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Innovation

Pacing problem: can AI fears overcome US-China race dynamics and force a slowdown?

When the presidents of the United States and China meet in Washington, the world will be watching to see whether their two countries can make good on their agreement to work towards “constructive strategic stability”. In the sixth part of a series, Chong Ming Lee and Vincent Chow examine what’s behind the call for “pacing” by American AI giants – effectively a slowdown in development – and how the phenomenon is being viewed in China. After years of rapid development, leading US AI executives are...

September 23, 2026

Innovation

Alibaba Cloud set to open new data centres in Europe next year as overseas push gains pace

The tech giant is set to add extra capacity to help international clients deploy real-world artificial intelligence Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud business unit, is set to launch data centres in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months, speeding up an overseas push as it seeks to win enterprise customers through its “full stack AI capabilities” spanning chips, cloud infrastructure and multimodal models. The first of these new data centres will open in the Netherlands in October. The cloud unit will also add to existing data centre capacity in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France and Hong Kong, said Li Feifei, the CTO and president of international business at Alibaba Cloud, at the company’s Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, which runs through Thursday. “We are expanding our global cloud footprint to bring computing resources closer to customers and partners,” Li said, adding that companies were moving AI from experiments into real-world deployment. The company also announced partnerships with firms including Panasonic Digital, Unity China, Indonesian logistics group Lion Parcel, Malaysia’s Loomi Entertainment and business software provider Shake.

September 23, 2026

Innovation

China’s Premier Li Qiang calls for harnessing AI to propel manufacturing advances

Li calls for service platforms to help companies, particularly SMEs, with functions such as industrial design, pilot testing and maintenance “[We] should combine China’s strengths in manufacturing and digital technologies,” Li said during his visit to an AI application testing base in the city on Tuesday, Xinhua reported. He called for the creation of more manufacturing service platforms, covering areas such as industrial design, pilot testing and intelligent maintenance, to help companies – particularly small and medium-sized firms – upgrade operations more efficiently and at lower cost.

September 23, 2026

Innovation

China eyes chip-industry foothold with a tiny Han Xin code to challenge US standard

After failing to unseat the QR code years ago, Beijing is betting that a “micro” version of its home-grown barcode can gain a foothold in the global semiconductor supply chain China is attempting to breathe new life into its nearly 20-year-old Han Xin code by promoting a miniaturised version to use on semiconductors, marking the latest chapter in Beijing’s long-running attempt to secure a foothold for its home-grown standards in global industrial supply chains. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said on Monday that the “Micro Han Xin” code – a scaled-down iteration of the 2007-era symbology – had entered the formal international standardisation process. The effort aims to mark components that are too small for conventional labelling, specifically computer components. These ultra-compact codes give unique identities to sensors, microprocessors, controllers, memory units and other components, allowing them to be tracked across complex fabrication, packaging and testing workflows. The move reflects a strategic recalibration as China looks to challenge the established foreign technologies being used in high-specification industrial applications.

September 22, 2026

Innovation

Alibaba teases 10-trillion-parameter model, debuts ‘China’s most powerful’ AI chip

The tech giant also aims to scale its Alibaba Cloud global data-centre capacity to more than 20 gigawatts by 2032 Alibaba Group Holding has introduced what it called China’s most powerful artificial intelligence chip and teased plans to train an AI model with up to 10 trillion parameters, as top executives reaffirmed the tech giant’s ambition to pursue artificial superintelligence (ASI). Speaking at the company’s annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou on Tuesday, group chairman Joe Tsai highlighted Alibaba’s commitment to building end-to-end capabilities. “Alibaba is firmly investing in building full-stack AI ... to let AI move from a technological breakthrough to value creation,” Tsai said during his opening remarks at the flagship event, which runs through Thursday. CEO Eddie Wu Yongming outlined the company’s road map during a keynote address, identifying “AI models, AI chips and the AI cloud” as the three cornerstones of the machine intelligence era. The company aims to scale its Alibaba Cloud global data-centre capacity to more than 20 gigawatts by 2032.

September 22, 2026

Innovation

Ant Group consolidates Alipay operations in big bet on AI ‘agentic commerce’

Agentic commerce is entering a phase of ‘explosive, large-scale growth’, Ant CEO Cyril Han Xinyi said in an internal letter on Monday Chinese fintech giant Ant Group has revamped its online payments operations by creating a new business group for Alipay, as it sharpens its artificial intelligence focus on “agentic commerce” to drive new growth. Ant, an Alibaba Group Holding affiliate, merged its Digital Payment Business Group, Alipay Business Group and Zhima Credit Business Group into a new business unit dedicated to Alipay, according to an internal letter from CEO Cyril Han Xinyi on Monday, as reported by Chinese media outlet The Beijing News. The company also appointed Wu Minzhi, a veteran executive at Ant and previously at Alibaba, to lead the new Alipay Business Group while serving as Ant’s chief people officer. The restructuring aimed to “further consolidate technology, product and ecosystem capabilities and strengthen the merchant service system”, Han said in the letter.

