scenario as an example, it was quite challenging for robots to enter households, especially general-purpose ones. There are already some robots in households, such as vacuum robots. However, overall, their functionality is relatively limited, either serving specific purposes or performing single functions. In the future, we hope to create general-purpose household robots that can assist homeowners in various tasks such as washing dishes, cleaning floors, making beds, and cooking.

To accomplish these diverse tasks, single-function robots are insufficient; they must be empowered with general artificial intelligence. This empowerment can be done through end-to-end approaches, cloud-based methods, or training methods. The approach is not limited, but I believe the only viable path is to establish a “strong bond” between general artificial intelligence and robots so that robots can enter millions of households.

12. What can you tell us about Unitree’s future plans?

We firmly believe that innovation is the cornerstone of enterprise development. Unitree continuously enriches its product line, improves product performance, and continues to advance the construction and improvement of existing production lines. We deeply cultivated the quadruped robot track in both the B2B and B2C markets, and through a multidimensional growth journey, we have expanded from quadruped robots to the intelligent fitness track and then to the general humanoid robot track, making people’s work and life more convenient, comfortable, and efficient.

Unitree has always believed in becoming a leader in a segmented industry, driving the entire industry and high-quality development of the Chinese economy. We look forward to embarking on a new journey of “technology changing the world” together with everyone, using the power of the collective. 

Major Chinese car manufacturers, including SAIC and BAIC, saw double-digit declines in annual profits as the industry was hurt by slowing growth in new fossil fuel car sales and aggressive price cuts for their electric vehicles amid rising competition from the likes of BYD and Tesla. 

Why it matters: The latest financial results coincide with the rising momentum of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) sales in China. BYD, Geely, and Li Auto, all with a broad PHEV lineup, are among the few that reported both revenue growth and margin improvements, while traditional automakers and battery electric vehicle startups have been put under pressure to sacrifice profits for growth. 

• The figures also signaled potential growing challenges for international carmakers as Chinese EV manufacturers take a stronger position at home. The market share of their joint venture brands with Chinese partners will fall from 40% to 10% over the next three to five years, BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu forecast at an investor meeting on March 27, reported Reuters. 

Details: China’s biggest car manufacturer SAIC reported revenue of RMB 744.7 billion ($102.9 billion) in 2023, an increase of just 0.1% from the same period last year, with net profit declining 12.5% year-over-year. Sales of its joint ventures with Volkswagen and General Motors last year fell 8% and 14.5% to roughly 1.2 million and 1 million units, respectively. 

• BAIC Motor, a Hong Kong-listed unit of BAIC Group, also disappointed investors with a slower pace of revenue growth of just 3.9% in 2023, marking a slowdown from the brisk 8.3% rate notched a year earlier. Mercedes-Benz Group kept China sales flat with its joint venture partner last year, having slashed car prices by as much as a third over the last three months of 2023. 
• Revenue of GAC Group grew at a solid clip last year partly thanks to strong sales of its Aion EVs. However, Toyota and Honda’s main China partner revealed a 45.1% nosedive in net profit to RMB 4.4 billion, which it blamed on an RMB 2.9 billion one-time loss due to charges tied to restructuring, as well as shrinking revenue at its joint venture with Mitsubishi.
• Great Wall Motor’s annual results also offered a mixed picture as it struggles to ramp up EV sales profitably. Revenue grew a more robust 26.1% year-on-year to RMB 173.2 billion, but its profits fell 15.1% to RMB 7 billion. Some of its PHEV models such as Lanshan and Gaoshan fell short of expectations, Bernstein analysts wrote in a March 28 note. 
• Dongfeng Motor Group posted a loss of nearly RMB 4 billion for 2023, compared with a profit of almost RMB 10.3 billion, marking its first annual loss in nearly two decades since going public in Hong Kong in 2005. Sales of its two joint ventures with Nissan plunged 21.5% and 10.2%, while deliveries of its proprietary passenger EVs declined 5.1% to roughly 303,900 units.

Context: Beijing is planning to unveil new measures to boost the performance of FAW, Dongfeng, and Changan, three automakers directly under the leadership of China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), by giving them more leeway and independence in EV operations. Local government-owned businesses, including SAIC, BAIC, and GAC, are also expected to benefit from the policy in the coming months.

