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Innovation

Alibaba sells gaming arm Lingxi Games as tech giant sharpens focus on AI and e-commerce

The landmark deal sees Citic Capital’s private equity arm acquiring the unit famous for strategy game Three Kingdoms Tactics Alibaba Group Holding has agreed to sell its wholly owned gaming business Lingxi Games to Trustar Capital as the Chinese technology giant pivots away from noncore sectors to prioritise e-commerce and artificial intelligence, according to an internal letter issued on Monday. “As part of Alibaba’s broader strategy to sharpen its focus, the group has decided to entrust Lingxi to Trustar Capital,” stated the letter seen by the South China Morning Post and signed by Lingxi CEO Zhou Bingshu. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The sale of the unit comes as the Hangzhou-based group concentrates resources on its e-commerce, cloud computing and AI businesses. The deal follows the offloading of other noncore assets, including exits from hypermarket operator Sun Art Retail and department store chain Intime Retail. Lingxi was officially established as a brand in 2019, stemming from Alibaba’s existing gaming operations and its 2017 acquisition of Ejoy, the studio founded by former NetEase chief operating officer Zhan Zhonghui.

August 17, 2026

Innovation

CXMT value tops 4 trillion yuan as AI-fuelled memory rally lifts China’s chip champion

Shares jump 12 per cent to a record as bullish signals from SanDisk reinforce expectations that AI-driven memory demand will keep supplies tight Shares of ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China’s leading DRAM maker, jumped 12 per cent on Monday to close at a record 61.80 yuan (US$9.16), lifting its market capitalisation to 4.13 trillion yuan and extending its lead as China’s most valuable listed company. The latest jump appeared largely sector-driven. SanDisk shares surged nearly 30 per cent on Thursday and Friday after its investor day reinforced expectations that artificial intelligence (AI) demand could keep memory supplies tight, while Micron Technology also gained 6.7 per cent last Friday. SanDisk had reported strong quarterly results earlier this month. At its investor day last week, the NAND maker also forecast solid long-term growth and margins, further boosting confidence in the memory upcycle. Nomura said the investor day provided greater long-term visibility into the NAND market, pointing to SanDisk’s forecast that solid-state drive (SSD) shipments for AI data centres could reach 1,200 exabytes in 2030. An exabyte equals 1 million terabytes.

August 17, 2026

Innovation

AI chipmaker Biren projects up to 22-fold revenue surge amid China’s hi-tech boom

Massive financial gains across domestic chipmakers underscore how the push for self-sufficiency is reshaping demand for home-grown hardware Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaker Biren Technology projects that its first-half revenue could shoot up by up to 2,107 per cent amid the AI hardware boom, joining industry peers like Hygon Information Technology and Cambricon Technologies in reporting accelerating demand for home-grown chips. The Shanghai-based graphics processing unit (GPU) maker, which debuted on the Hong Kong stock exchange in January, estimated revenue for the first six months of 2026 to reach between 1.15 billion yuan (US$170.5 million) and 1.3 billion yuan, with staggering year-on-year growth of 1,852 per cent to 2,107 per cent, according to its stock exchange filing on Monday. Biren also projected that its net loss would narrow to between 320 million yuan and 400 million yuan, compared with a loss of 1.6 billion yuan during the same period in 2025. The firm attributed the revenue surge to accelerating commercialisation and strong market demand for general-purpose GPUs, which are processors used in AI applications that handle complex tasks, including coding and agent software.

August 17, 2026

Innovation

Chinese robots on the march despite tech war hurdles

Did the stair-climbing Chinese robot vacuum or flying robovac prototypes that wowed visitors at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas go into production? American consumers will probably not find out. Nor will US businesses and households get to buy Iron, Xpeng’s humanoid robot, so lifelike it had to be unzipped on stage to convince onlookers it was a machine. Even Elon Musk, whose Tesla is developing Optimus, praised his Chinese competitor’s model. The next generation of the dancing...

August 17, 2026

Innovation

Global leaders must wake up to threat of unbridled AI adoption

To describe the uncontrolled adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) as a “mixed blessing” is a grotesque understatement. It is better termed a miscalculated risk that reflects the world’s present sad and potentially tragic lack of responsible leadership, in Western nations especially. On the one hand, we are assured AI will raise productivity and economic growth. It will be a particular blessing for developing countries, such as those in Asia, enabling them to leapfrog the centuries it took...

August 15, 2026

Innovation

Open-weight Chinese AI models gain foothold in Europe despite Brussels’ trepidation

Chinese models will be ‘significant’ for European firms, as their ‘performance and efficiency are increasingly competitive’, analyst says European businesses are increasingly weighing whether cheap but capable Chinese artificial intelligence systems represent a new threat to the continent’s technological sovereignty or a practical tool to strengthen it. While using Chinese technology might seem counterintuitive to Europe’s goals, running open-weight Chinese models on local servers can actually give firms greater operational control than relying on proprietary US services, according to a Germany-based consultant. “A Chinese-developed open-weight model operated on European infrastructure, with data remaining under the company’s control, may in some respects offer greater operational sovereignty than consuming a proprietary foreign [model] that can be changed, repriced or withdrawn remotely,” said Volker Pfirsching, a Munich-based partner at management consultancy Arthur D. Little, in an interview this week. “Sovereignty should not simply be equated with the nationality of the supplier,” Pfirsching said.