September 22, 2026

Innovation

Moonshot’s Kimi K3 lands on Amazon in key test for Chinese open-source AI revenue

Open-weight models allow users around the world to use, copy, modify and distribute the software without paying the model developer Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Moonshot AI has begun supplying its flagship Kimi K3 model to Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the world’s largest cloud services providers, in a major test case for how open-weight AI models can generate higher revenue from third-party platforms. The model is now available on Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s tool for building generative AI applications, offering “a powerful new option for coding and knowledge work”, Amazon said in an announcement on Friday. While neither company has publicly disclosed financial terms, the arrangement appears to have triggered Moonshot’s updated commercial licensing terms. Revised in July upon K3’s release, the open-source licence mandates a paid arrangement if any firm or its affiliates host the model as a service and generate more than US$20 million in aggregate annual revenue. AWS reported in July that its AI business had surpassed US$25 billion in annual revenue run rate.

September 21, 2026

Innovation

Chinese regulator drafts rules to protect teenagers from ‘intimate’ AI companions

The latest proposals come two months after China introduced its first dedicated rules governing humanlike AI interaction China’s top internet watchdog has drafted new rules to regulate how social platforms and game developers should protect minors, including a ban on offering “virtual intimacy services” to those under 18 as artificial intelligence-powered companions gain traction. The rules, titled “Ensuring minors’ safe and healthy use of the internet”, would ban online platforms from providing “virtual relatives or companions”, and prohibit them from offering services that “induce minors to become addicted or otherwise harm or may seriously affect their physical and mental health”. The document requires platforms to activate minors’ mode when operating online games, social sites and offering AI services that “could affect the cognition of” users under 16.

September 21, 2026

Innovation

Neither the US nor China can win the AI race alone, BofA analyst says

American power grid limits and China’s reliance on overseas chips mean both nations must lean on international cooperation Neither Beijing nor Washington can win the race for artificial intelligence dominance without relying on other countries, a Bank of America analyst said ahead of this week’s high-stakes bilateral summit, citing deeply entangled global tech supply chains. While China’s advantages had emerged in areas like power grids and manufacturing equipment, the country remained reliant on overseas suppliers for advanced chips, memory and some high-end materials, said Matty Zhao, co-head of China equity at Bank of America in an interview with the South China Morning Post on Monday. The US faced different constraints, including an ageing power grid averaging 30 to 40 years old, compared with 15 to 20 years old in China, Zhao said. Across the US, data centres have fuelled widespread political and community pushback over fears of surging power costs.

September 21, 2026

Innovation

Chinese AI firm Z.ai faces reputation hit after users spot unauthorised uploads

‘It’s basically like stealing something from users, and the malicious intent is what concerns me,’ Shanghai-based AI developer says Even though the company, also known as Zhipu AI, apologised and patched the vulnerability, developers said the incident was likely to weaken its reputation, especially at a time when cybersecurity is becoming a central issue in the AI industry. The issue came to light on Friday when an independent Chinese technical blogger known as Ferstar inspected a local directory in ZCode and found that a compressed file of 313 megabytes was pending upload to Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud storage service after failing 564 times, while a smaller 15-kilobyte file had been successfully sent. Both files were encrypted, he said. The larger file, according to visible filenames, contained a snapshot of a commercial project he was working on, including the project’s Git history. He said the archive could not be opened by him or the ZCode client and could be decrypted only with a private key held on Z.ai’s back end.

September 20, 2026

Innovation

China’s GoPro rival Insta360 opens first US flagship store in New York’s Times Square

Action camera maker Insta360 is opening a New York City flagship as it navigates price wars with DJI, soaring memory costs. Chinese action camera maker Insta360 is deepening its US footprint with a flagship store opening in New York as it navigates escalating price competition with DJI and industry-wide memory cost pressures. The Chinese GoPro rival was slated to plant its flag in the heart of Times Square with its first flagship retail store in the US on Saturday, a marquee launch as the firm looked to “leap to the next stage of growth”, co-founder Max Richter said. “The US market plays a very important role for us and has great potential both in terms of outdoor sports and the creator economy,” Richter said in an interview on Tuesday in Shenzhen, where Insta360 is based. The company was also eyeing another bricks-and-mortar flagship in Europe later this year, likely in Munich or Amsterdam, following the New York launch and its August opening in Tokyo, bringing its self-operated overseas retail presence to three stores by the end of 2026, according to Richter.

September 19, 2026

Innovation

AI doesn’t just answer questions – it legitimises bad ones

Readily available AI analysis can give weak ideas credibility they have not earned. Decision-makers need to get the question right before reviewing the answer Years ago, I watched a focus group explain itself into a contradiction. We asked people what mattered when choosing car insurance. Price won. The deductible came next. Reputation did not appear. During coffee, I asked the interviewer to change the question. How much cheaper would a less prestigious insurer have to be before they switched? One participant, who 15 minutes earlier ranked price first, said no discount was large enough. Nothing changed except how we asked the question. Something unmentioned had become non-negotiable. The first response was not dishonest; it answered our question. The second exposed what the first could not.

September 19, 2026