READ MORE: Chinese officials reaffirm commitment to EV ambitions and promise raft of support measures amid industry doubts

Around 119 million domestic trips were made during China’s three day Qingming holiday that ended Saturday, with RMB 54 billion ($7.5 billion) recorded in total spending, according to the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Both figures represent a rise of more than 10% on pre-pandemic levels. The Qingming Festival is generally used for visiting tombs or paying tribute to dead relatives in people’s home towns. Official data showed that the country handled 1.041 million inbound tourist arrivals during the period and 992,000 outbound tourists, with South Korea and Japan among the most popular destinations, as well as Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia, which recently introduced mutual visa exemptions with China. [Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in Chinese]

US chip giant Nvidia has introduced the RTX 4090D in the Chinese market, with current prices on China’s e-commerce platforms ranging from RMB 14,999 ($2,074) to RMB 15,999 ($2,212) for two models. The company confirmed that US export regulations would not impact the import of its H20 or RTX 4090D graphics cards into China, despite earlier reports suggesting that sales of the RTX 4090D could be impacted. Micro-Star International (MSI), a Taiwanese manufacturer of computer hardware and electronics, has also released the GeForce RTX 4090 D 24G Ventus 3X for the Chinese market. This new model adopts a default frequency of 2,520 MHz, but it can be manually overclocked to 2,535 MHz through the MSI Center, MSI’s software for optimizing system performance and customization. [MyDrivers, in Chinese]

TikTok sibling Douyin is on track to buy a payment license from Chinese third-party payment provider Union Mobile Financial (UMF), a significant step for the short video app to enter the bank card-based offline payment field. According to a recent announcement from HyUnion Holding, the parent of UMF, Douyin needs to pay nearly RMB 1.4 billion for the license acquisition, which includes a basic transfer consideration of $750 million and net assets valued on the settlement date. “The purchase is to support offline transaction scenarios such as local services, providing a more convenient payment and service experience to users and merchants within Douyin,” said Douyin Pay’s spokesperson. The deal comes three years after Douyin launched its own payment service by acquiring Wuhan Hezhong Yibao, which obtained a third-party payment license from China’s central bank in 2014. [Caixin, in Chinese]

Huawei will hold a spring product launch event on April 11, during which it is expected to release new products for cars and PCs. The much-anticipated flagship smartphone P70 series is yet to be confirmed for unveiling at the event. An industry insider suggested that the Huawei P70 series may skip the launch event and could be directly available for online purchase, similar to the Huawei Mate 60 Pro Pioneer Program last August. Several Huawei offline store employees have stated that there are no pre-order activities available for the P70 series. [DoNews, in Chinese]

Alibaba’s chair Joe Tsai commented that by not focusing on truly creating customer value, they had “stepped on our own foot” in recent years, when explaining why he thought the e-commerce giant had been “falling behind”. Tsai’s remarks were made in an interview with Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management, at a time when the Chinese tech giant has undergone frequent organizational restructures.

“We forgot about who our real customers are,” Tsai told Tangen. “Our customers are the users who use our apps, that are shopping, and we did not give them the best experience.”

Why it matters: Tsai’s conversation with Tangen ranged in topics from Alibaba’s internal reckoning and competitiveness in artificial intelligence, to China’s consumer market potential, in a major signal to the outside world that Alibaba is aware it needs to make changes to keep its customers.

Details: The biggest reorganization in Alibaba’s history, which began last March when it decided to split the group into six units and give multiple businesses the freedom to seek funds or go public, has been fraught with twists and turns. It has now suspended its logistics arm Cainiao’s Hong Kong IPO application and canceled plans to divest from its cloud operation.

• Tsai said China is “probably two years behind the top [large language] models,” with the US’s curbs on exporting high-end chips to China part of the reason the country is behind in the AI space. But he mentioned Alibaba has “made some efforts” when it came to the manufacture of high-end GPUs, while also sourcing chips from other players, without giving further details.
• In China, where consumers are highly price-sensitive, Tsai said he believed the ability to spend among Chinese “is there”, but that the downturn in the real estate and job markets has put a dent in consumers’ confidence and willingness to spend. He struck a more positive note when he said he still saw “great potential” for growth in China’s overall consumption rates that would eventually reach levels comparable with markets in the West. 
• The chair of Alibaba also noted in the interview that giving incentives and confidence to investors, as well as hired people, is “important”, especially for private businesses, and that the company is buying back stock at a rapid pace to bolster market value. Alibaba spent $4.8 billion on buybacks in the first quarter, the second-largest quarterly buyback amount in its history.

