As China’s AI race accelerates, ‘model fatigue’ becomes the next challenge
On September 22, the global artificial intelligence landscape spun on its axis within a matter of hours. In Beijing, Xiaomi engineers went live with an unusual broadcast, streaming the training run of their new MiMo-V2.6 model. In San Francisco, Anthropic unveiled its frontier Opus 5.5 model. About an hour later, OpenAI crashed the party with the surprise release of its GPT-6 Sol and Luna models. For tech executives and developers trying to keep pace, it was just another overwhelming day in the...
Nvidia-backed Reflection AI challenges Chinese dominance in open-weight models
An Nvidia-backed US start-up has unveiled an open-weight model to challenge China’s dominance in freely available artificial intelligence, releasing a system that early third-party testing suggests could be one of the most token-efficient open models in its class. Reflection AI on Monday debuted Beam, its first open-weight model built for coding, reasoning and agentic tasks. The US firm said Beam was “competitive” with GLM-5.2 from Z.ai – also known as Zhipu AI – and was “approaching” Alibaba...
Hong Kong’s Hermitage Capital stays devoted to top-tier tech stocks amid jitters
Even as geopolitical frictions and market swings unsettle venture investors, Hong Kong-founded Hermitage Capital is sticking to a global strategy of backing frontier technology companies wherever they emerge. With a US$1.5 billion war chest that is 80 per cent in US dollars, with the remainder in renminbi, the private equity firm is ramping up investments across artificial intelligence, semiconductors and robotics, mainly in the US and China, capitalising on a market turnaround triggered by the...
Hong Kong lawmakers say 5-year tax incentive too short to entice major innovative firms
Hong Kong lawmakers have backed the government’s proposed tax incentives for large innovative companies, but many said on Monday that the planned five-year concession period is too short to attract major firms to establish headquarters or expand operations in the city. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in his policy address last month said the government planned to submit a bill introducing preferential profits tax rates of either 5 per cent or 8.25 per cent, which was half of the city’s standard...
Huawei, Qualcomm strike multi-year patent agreement across 5G, AI
US chip giant Qualcomm has agreed to pay to licence and acquire patents from China’s Huawei Technologies for the first time as part of a “multi-year, broad patent licence agreement” covering 5G, computing and artificial intelligence. The deal involved cross-licensing between both firms’ patent portfolios, the Shenzhen-based firm said in a statement on Monday, adding that it included Qualcomm’s purchase of specific Huawei US patents across compute, AI, networking and other technologies. The...
Temu took the world by storm – but has the shopping app lost its thunder?
In February 2023, the budget shopping platform Temu announced itself on the world stage in the brashest way possible: becoming one of the youngest ever brands to buy a Super Bowl advertising spot. “Download the Temu app and shop like a billionaire,” a voice proclaimed in the 30-second commercial, as a woman danced on screen and ordered a series of outlandishly cheap items: from a US$8.99 dress to a US$4.99 wig. The commercial – which aired twice during the game, costing Temu an estimated US$14...
Dario Amodei’s American AI imperialism
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seems to believe that he, the American artificial intelligence (AI) industry and the United States are the only ones who should have the right to determine the fate of humanity. While he pays lip service to involving other democracies in AI development, which ones remotely approach the technological capacities of the US and China? Do other non-democratic developing countries not count? His self-belief is far more dangerous than mere commercial greed. Like Peter Thiel,...
Quality over quantity: China’s AI microdrama producers battle viewer fatigue
Two decades after stepping away from the spotlight, iconic actress Joey Wong made an unexpected return to the screen – not through a traditional production, but via artificial intelligence-powered reconstruction. In a two-minute video by NetEase this summer, Wong, one of the most well-known actresses of the 1980s and 90s, had some of her most celebrated roles recreated, including the beautiful ghost in A Chinese Ghost Story and an alluring snake demon in Green Snake. The revival is just the tip...
How US-China RISC-V collaboration is deepening despite chip rivalry
As global adoption of the open-source RISC-V chip architecture accelerates, US intellectual property provider MIPS is collaborating with Chinese firms at an unprecedented level, according to a senior executive, highlighting how cross-border cooperation persists despite intense tech rivalry between Washington and Beijing. MIPS, which was acquired by US chipmaker GlobalFoundries last year, was driving RISC-V standardisation “very closely with China”, chief technology officer Yankin Tanurhan said...
More Chinese banks likely to adopt AI rules after Ping An move: analysts
After Ping An Bank became the first listed Chinese lender to formally adopt rules governing its use of artificial intelligence, analysts said more mainland institutions were likely to follow, with the move setting an early benchmark for how far the sector can go in applying the technology. The Shenzhen-listed bank said in a filing on Wednesday that its board had approved AI management measures, following a regulatory push for banks to strengthen oversight of AI use. The full rules have not been...