For autonomous vehicles, the hardest lessons to learn are the ones that can test the skills of even the most experienced human drivers: an errant cyclist darting through a red light, or an animal bolting into oncoming traffic from behind a corner. The Chinese tech giant Baidu has developed a new AI-driven simulator to prepare its Apollo robotaxis for just such rare but high-stakes road hazards, as the firm looks to gain an edge in the fast-growing self-driving taxi market. The system, Apollo...

US artificial intelligence giant Anthropic’s initial public offering prospectus has exposed a vast profitability gap between it and rivals Z.ai and MiniMax, highlighting the challenges facing China’s AI model developers in turning technological advances into sustainable businesses. The Claude developer’s filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week revealed a significant financial advantage over its most direct Chinese counterparts, despite the latter’s continued...

China’s “Lipstick King” has traded make-up swatches for artificial intelligence. Top live-streamer Li Jiaqi on Monday evening teamed up with an executive from Alibaba Group Holding to pitch AI subscriptions, selling nearly 100,000 monthly packages in just 30 minutes, according to data provided by the e-commerce giant. The broadcast on Taobao and Tmall – Alibaba’s largest domestic online marketplace – marked the first time generative AI products have taken centre stage during the annual Singles’...

Empyrean Technology, China’s top provider of electronic design automation (EDA) tools, plans to acquire a majority stake in a domestic start-up, reinforcing Beijing’s drive for tech self-sufficiency and bolstering support for Huawei Technologies’ semiconductor ambitions. The Beijing-based firm said in a Shenzhen Stock Exchange filing on Sunday that it would acquire a 50.38 per cent stake in Easy-Logic Technology for 218.8 million yuan (US$33 million). Once completed, the start-up would be...

For the first time, the amount of inference data generated by artificial intelligence systems in China has surpassed the amount of data used to train those systems, according to a new government-backed report, illustrating how the country is increasingly adopting AI at scale. The report released on Saturday by the China Centre for Information Industry Development (CCID), which operates under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), cited recent official data showing that...

Driving along the wide boulevards of Astana during a recent trip to the Kazakh capital, signs of China’s growing commercial footprint were everywhere. Chinese cars were becoming a common sight on the streets here, as brands from BYD to Changan made aggressive inroads in a market once dominated by South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia, said the driver who picked me up from the airport in a gleaming Changan electric vehicle. But it was not the rise of Chinese tech that had brought me to this energy-rich...

Apple’s long-awaited artificial intelligence features will be officially launched in China in December, ending two years of regulatory uncertainty as the US tech giant seeks to bring advanced technologies to its second-largest market with the help of Alibaba Group Holding. The first batch of Apple Intelligence services will roll out to Chinese iPhone users alongside the iOS 27.3 update in December, following an open beta test with developers starting November 4, the US company said in a...