Context: Norges Bank Investment Management looks after Norway’s sovereign wealth fund,  a major Alibaba shareholder with a stake worth $3.5 billion at the end of last year. The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund also owns shares in Alibaba’s top competitors, PDD and JD. The fund raised its position in Temu parent PDD by 117.9% last year, compared to a less than 10% increase in its Alibaba holding.

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Hualien county in Taiwan Wednesday morning, with the latest reports indicating that its impact on Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain is relatively minor. Most wafer foundries are located in regions experiencing seismic intensity of level four, while chip factories are constructed with high standards and advanced internal damping measures. Taiwan’s chip manufacturers conducted shutdown inspections and resumed operations after the earthquake on April 3, according to market intelligence firm TrendForce. Despite potential losses from emergency shutdowns or earthquake-induced damages, most chip companies can rapidly recover the majority after resuming operations, as the current capacity utilization rates in mature process fabs range between 50% to 80%. [Icsmart, in Chinese]

Xiaomi has been under pressure related to mass production and timely delivery of its first electric vehicle, as the estimated delivery wait times for the SU7 Pro extend to five months, according to two sales representatives in Shanghai on Friday. Meanwhile, the waiting time for the SU7 Max, the top-end version of the all-electric sedan, is 29 weeks, much longer than the expected 4-8 weeks reported by a customer TechNode spoke with at a Xiaomi store. Two other customers, who gave positive comments about the sleek design of the SU7 at a competitive price, said they were more attracted to the Aito M5 and the Luxeed S7, both powered by Huawei technologies, citing reasons such as more fluid in-car software. Beijing-based Xiaomi, nicknamed “China’s Apple,” seems to be benefiting from its loyal fan base, having secured more than 100,000 reservations as of April 3, a week after the vehicle’s launch. Roughly 40,000 of them have converted their reservations into orders, according to Chief Executive Lei Jun. The smartphone maker stated in a March 29 post on WeChat that it is still “making all efforts” to ramp up production at a new factory in Beijing, set to have an annual capacity of 150,000 units. [TechNode reporting]

The US and the EU have agreed to extend their partnership for three years to address issues in the semiconductor sector, particularly concerning legacy chips from China, Reuters reported on Friday. The two sides issued a 12-page joint statement on the meeting’s outcomes, which outlined plans for the US and the EU to exchange market intelligence on China’s “non-market” policies and consult on planned actions to address related issues in the global supply chain. During a press conference, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo stated that China currently produces around 60% of legacy chips used in automobiles, household appliances, and medical devices. [Reuters]

Semicon is a series of exhibitions run by SEMI and focused on semiconductor manufacturing. It has everything, from materials to equipment to fabrication. I say series of events because virtually every region in the semiconductor ecosystem gets one – Semicon China, Semicon Europa, Semicon India, Semicon SEA, Semicon Japan, Semicon Korea, Semicon West (USA), and of course Semicon Taiwan, all throughout the year. 

The show this year

Chen Nanxiang, the Chairman of both Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC) and the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) said in the opening keynote, “China’s semiconductor market belongs to the world, while the world’s semiconductor market also belongs to Chinese companies”. He and the China Electronics Chamber of Commerce’s Wang Ning also praised Nvidia’s progress, highlighting generative AI as a key growth driver for the industry, and were very bullish on the industry’s goals to become a $1 trillion market by 2030. Working together globally is key to reaching these goals, they said. This was a very positive and inclusive message, one that representatives of SEMI shared (albeit via video as none seemed to be present in person), but seemed at odds with the language coming from Beijing, which recently banned Intel and AMD chips from government computers, and from Washington, which continues to restrict semiconductor technology exports to China.

I have been attending Semicon China and Semicon Taiwan for several years. Semicon Taiwan last September felt like the largest show I’d ever been to, but Semicon China felt larger again, albeit simultaneously less international. It has grown every year I have attended and this time was no different. Over 35,000 visitors, 1,000-plus exhibitors, and still a number of foreign firms taking up some of the largest booths. Japanese firms were especially present, with the likes of Sumitomo, Canon, Tokyo Electron, Disco, and many more having the largest booths at the show. Korea, Taiwan, and Europe both had a large showing, with Korea and Taiwan having their own pavilions.

