Illustration by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The idea that an AI system could improve itself, then use those improvements to improve itself again, faster, in an accelerating loop that eventually outpaces every human researcher on earth, has been a fixture of computer science folklore since at least the 1960s. For most of that time, it remained comfortably theoretical. Now someone […]
Beijing’s foreign ministry hit the MATCH Act on the eve of the Xi summit, with a 150-day alignment deadline for Japan and the Netherlands at the heart of the legislation Beijing has sharpened its criticism of US legislation that would tighten controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, on the morning Donald Trump arrived in the Chinese […]
Bristol Myers Squibb has signed a deal worth up to 15.2 billion dollars with Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine, China’s largest pharmaceutical company by market capitalisation. The agreement covers 13 early-stage drug programmes across oncology, haematology, and immunology. None of the drugs have entered human clinical trials. The deal was announced on the same day that […]
On Friday evening, China Central Television’s most-watched news programme broadcast footage that has never been shown publicly. The Chip Fundamental Technology Research Laboratory at Huawei’s Lianqiu Lake campus in Shanghai appeared on Xinwen Lianbo, the state-run bulletin that reaches more than 200 million viewers nightly, in a segment showing Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei hosting […]
China’s export earnings have reached roughly $500m an hour, according to a Bloomberg calculation based on the latest customs data, with AI-related goods accounting for about half of the year-on-year growth that has driven the figure to record levels. Total Chinese exports rose 14.1% year-on-year in April to a record $359.4bn, comfortably ahead of consensus […]
Meituan Dragon Ball is leading a $2bn round in the Beijing-based maker of the Kimi chatbot, with China Mobile and CITIC Private Equity Funds participating. The valuation is roughly seven times the figure Moonshot carried sixteen months ago. Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based developer of the Kimi chatbot, is closing a $2bn funding round at a […]
A KPMG-conducted study commissioned by the CCCEU estimates that phasing Chinese suppliers out of 18 critical EU sectors between 2026 and 2030 would cost €367.8bn. Reuters’ headline rounds that down. The actual figure is materially higher. China’s chamber of commerce in the EU has put a number on the cost of the European Commission’s plan […]
China’s Big Fund is now leading the DeepSeek round, and the price has more than doubled in two weeks
What started in mid-April as a $300m raise at a $10bn valuation, with Alibaba and Tencent talking, is now an FT-reported deal at $45bn led by the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund. The strategic logic has changed substantially. There is, in venture-capital pricing, a particular kind of ascent that does not normally happen to […]