Hua Hong Semiconductor, China’s No 2 contract chipmaker, on Wednesday announced the acquisition of its sister foundry in Shanghai, days after market leader Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) said it would take full control of a subsidiary. Those big-ticket transactions – 8.27 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) for Hua Hong and 40.6 billion yuan for SMIC – signalled a fresh round of consolidation in the country’s semiconductor industry, as Beijing’s tech self-sufficiency drive...

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has ushered in 2026 with a new technical paper, co-authored by founder Liang Wenfeng, that proposes a rethink of the fundamental architecture used to train foundational AI models. The method – dubbed Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections (mHC) – forms part of the Hangzhou firm’s push to make its models more cost-effective as it strives to keep pace with better-funded US rivals with deeper access to computing power. It also reflected the...

China’s carmakers are on track to capture about one-third of the global auto market by 2030 and generate most of their profits overseas, according to UBS, underscoring the resilience of the country’s electric vehicle (EV) advantage despite mounting trade barriers in the West. The Swiss bank said its forecast had remained unchanged from two years ago, even as Chinese carmakers accelerated factory construction in Europe and some global rivals scaled back electrification plans. “The main drag was...

The US government ‍has granted an annual licence to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to import American chip manufacturing equipment to its fabrication facility in Nanjing, the capital of eastern China’s Jiangsu province, according to the company. The approval “ensures uninterrupted fab operations and product deliveries”, TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said in a statement on Thursday to Reuters. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have also received similar...

Nvidia is scrambling to meet strong demand for its H200 artificial intelligence chips from Chinese technology companies and has ‌approached contract manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to ramp up production, sources said. Chinese tech companies have placed orders for more than 2 million H200 chips for 2026, while ‍Nvidia currently holds just 700,000 units in stock, two of the people said. The exact additional volume Nvidia intends to order from TSMC remains unclear, they...

ByteDance plans to spend about 100 billion yuan (US$14 billion) on artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia in 2026, a hefty increase from roughly 85 billion yuan in 2025, if the US company is allowed to sell its H200 graphic processing units in China, according to people familiar with the matter. The budget, which could change, is part of the Beijing-based unicorn’s ambitious capital spending plan in AI for 2026. The company, with a private market capitalisation of US$500 billion, has built up...

A China-founded start-up that specialises in artificial intelligence agents was acquired by US tech giant Meta Platforms for billions of dollars, marking a landmark deal amid US-China competition in AI technology. The acquisition of Singapore-based Manus just nine months after its public launch in March underlines China’s AI competitiveness despite Washington’s efforts to deprive its rival of access to advanced US chips and funding. According to announcements from both sides, Manus would...