Alibaba Cloud’s flagship Qwen family of artificial intelligence models surpassed 700 million downloads as of January on the developer platform Hugging Face, which made it the world’s most widely used open-source AI system. According to research published on Friday by consultancy AIBase, citing data from Hugging Face, estimated Qwen downloads as of December alone exceeded the combined total of the next eight most popular models on the platform globally, including those from Meta Platforms and...

China’s artificial intelligence efforts are unlikely to catch up with the United States in the near term despite making significant headway in recent years, according to the country’s leading AI researchers. The comments at a major industry conference in Beijing on Saturday underscored the gap between the two countries in semiconductor chips and chipmaking equipment, key resources for building out the infrastructure needed for developing cutting-edge AI models. Lin Junyang, technical lead of...

Hong Kong has started 2026 with a wave of IPOs driven by artificial intelligence (AI), led by the recent listing of Chinese chipmaker Biren Technology. Beyond the revival of market activity, the surge points to a clearer strategic direction. China is increasingly using Hong Kong as an offshore capital platform for funding priority technologies – at a time when geopolitics is reshaping where innovation can be financed and how international capital can be accessed. This repositioning aligns...

The global artificial intelligence (AI) race remains one of the most hotly contested spheres of international competition. Few would bet today on an eventual winner, but current trends point to three possible scenarios that we should consider. In the first scenario, the AI world is dominated by the US and China. While the US still has the technological edge, China is closing in fast and vies with the US for leadership on many of the key dimensions of AI prowess. According to Stanford...

China’s review of Meta Platforms’ acquisition of artificial intelligence agent start-up Manus signals Beijing’s intent to more tightly police foreign involvement in sensitive technologies developed by Chinese entrepreneurs, as more founders move operations overseas to sidestep geopolitical scrutiny, analysts say. The Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday that it would work with other Chinese regulators to assess whether the acquisition complied with the country’s export controls and technology...

China’s drive for chip manufacturing equipment self-sufficiency advanced so rapidly in 2025 that even the country’s planners were caught by surprise, as the ratio of domestically developed semiconductor equipment surged to 35 per cent by the year’s end, up from 25 per cent in 2024. The ratio was higher than Beijing’s target of 30 per cent, set in early 2025 to encourage China’s semiconductor industry to favour local suppliers over US rivals such as Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA,...

Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba Group Holding, is stepping up its overseas push with a new service crossing the US-Mexico border. The cross-border logistics service, a first for Cainiao in the Americas, was designed to handle parcel flow between the two countries, which was one of the region’s high-traffic corridors, the Alibaba unit said on Friday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The service was expected to reach 99 per cent of the Mexico market and would be priced at around 60...