South China Morning Pos / Tech

• Tecnologia

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1. US risks ceding AI governance leadership to China and the EU

   Standing alongside prominent technology executives, US President Donald Trump announced a voluntary agreement under which major artificial intelligence (AI) companies will use internal controls and monitoring, outside audits and board oversight to manage risks. The White House calls the commitments “morally binding”, but the accord does not create a comparable system of legal enforcement. The administration’s logic is understandable. AI is becoming a source of economic and military power, and...

2. China’s ‘city of the future’, Xiongan, hunting high-value tech firms: sources

   China’s Xiongan New Area is accelerating its hunt for technology firms as the city, designed partly to house state-owned institutions relocated from Beijing, moves to nurture its own industries, according to people familiar with its plans and local officials. Officials were looking to attract tech companies that could reach valuations of 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion), hoping some would list on stock markets, including Hong Kong’s, in the next few years, sources said, adding that the key...

3. Would China agree to slow AI development? That’s the wrong question

   The latest US-China summit covered a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence (AI). However, the official readouts from both countries did not touch upon an issue that has generated heated debate: whether the United States and China should agree to pause or slow down the development of frontier AI. That absence has triggered considerable discussion. During my recent visit to New York, many US friends asked whether Beijing would ever agree to some form of arrangement. Before...

4. 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...

5. 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...

6. 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...

7. 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...

8. 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...

9. 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...

10. 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,...

11. 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...

12. 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...

13. 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...

14. What’s in a name? Why Trump wants to rebrand AI as ‘super intelligence’

    US President Donald Trump wants to retire one of the technology sector’s most recognisable acronyms, arguing that the term “artificial intelligence”, or AI, is no longer fit for purpose. On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order directing US federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “super intelligence” and “SI” in official communications and non-statutory documents. He also instructed the White House science adviser to draft a new federal definition. The move...

15. China stockpiles ASML lithography tools, spurring US calls for complete export ban

    Chinese semiconductor plants amassed hundreds of immersion lithography machines worth billions of dollars in recent years, according to former US officials, who urged Washington and its allies to shut down further exports. Chinese-owned fabs had acquired an estimated 343 immersion deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography systems by early 2026, said a report published in late September by the Centre for Technology & Statecraft (CTS), a Washington research group established in August. Co-authored by...

16. China’s AI compute ambitions demand innovation

    China has set a five-year goal for the expansion of intelligent computing capacity to drive artificial intelligence (AI) that calls for a more than fourfold increase on what was in place at the end of June this year. To reach the 2030 target while being blocked by the United States from importing the most advanced Western-made AI chips will require innovation, adaptation and the application and coordination of vast resources. Judging by the 177 per cent increase in capacity achieved in the year...

17. Hong Kong users caught off guard as Anthropic tightens VPN access to Claude

    US artificial intelligence company Anthropic appears to have stepped up enforcement of geographical restrictions on its Claude models in Hong Kong, with local users reporting abrupt account suspensions after accessing the service through virtual private networks (VPNs). A wave of complaints surfaced on social media platforms X and Reddit on Thursday, as users who had operated accounts for months using VPNs found them suddenly disabled. One Hong Kong-based user posted on the “r/claude” subreddit...

18. From stock losses to bond bets: 5 figures investors are watching in China

    A sell-off in technology stocks pushed mainland Chinese equities to their lowest level in more than a year, even as Beijing stepped up support for the economy with a key interest rate cut. At the same time, Chinese government bonds attracted fresh interest as US Treasury yields climbed to a new high. Here are some figures that have captured market attention this week. China’s CSI 300 Index hits 13-month low Mainland China’s CSI 300 Index dropped 2.2 per cent on Monday to its lowest level since...

19. DeepSeek effect? How China’s quant funds thrive amid tight regulatory scrutiny

    China’s quantitative investing sector has added 18 new members to the ranks of funds managing more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in assets this year, underlining the industry’s ability to generate competitive returns despite a tight regulatory environment. The firms were among 159 Chinese hedge funds overseeing more than 10 billion yuan each, according to financial news agency Cailian Press. Their growth has been fuelled by technology-driven momentum in the world’s second-largest stock...

20. China leads drone patent volume but US matches quality as start-ups drive innovation: study

    Chinese and US firms are “neck-and-neck” in the quality battle for the next generation of drone patents, despite China having a lead in volume, a study published on Thursday shows. Chinese companies accounted for 44 per cent of the world’s drone patent filings in 2024, against 17 per cent for American firms, according to a report published by LexisNexis. Measured by value, however, US drone patents were on a par with China’s, leaving the two countries roughly even in total global patent asset...