When speaking with exhibitors though, not everything was as rosy. Exhibitors at the Korean pavilion did admit the Chinese market was tough for them right now, but did not want to go into details. Surprisingly, despite this, they claimed Semicon China was the only Semicon where they planned on having a specific Korean pavilion this year. Such a decision can be interpreted in several ways, either negative or positive. Another Chinese exhibitor working for an outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) vendor admitted that the entire industry was witnessing involution. Like other industries in China, too many players had entered, no one had any clear differentiation, and decent margins were rare.

There was also a clear lack of US companies, just 22 in total, and no household names such as AMAT or LAM. This may not be surprising, but compared to other foreign countries it did feel strange. Cadence’s CEO did appear in person, however, and gave a very informative speech about how AI is driving Cadence’s product development and industry growth.

Power electronics and compound semiconductors were another key theme of the show, having a large area set out just for compound semiconductor companies and also a two-day conference. China now accounts for around 40% of the global power semiconductor market, driven in part by explosive EV sales growth over the past few years. In 2023, BYD Semi overtook Infineon in the Chinese market, and now five of the top ten companies in China are domestic. BorgWarner and Hitachi are no longer in the top ten within China.

Conclusions

The current state of affairs is somewhat contradictory. On one hand, Semicon China and Beijing seem to be welcoming foreign semiconductor companies with open arms. On the other they are pushing companies, especially SOEs, to buy made in China technologies and products. They complain about being blocked from foreign technology, but then proceed to block themselves even further. The conference remarks were very positive, but on the ground, many booths were still pushing the made in China message.

Despite all of this, China remains the largest semiconductor market in the world, and foreign firms, whether they like it or not, need to find ways to tackle it. Chinese firms themselves are facing intense competition domestically so are looking to expand into foreign markets where they hope to find better margins. My impression though is that many foreign semiconductor companies have significant technological advantages over their Chinese competitors and being present in China helps them not only keep an eye on competitor progress but also take away some revenue from these firms that could be spent on R&D to catch up from a technical perspective, or be spent on foreign market expansion.

China may not be the easiest market, but the size and scope of Semicon China, despite everything, shows that there are ways to deal with it.

US sports camera firm GoPro has filed a complaint against Chinese camera maker Shenzhen Arashi Vision (Insta360) with the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, according to information obtained by Chinese media outlet Jiemian. GoPro is claiming patent infringement and asking USITC to investigate the matter and halt the US sale of certain Insta360 cameras, software, and accessories.

Why it matters: GoPro is seeking intervention from USITC to investigate and prevent the sale of the disputed products in the US.

Details: GoPro has submitted evidence of patent infringements to the commission covering nearly all the consumer products sold by Insta360 in the US.

• The products mentioned by GoPro are Insta360’s ONE X, ONE R, ONE R1-inch, ONR X2, ONE RS, ONE RS 1-inch 360, X3, GO3, Ace, and ACE Pro, according to the Jiemian report.
• The Section 337 investigation initiated by GoPro, also known as an “unfair import” investigation, is an administrative inquiry conducted by USITC under the provisions of the Tariff Act of 1930 and its amendments. It targets intellectual property infringement and other unfair competitive practices by goods importers.
• Compared to normal patent litigation in the US, which can last over two years, 337 investigations generally resolve faster. However, they require companies to swiftly gather evidence, hire lawyers, and bear costs that can total millions of dollars.
• The Jiemian report suggests that GoPro’s market share has declined due to the rise of Insta360, which was founded in 2015. By the end of 2021, Insta360 held a leading market share of 41% in the global market for panoramic cameras, followed by Japan’s Ricoh at 22%, while GoPro ranked third with 19%, according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.
• Established in 2002, GoPro’s latest market value is $331 million, over 97% lower than its peak market value of $13 billion in June 2014, when GoPro listed on the NASDAQ. Insta360’s overseas markets account for nearly 70% of its overall revenue, which were around $280 million in 2022.

Context: In 2023, USITC undertook investigations into 72 Chinese companies, of which 48 chose to respond, the Jiemian report said.

• California-based GoPro manufactures action cameras and develops its own mobile apps and video-editing software. The company focuses on the connected sports genre, developing action cameras and video editing software for outdoor activities. 
• Arashi Vision, better known as Insta360, is a camera company headquartered in Shenzhen, with offices in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Berlin. It makes action cameras, 360-degree cameras, editing software for mobile and desktop and 180-3D cameras.

