China’s 618 festival is all-in on AI. Its shoppers are not.
China’s 618 festival is all-in on AI. Its shoppers are not.

China’s ‘618’ shopping festival, the mid-year sales event named for 18 June and now stretched across several weeks, has become two things at once this year: a showcase for how thoroughly AI has been threaded through online retail, and a reminder of how…

China pitches free AI for the developing world as the G7 debates who gets access to American models
China pitches free AI for the developing world as the G7 debates who gets access to American models

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi announced on Wednesday that Beijing is “accelerating the establishment of a global AI cooperation organization” and invited all countries to join. The comments came as the G7 summit in France wrapped up with discussions abo…

China’s new five-year plan makes tracking AI’s hit to jobs a national priority
China’s new five-year plan makes tracking AI’s hit to jobs a national priority

China has spent two years telling the world it intends to win the AI race. Its new five-year employment plan is the quieter admission that winning it could cost a lot of people their jobs. The State Council, effectively China’s cabinet, has issued its …

Microsoft might put China’s DeepSeek inside Copilot to tame its AI bills
Microsoft might put China’s DeepSeek inside Copilot to tame its AI bills

Microsoft is considering putting a Chinese AI model inside its enterprise Copilot, and the reason is money. The company told Axios it is exploring a self-hosted, fine-tuned version of DeepSeek V4, or another open-source model, as a cheaper option to po…

US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek and 100-plus Chinese firms
US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek and 100-plus Chinese firms

The decision had, in effect, already been made. According to people familiar with the matter, reports Reuters, a US interagency committee approved adding the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, the memory-chip maker CXMT and more than 100 other companies flag…

EU Parliament strips immunity from senior Italian MEP in Huawei bribery probe
EU Parliament strips immunity from senior Italian MEP in Huawei bribery probe

The European Parliament voted on Tuesday to lift the parliamentary immunity of Fulvio Martusciello, clearing the way for Belgian prosecutors to pursue bribery allegations linked to Chinese tech giant Huawei. The vote was 344 in favour, 234 against, wit…

China signs up 26 financial institutions for digital-yuan cross-border payments
China signs up 26 financial institutions for digital-yuan cross-border payments

China’s central bank has brought a fresh batch of financial institutions into its digital-yuan network for cross-border payments, extending a currency that began life as a way to buy noodles in Shenzhen towards the far harder business of moving money b…

DeepSeek closes $7bn-plus round with an unusual structure
DeepSeek closes $7bn-plus round with an unusual structure

DeepSeek, the Chinese AI lab that unsettled the industry with a cheap, capable model last year, has closed its first round of outside funding, raising roughly 50 billion yuan, about $7bn, in a deal whose structure is as notable as its size. The valuati…

Alibaba unveils AI models for robots as China’s focus shifts to agents
Alibaba unveils AI models for robots as China’s focus shifts to agents

Alibaba has revealed its first suite of AI models for robots, a move that says as much about where Chinese technology is heading as about the models themselves. The launch came as the industry pivots away from chatbots and towards agents, the systems m…

Huawei’s ‘chip queen’ returns from seven years in the shadows with a bold new scaling law
Huawei’s ‘chip queen’ returns from seven years in the shadows with a bold new scaling law

For seven years, He Tingbo worked in silence. The head of Huawei’s semiconductor business, widely known as the company’s “chip queen,” vanished from public view in 2019 after Washington severed the Chinese company’s access to advanced technology. Her r…