China accounts for about 5 per cent of the equipment and materials directly supplied to the US chip industry when measured by country of manufacture, but its grip on certain rare earths needed for chipmaking is over 90 per cent, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). While 95 per cent of the nearly US$27 billion annual spending by American chipmakers on manufacturing equipment and materials was sourced from companies headquartered in the US, Europe, and Japan, that figure...

A former top executive at HSBC has launched an artificial intelligence-driven wealth management start-up, setting her sights on a billion-dollar valuation and betting that AI can transform how individuals manage their investments and finances. Trista Sun, formerly a managing director in the international wealth and premier banking division at HSBC, said in an interview last week that her venture Equora aimed to help investors manage their finances “proactively” with AI agents, addressing...

A former top executive at HSBC has launched an artificial intelligence-driven wealth management start-up, setting her sights on a billion-dollar valuation and betting that AI can transform how individuals manage their investments and finances. Trista Sun, formerly a managing director in the international wealth and premier banking division at HSBC, said in an interview last week that her venture Equora aimed to help investors manage their finances “proactively” with AI agents, addressing...

New research has exposed a potential flaw in the memory-saving technology underpinning DeepSeek’s models, marking a rare challenge to a breakthrough that has helped the Chinese artificial intelligence lab close the gap with US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic with its low-cost approach. The findings were published late last month in a paper led by researchers from ByteDance and co-authors affiliated with Princeton University, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. The study,...

New research has exposed a potential flaw in the memory-saving technology underpinning DeepSeek’s models, marking a rare challenge to a breakthrough that has helped the Chinese artificial intelligence lab close the gap with US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic with its low-cost approach. The findings were published late last month in a paper led by researchers from ByteDance and co-authors affiliated with Princeton University, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. The study,...

More than half of Hong Kong’s working adults believe artificial intelligence will make their retirement path more unpredictable than previous generations, yet only one in five feel financially prepared for the shift, according to a survey by global asset manager T. Rowe Price. About 55 per cent of the 1,004 Hong Kong residents surveyed – all 30 or older and earning at least HK$15,000 (US$2,239) per month – said they expected AI-driven disruptions to destabilise their long-term career and income...

More than half of Hong Kong’s working adults believe artificial intelligence will make their retirement path more unpredictable than previous generations, yet only one in five feel financially prepared for the shift, according to a survey by global asset manager T. Rowe Price. About 55 per cent of the 1,004 Hong Kong residents surveyed – all 30 or older and earning at least HK$15,000 (US$2,239) per month – said they expected AI-driven disruptions to destabilise their long-term career and income...

China’s manufacturing sector is leapfrogging straight into the era of agentic artificial intelligence and is now exporting that playbook to global supply chains, according to the CEO of Black Lake, a Chinese provider of cloud-based AI tools for factories. “Just as China skipped credit cards and jumped directly to mobile payments, many factories are skipping full traditional digitalisation and jumping directly to AI agents,” Zhou Yuxiang said in a recent interview with the South China Morning...

China’s manufacturing sector is leapfrogging straight into the era of agentic artificial intelligence and is now exporting that playbook to global supply chains, according to the CEO of Black Lake, a Chinese provider of cloud-based AI tools for factories. “Just as China skipped credit cards and jumped directly to mobile payments, many factories are skipping full traditional digitalisation and jumping directly to AI agents,” Zhou Yuxiang said in a recent interview with the South China Morning...

China’s top securities regulator has signalled fresh support for the domestic A-share market, convening a symposium over the weekend as authorities sought to shore up sentiment following a sharp sell-off in technology shares driven by concerns over US sanctions. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) brought together executives from listed companies and experts from securities firms and fund managers at a meeting in Beijing on Saturday to “discuss the country’s capital markets and...