Major Chinese automakers, including Geely and Changan, have strategically introduced big discounts to their car prices or new variants of existing models despite posting a pickup in March deliveries, in a defensive move after Xiaomi’s first car reached nearly 90,000 pre-orders in just 24 hours. 

Xiaomi’s smash hit: The initial success of Xiaomi’s first EV, rolled out on March 28 with a lower-than-expected price tag, is having a knock-on effect on most other automakers which are being forced to take immediate action in order to hold on to their market shares. 

• The reservation-to-order conversion rate of the electronics brand’s SU7 has currently reached more than 35%, according to Sun Shaojun, founder of consumer behavior research agency CarFans. 
• Around 40% of Xiaomi customers canceled their pre-orders partly due to an expected long waiting time for vehicle delivery, Sun said in a Tuesday post on WeChat. Some were also frustrated by awkward sales-service interactions at overcrowded Xiaomi stores in major cities, Sun added, as the Chinese smartphone giant is gradually expanding its sales network for car retail. 
• Nevertheless, this is equal to a volume of at least 31,000 non-refundable orders in just four days, still an impressive performance for a new entrant and one that sees it surpass the early sales figures of Aito, a rising player launched by Xiaomi’s long-time rival Huawei.

March sales, discounts: Sales of Geely’s new energy vehicles (NEVs) rose 65% year-on-year and 34% month-on-month to 44,791 units in March, of which roughly 13,000 were Zeekr-branded battery EVs, partly driven by the strong sales of its refreshed 001 sports wagons, delivery of which began on March 1. 

• Geely on Monday launched a new rear-drive Zeekr 007 sedan, turning a bundle of add-ons into standard features including a large head-up display unit and heated and ventilated seats, at a price tag that is RMB 6,000 ($829) cheaper than Xiaomi’s SU7. 
• This comes after a similar move by Changan which two days earlier introduced a new entry-level variant of its Avatr 12, lowering the starting price of the premium sedan by 12% to RMB 265,800. Avatr’s deliveries more than doubled to 5,016 units last month. 
• Meanwhile, Huawei-backed Aito, which sells both battery EVs (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs), edged out rival Li Auto for a third month in March with 31,727 deliveries compared to Li Auto’s 28,984, buoyed by strong demand for both the M7 and M9 crossover. 
• Aito claimed the M9 was the top-seller in the RMB 500,000-plus price segment in China last month, a title Li Auto had previously aimed for (and failed to reach) with its Mega van. Still, the EV brand, co-launched by Huawei and Seres, on Monday slashed the starting price of its best-selling five-seater by 8% to RMB 229,800. 
• NIO and Xpeng Motors deliveries also jumped significantly through March, and yet both are either slashing prices or using other promotions to lure customers. NIO’s ET5 and Xpeng’s P7i sedans compete in the same price segment as the Xiaomi SU7. 
• NIO said on Monday it will offer a reduction of RMB 10,000 for those who replaced their gasoline cars with a new EV. Xpeng’s G9 crossover now costs RMB 20,000 cheaper than its original list price, following a more than RMB 10,000 price reduction across its lineups a month earlier. 

READ MORE: Explainer: How a new round of price cuts are reshaping China’s EV market

Context: The March sales figures – which showed a rebound from the annual Chinese New Year holiday slump – also indicated a stronger growth momentum for PHEVs than BEVs with a growing number of carmakers pivoting to more affordable PHEVs as they look to expand NEV sales in China’s vast majority of underdeveloped regions.

• PHEVs accounted for more than half of BYD’s sales and enjoyed a higher growth rate than BEVs over the first three months of this year, according to a regulatory filing posted on Monday (in Chinese). The country’s biggest EV maker was followed by the likes of Geely, Aito, and Li Auto, all preferring a broader product portfolio to purely BEVs.
• Ouyang Minggao, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Science, said last month that PHEVs could grab substantial market share from internal combustion engine cars in the coming years, especially in the entry-level price segment, and expected more widespread adoption of BEVs over the next decade.
• EV adoption in China’s lower-tier cities and rural regions is slower than in the country’s more developed areas. A growing number of EV owners from lower-tier cities said they will go back to conventional automobiles for their next purchase due to a lack of charging infrastructure, according to an annual report by consultancy McKinsey released on March 12. 