August 15, 2026

Innovation

Launch of DeepSeek’s Harness marks its strategic pivot towards autonomous agentic AI

With the launch of Harness, China’s DeepSeek continues to build the foundational digital scaffolding for autonomous AI agents The release on Thursday marks a strategic pivot as DeepSeek moves to build foundational digital scaffolding for AI agents – systems capable of using AI models to operate external software, run code, and complete complex jobs on their own. Tools like DeepSeek Harness are rapidly becoming an important layer in AI systems, shifting the global competition from model intelligence to one that focuses on how seamlessly an AI agent can connect to real-world software. To cater to different enterprise and developer workloads, DeepSeek Harness provides four operational settings. These include a standard mode for general tasks, a code-focused mode that lets the AI write code to command multiple applications simultaneously, a creative mode that allows the system to experiment with custom tools, and a minimal mode for isolated testing.

August 14, 2026

Innovation

China’s richest province taps Alibaba to power its AI and chip push

Guangdong province deepens ties with China tech giant to boost digital innovation by focusing on AI, semiconductors and smart services Under a strategic cooperation framework agreement signed on Thursday in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province in southern China, the Hangzhou-based firm planned to increase its investments in computing power, AI models and digital services, according to a report by local state media Nanfang Daily. Provincial party secretary Huang Kunming thanked Alibaba “for its long-standing support of Guangdong’s economic and social development” and urged the company to “step up efforts in technology innovation, research development and investment” in the region, according to the report. He highlighted potential synergies with energy and telecommunications companies to strengthen computing power in Guangdong, alongside the deployment of AI models across consumer electronics, manufacturing equipment and healthcare. Huang added that local goods could be further promoted through Alibaba’s online shopping and cross-border e-commerce platforms.

August 14, 2026

Innovation

SMIC eyes expansion amid AI boom, Zhu Rongji dies, Shein nears IPO

SMIC, China’s biggest contract chipmaker, is planning to boost capacity after beating earnings expectations amid the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. Demand is “far exceeding our previous expectations”, so the company is adjusting expansion plans and may add more equipment at existing sites, chief executive officer Zhao Haijun said on an earnings call on Friday. He didn’t provide details. The chipmaker’s shares gained 4.8 per cent in Hong Kong trading after it more than tripled second-quarter...

August 14, 2026

Innovation

Rich Chinese embrace domestic high-end EVs as tech and driving experience eclipse prestige

Younger, professionally diverse Chinese are turning to local brands for technology and qualities once tied to foreign marques His next purchase, he said, would be a six-seat premium electric minivan equivalent from a Chinese brand, with a budget of about 1 million yuan (US$148,000). Huang’s choice shows that even while China’s ultra-luxury car market has slowed overall, a growing segment of drivers, with a penchant for domestic brands, are still opening their wallets for top-end EVs. A report by Beijing-based consultancy Guanyan Tianxia on China’s luxury car market and investment from 2025 to 2032 said Chinese luxury-car buyers were becoming younger and more professionally diverse, with technology and driving experience increasingly outweighing the prestige of traditional luxury names.

August 14, 2026

Innovation

SMIC weighs more capacity as AI-related chip demand exceeds forecasts

China’s largest foundry says shortages are spreading to mature-node chips, with some AI-driven demand visible through the end of 2027 Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is actively looking at adding equipment in its factories after demand for mature-node chips used alongside AI processors surged beyond expectations, according to company management. “Future wafer starts are far exceeding our previous expectations,” co-CEO Zhao Haijun said during an earnings call, referring to the volume of new chip batches entering the production line. Zhao said SMIC was adjusting its expansion plans and may install additional equipment at existing sites where space was available, with further details to be disclosed in upcoming announcements or briefings. Demand was particularly strong for supporting chips in AI servers and data centres – including logic chips, power-management products and optical module components. Orders for BCD (bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) power-management products were visible through the end of 2027, Zhao added.

August 14, 2026

Innovation

DeepSeek’s updated V4 Pro AI model struggles on benchmarks, shines in cybersecurity

Chinese AI start-up’s model impresses in niche areas like cybersecurity but leaves some developers disappointed in its overall capabilities Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has quietly released DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813, an updated version of its latest flagship model, leaving some developers underwhelmed by its overall capabilities and disappointed in its pricing – but impressing researchers in niche areas like cybersecurity. However, early benchmark results suggest the new flagship is struggling to match its top-tier rivals. DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 scored 53 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2 released in June, but was four points behind the mid-tier Terra model in OpenAI’s latest GPT-5.6 series and seven points behind Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3. On the Vals Index, compiled by San Francisco-based Vals AI to evaluate models across several benchmarks, the new DeepSeek model ranked 12th. It trailed OpenAI’s previous-generation GPT-5.5 and also lagged well behind frontier systems like Kimi K3 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.

August 13, 2026