Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group and OpenAI on Friday announced an agreement to design and build artificial intelligence data centre hardware, the latest in a string of infrastructure deals for the US creator of ChatGPT. Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, has seen profits soar after shifting its focus from low-margin iPhone assembly to AI servers that are now in huge demand, as firms plough hundreds of billions of dollars into the technology. Optimism over AI has...

Huang Shilin, co-founder of Contemporary Amperex Technol­ogy (CATL) and its third-largest shareholder, has cashed in on a rally in the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) battery giant’s shares, selling a 1 per cent stake worth 1.7 billion yuan (US$239 million). The engineer-turned-entrepreneur agreed to offload 45.6 million yuan-denominated A shares to 16 corporate and institutional investors at 376.12 yuan (US$52.92) apiece, according to a filing by CATL to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The...

Chinese technology powerhouses are beginning to reap early returns from their heavy investments in artificial intelligence, with quarterly results showing the impact across businesses from short video platforms like Kuaishou Technology to social media giants like Tencent Holdings. Kuaishou, China’s second-largest short video app and rival to TikTok’s Chinese sibling Douyin, was the latest to highlight gains from AI adoption. The company, in an earnings statement on Wednesday, attributed its...

While the Dutch government has offered goodwill in the dispute over control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned, Netherlands-based chipmaker, the crisis is far from over. China’s Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday welcomed the Dutch government’s revocation of an executive order taking control of the firm. But it also noted that a Dutch court ruling remained a “key obstacle” to resolving the matter. Wingtech Technology, the Chinese owner of Nexperia, said it had yet to resume control of the chipmaker. In...

Lenovo Group, the world’s largest personal computer maker, is betting that its own artificial intelligence agent will help grow its AI-powered consumer electronics business, even as the industry faces a global memory chip supply crunch. Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing on Thursday said the company would globally launch in January its “personal AI super agent”, which would leverage AI models to anticipate a user’s intentions via “portable devices and personal trusted computing hubs”. Beijing-based...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday shrugged off concerns about an artificial intelligence bubble as the company surprised Wall Street with accelerating growth after several quarters of slowing sales. The chipmaker’s stellar third-quarter earnings and fourth-quarter forecast calmed, at least temporarily, investor nerves over concerns an AI boom has outrun fundamentals. Global markets have looked to the chip designer to determine whether investing billions of dollars in AI infrastructure...

Warning signs are flashing from experts, entrepreneurs and workers concerned that automation is coming for a wide range of information-oriented jobs. What ordinarily would be just another boom-bust cycle fuelled by computer-generated efficiency, a typewriter to keyboard type of evolution, is this time threatening to overturn the basic social contract between employers and employees. Unless and until this is taken seriously by policymakers, the modern middle class risks becoming a relic of...