READ MORE: Chinese officials reaffirm commitment to EV ambitions and promise raft of support measures amid industry doubts

Bilibili’s main site operating center has been replaced by five relatively independent category units in a recent overhaul, according to a Monday report by media outlet LatePost. The move comes as part of efforts to split the video streaming platform’s content operations team to enable it to be more focused and boost quality content. According to the report, the five stand-alone units are designed to oversee separate comprehensive categories: animation, games, music, film, and entertainment. As part of the restructuring, Bilibili has also separated its livestreaming and video operations teams as the company pushes “value-added services” including livestreaming, which contributed to 44% of total earnings last year, as the firm looks to accelerate its path to profitability. [LatePost, in Chinese]

Xiaomi sub-brand Redmi on Monday unveiled the Redmi Turbo 3 smartphone, the latest model in its decade-long series, which is scheduled to launch this month. The upcoming Redmi Turbo 3 smartphone is expected to feature the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, according to sources familiar with the matter. As a budget mid-range smartphone line, Redmi plans to introduce four series for the next decade: the K series, Turbo series, Note series, and Digital series. The K series is positioned as Redmi’s flagship line, while the Turbo series and Note series will provide flagship-like performance at a more affordable price, according to the company. The Digital series will comprise entry-level devices. [Redmi Weibo, in Chinese]

United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), a major player in semiconductor wafer foundry, has secured a significant order from Apple’s radio frequency power amplifier supplier Qorvo, as reported by Taiwanese media outlet Economic Daily News. Qorvo will integrate new chips with its power amplifiers for antenna components of the next generation of iPhones, with the new chips manufactured using UMC’s 3DIC (three-dimensional integrated circuit) technology. Supply chain sources disclosed that Apple has revised the design of the antenna module for the next generation of iPhones to bolster signal performance. This optimization includes the integration of products from Anokiwave, a company recently acquired by Qorvo, aimed at enhancing the iPhone’s signal reception capability. [Economic Daily News, in Chinese]

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is joining forces with a rocket maker startup Space Epoch to test rocket-powered parcel delivery, expected to reach shoppers worldwide within an hour. “A lot of great things seem like a joke at first,” Alibaba-owned marketplace platform Taobao said on Monday, April Fool’s Day, before confirming the collaboration was genuine on its Weibo account. The project is planning to use reusable rockets for parcel delivery and aims to have each projectile carry a 120 cubic meter container holding up to ten tons of goods, according to a post on Space Epoch’s official WeChat account. The Beijing-based startup said it will conduct its first rocket delivery test soon, while the company added that achieving the goal in the short term will not be easy, but that it still hopes to bring opportunities for both the traditional logistics industry and China’s commercial space field through the experiments. [Space Epoch, in Chinese]

Hundeds of customers queued up in long lines amid tight security at Xiaomi’s flagship store in Shanghai over the weekend looking to get their hands on the electronics brand’s $29,881 Porsche-like EV, with some even getting to test drive the vehicle well past midnight. A sales executive told state-owned media The Paper that over 1,800 customers who visited the showroom made reservations for the SU7 sports sedan with a refundable deposit of RMB 5,000 ($692) over the past weekend, highlighting the strong demand for Xiaomi’s first electric vehicle. The report echoes an earlier announcement by Xiaomi chief executive Lei Jun, in which he said the company secured 88,898 pre-orders in the 24 hours following the launch of the all-electric car on March 28. This will account for roughly the total capacity of Xiaomi’s plant on the outskirts of Beijing this year, where the smartphone maker began volume production of the car in late February. [The Paper, in Chinese]

On March 29, Chinese tech company Roborock hosted its global launch event in Beijing, unveiling two flagship cutting-edge robotic vacuums: the V20 and G20S (S8 MaxV Ultra), both of which are intelligent automatic sweeping and mopping robot cleaners. The V20 features a dual-vision 3DToF (three-dimensional time of flight) solid-state lidar (light detection and ranging) system, giving it advanced navigation and obstacle avoidance capabilities.

Why it matters: A leading brand in the field of robotic vacuum cleaners, Roborock is looking to use technology from China’s rapidly developing self-driving car sector in the hopes that the country’s consumers are ready for robotic home appliances and labor-saving devices. 

