Meta Platforms’ breakout Muse personal AI agent is shining a spotlight on a new battleground in artificial intelligence – one in which China’s biggest internet companies are already jostling for position. Launched on September 8, Muse surpassed 2.5 million downloads in its first two weeks and topped free-app rankings on Apple and Google’s US app stores. Its popularity has drawn fresh attention to the emerging market for what are known as agent harnesses. Unlike chatbots, which merely respond to...

Alibaba Group Holding is expected to report a 50 per cent revenue surge for its cloud and artificial intelligence unit for the September quarter, driven by strong returns on its aggressive AI investments, according to analysts. Analysts across several financial institutions projected revenue growth for the Chinese tech giant’s AI Cloud and Compute Services unit to have accelerated in the three months ended September 30, up from the 45 per cent growth seen in the preceding quarter. The unit’s...

Shares of artificial intelligence chipmaker Shanghai Biren Technology tumbled more than 12 per cent in Hong Kong on Thursday amid plans to raise HK$4 billion (US$510 million) through a share placement, as competition with other Chinese Nvidia challengers intensifies. The sell-off followed a stock exchange filing by the Hong Kong-listed company on late Wednesday, which revealed it had engaged placing agents on a “best effort” basis to issue 130 million new shares at HK$31.08 apiece. The offering...

US artificial intelligence company Anthropic has introduced Chinese-language options to its Claude chatbot in supported markets, even as it continues to block users from mainland China. Checks by the South China Morning Post on Thursday confirmed that Claude’s web interface now lets users select simplified and traditional Chinese as their preferred on-screen language. China also briefly appeared as a billing country option before disappearing from the settings. Users on X have shared screenshots...

When I took out the US$3,500 Huawei Mate XT 2 over a family dinner during China’s “golden week” – the long National Day holiday in early October – the trifold phone quickly became the centre of discussion: my father and his peers took turns playing with the device, marvelling at the sleek design while debating whether it was true innovation or pure luxury. It wasn’t the first time unfolding its massive 10.2 inch display raised a few eyebrows at dining tables during the week I spent trying out...

TikTok owner ByteDance is China’s Going Global champion, according to a new SCMP Plus databank tracking mainland companies’ overseas expansion efforts. The social media giant topped the debut SCMP Plus Going Global 100 ranking ahead of Apple assembler Foxconn Industrial Internet, online fashion retailer Shein and electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD. More than 2,000 companies were assessed as part of the research project, which assigned each contender a weighted score based on overseas revenue,...

China’s open-weight artificial intelligence models are taking off globally, but much of the money they generate is flowing to third-party providers rather than the companies that create them, according to a new study. Developers including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI make their model weights – essentially the “brains” of their AI systems – freely available for download. This strategy, which has accelerated global adoption over the past two years, allows other companies to run the models on their own...

Standing alongside prominent technology executives, US President Donald Trump announced a voluntary agreement under which major artificial intelligence (AI) companies will use internal controls and monitoring, outside audits and board oversight to manage risks. The White House calls the commitments “morally binding”, but the accord does not create a comparable system of legal enforcement. The administration’s logic is understandable. AI is becoming a source of economic and military power, and...

China’s Xiongan New Area is accelerating its hunt for technology firms as the city, designed partly to house state-owned institutions relocated from Beijing, moves to nurture its own industries, according to people familiar with its plans and local officials. Officials were looking to attract tech companies that could reach valuations of 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion), hoping some would list on stock markets, including Hong Kong’s, in the next few years, sources said, adding that the key...

The latest US-China summit covered a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence (AI). However, the official readouts from both countries did not touch upon an issue that has generated heated debate: whether the United States and China should agree to pause or slow down the development of frontier AI. That absence has triggered considerable discussion. During my recent visit to New York, many US friends asked whether Beijing would ever agree to some form of arrangement. Before...