Details: At the launch event on the eve of the company’s 10th anniversary, Roborock CEO Quan Gang said the firm’s robotic vacuum cleaner sales revenue has clinched the global top spot, based on data from the first three quarters of 2023, according to market research firm Euromonitor. “Our goal is to bring Roborock robotic vacuum cleaners into one hundred million households worldwide,” he said.

• Currently available only in China, the V20 is the world’s first robotic vacuum cleaner to feature a dual-vision 3DToF solid-state lidar navigation and obstacle avoidance system, which utilizes modulated light reflections to enhance depth accuracy for more intuitive floor mapping.
• Roborock, in partnership with industry leaders PMD Technologies, Infineon, and OFILM, jointly developed this dual-vision 3DToF solid-state lidar system. It emits an instant matrix laser that enables simultaneous far and near field visibility, achieves precise map restoration, and ensures ultra-accurate obstacle avoidance. Alongside this system, the V20 also applies AI to match users with a suitable cleaning method.
• The G20S features the FlexiArm Design Side Brush, an innovative robotic arm designed to clean corners, and an additional side mop for edges. It also includes Reactive AI 2.0 obstacle recognition, a built-in intelligent voice assistant, and RockDock Ultra, which automatically replenishes the robot cleaner using hot water and heated air, as well as intelligent mop re-washing and re-mopping capabilities.
• The company said the Roborock app, which controls the robotic vacuum cleaners, boasts over 11 million users, with one million daily active users. The Roborock app’s room map is designed with intensive color contrast for visually impaired users.
• Catering to China’s animal lovers, the app has recently introduced a Pet Mode that can remotely search for and photograph pets at home with the robotic vacuum. 
• Roborock has developed a case library that covers over 50 wall and baseboard materials and over 200 carpet materials, according to data provided by the company. This library is used to develop and test its products’ mapping and navigating capabilities.

Context: Founded in July 2014, Roborock is a Beijing-based tech company known for its robotic sweeping and mopping devices and handheld cordless stick vacuums. Xiaomi played a key role in the company’s founding.

• From 2019 to 2023, Roborock invested over RMB 1.9 billion ($260 million) in research and development, according to figures provided by the company. The firm currently operates three major R&D bases, with over half of its workforce consisting of highly skilled R&D employees. Currently, Roborock products are available in more than 170 countries, including the US, Germany, France, and Spain.
• According to Roborock’s latest financial earnings report, the brand recorded a revenue of RMB 8.65 billion last year ($1.22 billion), with robot vacuum shipments surpassing 2.6 million units.

TikTok owner ByteDance will give high-performance employees extra bonuses in a move to boost morale, according to Chinese media outlets citing the company’s internal email. Employees with performance ratings above “M,” the fifth of ByteDance’s eight standards for performance classifications, are expected to earn incentives ranging from 5% to 15% in the form of stock options or restricted stock units. The short video operator does not publicly disclose its workplace numbers, but the latest layoffs from its Slack-like Feishu unit affected around 1,000 employees, following the cut of hundreds of jobs late last year as ByteDance retreated from the gaming sector. The additional payments will be awarded on April 25, with staff eligible as long as they are still employed on that day, the email said. [Southern Metropolis Daily, in Chinese]

Chinese online retailer JD has lowered its free-delivery minimum order for one-hour delivery services to RMB 29 ($4.01), shortly after the e-commerce titan set on-demand services as one of its “must-win battles” in 2024. This type of business, a key offering mainly provided by China’s internet companies including JD, aims to efficiently deliver a wide range of products local consumers order online within one hour. Beijing-based JD last year brought back its retired executive, former international operations head Yan Xiaobing, to lead a newly established retail arm that integrates the company’s offline businesses, at a time when JD experiences low-digit growth in earnings and user numbers and focuses on increasing consumer spending on on-demand services. [JD, in Chinese]

On March 29, Huawei stated in its 2023 annual financial report that the company’s overall operational performance is in line with expectations. In 2023, Huawei’s global sales revenue reached RMB 704.2 billion ($97.45 billion), representing a year-on-year increase of 9.63%, the largest annual growth rate since 2019. The net profit surged to RMB 87 billion ($12.04 billion), up by 144.5% year-on-year. Huawei’s R&D (research and development) investment for 2023 totaled RMB 164.7 billion ($22.79 billion), with cumulative R&D spending exceeding RMB 1.11 trillion ($150 billion) over the past decade. “We’ve been through a lot over the past few years, but through one challenge after another, we’ve managed to grow,” said Ken Hu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman. [Huawei]

Hundreds of people flocked to a Xiaomi store in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in the late hours of Thursday evening to be among the first to take a look at what many deem to be the electronics brand’s more affordable alternative to a Porsche, as the brand announced a lower than expected starting price for its debut electric vehicle. That’s what TechNode observed during a livestream broadcast by a Chinese electric car blogger on social media app WeChat that attracted more than 200,000 viewers within an hour. 

Xiaomi has already enjoyed a debut win after securing a record 50,000 pre-orders in just a few minutes following its SU7 EV launch event. The official livestream racked up nearly 43 million views on microblogging platform Weibo, underscoring the overwhelming interest among tech-savvy Chinese consumers in the company’s first car. Those making a reservation were asked to pay a RMB 5,000 ($692) deposit as part of the process, with the tech giant expressing its thanks to customers who did so in a brief statement on the microblogging platform Weibo (in Chinese). 

The all-electric sports sedan is selling at a lower than expected starting price of RMB 215,900 ($29,881), roughly $4,100 cheaper than the popular Tesla Model 3, while touting better performance from driving range to acceleration. The dual-motor all-wheel drive version competes with the Porsche Taycan with a top speed of 265 kilometers (165 miles) per hour at a price tag of only RMB 299,900.

Xiaomi’s car launch contrasts markedly with Apple’s surprise retreat from the EV landscape, after the iPhone maker reportedly scrapped its decade-long effort to make a car recently. “We will provide every user, including those with Apple devices, a smart and connected life experience everywhere, creating seamless integration in their homes, cars, and beyond,” Xiaomi chief executive Lei Jun said during the press conference (our translation). 

“A trump card”

Lei, the 55-year-old serial entrepreneur dubbed “China’s Steve Jobs”, tried to lure users away from traditional carmakers during the two-hour event by showcasing how Xiaomi’s ecosystem would provide universal connection and integration between different devices, including phones, cars, and gadgets at home. 

Xiaomi essentially promised potential buyers that their devices would be all tied together with a click, swipe, or a simple voice command. The car’s air conditioning will cool the interior down on a hot summer’s day once the owner tells a home speaker what temperature they want before even leaving the house, according to one example given. In another, the car’s dashboard could become a centralized command station for home accessories which will be activated as the driver approaches home. 

Although rival Huawei has touted similar efforts with its EV partners, Xiaomi claimed last November that more than 655 million devices have been connected to its IoT (Internet of Things) platform, from televisions to fitness bands, making it the biggest network of its kind worldwide. “This is a trump card from Xiaomi,” said Lei when discussing the linking of the brand’s new EV with its IoT network. 

“Better than Tesla”

Meanwhile, Lei mentioned Xiaomi’s plans to be “among the top-tier players” in autonomous driving, a field where Tesla already stands out as a pioneer globally and Huawei is establishing its name at home. The company said its EVs are already capable of traveling more than 300 km on average autonomously on Chinese highways before human drivers take over and will be able to complete most trips by themselves on urban streets across China by August. 

Xiaomi is moving towards two distinct approaches by working on both a camera-based computer vision system and another advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that relies on more sensors including lidar. The company said it will exclusively employ Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips for both systems and bring the software development completely in-house to ensure timely over-the-air updates across all its car variants. 

“In China, Tesla vehicles will not be as good as the SU7 when it comes to intelligent driving capabilities,” said Lei, adding that customers who placed their orders before the end of this year will get the software free of charge. Tesla currently charges Chinese buyers RMB 64,000 for future access to its full self-driving (FSD) package, despite it remaining unavailable in the country. Still, it is faced with competitors from BYD to Geely which also look to offer customers highly automated features with their premium EVs.

READ MORE: Key takeaways from Xiaomi’s EV pre-launch: A top offering facing a tough test

Online video services have gradually become “a key engine to activate the new quality productivity” of the digital economy, said the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA) in a report, as the market size totaled RMB 1.15 trillion, continuing to attract growing companies and live streamers. The state-run association published an industry-focused report on Wednesday, revealing that the number of professional hosts exceeded 15 million, while short video accounts amounted to 1.55 billion at the end of December last year in China. More than 70% of users who participated in a CNSA survey said they had bought goods through short videos and livestreams, a significant increase from 42.7% in 2022. [CNSA, in Chinese]