1. (China Daily) Chinese artificial intelligence pioneer SenseTime is accelerating its global expansion strategy, in line with China's rising prominence in worldwide AI innovation.  

    Jeff Shi, president of SenseTime Asia Pacific, said: "Capitalizing on new opportunities centered around Chinese innovation, SenseTime consistently relies on local talent, collaborates with local partners and builds local ecosystems."  

    According to Shi, the company now operates in 11 markets across the Asia-Pacific region, achieving a remarkable fivefold increase in long-term customers over the past three years. Shi highlighted the strong growth potential as visual AI converges with generative AI.

    Traditionally known for its computer vision technology widely used in areas such as autonomous driving and smart city management, SenseTime has quickly leveraged its more than ten years of AI research and development to build its own AI large language model.  

    In July, a distinguished 39-member tech delegation, led by Hong Seok-Hyun, chairman and CEO of JoongAng Group, the largest media group in South Korea, visited Sense-Time's Shanghai headquarters. The delegation's visit focused on understanding SenseTime's advancements in visual AI and multimodal large language models, exploring significant potential for bilateral technological cooperation.  

    Hong emphasized the inseparable link between AI and China. "You cannot discuss AI without mentioning China, and you cannot discuss China without mentioning AI."

    According to Hong, SenseTime has not only excelled in computer vision, but also demonstrated profound technical accumulation and significant progress in the field of multimodal large models, which is deeply impressive.  

    Hong said he hopes this visit will provide a deeper understanding of China's latest developments and experience in related fields, enhance mutual understanding and cooperation, jointly address the challenges brought by global technological transformation and achieve mutual benefits.  

    Having entered the South Korean market in 2019, SenseTime said it has established long-term, stable partnerships with over 50 local clients across diverse sectors including smart buildings, finance, the internet and robotics.

    Apart from South Korea, Southeast Asian countries are also showing surging interest in China's AI innovation. Shi from SenseTime said: "We have received dozens of overseas delegations to our headquarters this year. For Southeast Asian countries, a fast way to develop AI innovation is to come to Shanghai every week."  

    Previously, Asian countries tended to flock to the United States to see the most pioneering innovation, but now China has also become a must-see destination for them, Shi added.  

    According to Shi, the Shanghai government has created a business-friendly environment, focusing on high-tech industries like semiconductors and AI, providing talent and facilitating business growth.  

    "A lot of things SenseTime has done are just monumental. The 10-year AI journey has provided us with insights into the challenges and rewards of AI adoption. We look forward to sharing these learnings with more enterprise customers, both at home and abroad," Shi said.

    Demonstrating its cutting-edge capabilities, SenseTime unveiled its upgraded "SenseNova V6.5" multimodal foundation model system earlier this month. Key advancements include strong reasoning. The company claimed that its text-image multimodal chain-of-thought reasoning matches top models like Gemini 2.5 Pro from Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and Claude Sonnet 4 from US AI startup Anthropic, which is backed by Amazon.  

    SenseNova V6.5 also features high efficiency, with its optimized multimodal architecture offering over three times cost-performance improvement over its predecessor, the company said.  

    Complementing this, SenseTime's core product, Raccoon AI, underwent a significant upgrade, evolving into a comprehensive co-pilot. Moving beyond traditional AI assistance, Raccoon AI proactively handles core tasks through precise questioning and user confirmation, enabling collaborative workflows akin to human colleagues.

    Raccoon AI is rapidly penetrating industries with tailored versions. The education edition of Raccoon can intelligently analyze student performance, course effectiveness and learning patterns. It has been deployed in more than 500 institutions across over 10 scenarios serving more than 250,000 teachers and students. It boosts learning efficiency by 15-30 percent and increases classroom participation by 2.1 times, SenseTime added.  

    In July, a State Council executive meeting approved a guideline on implementing the "AI Plus" initiative in China, calling for vigorously advancing the large-scale commercial application of AI and boosting its accelerated popularization and deep integration across various fields of economic and social development.

    Source: By Ma Si | China Daily | Updated: 2025-08-13 09:59

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  2. (China Daily) Chinese technology heavyweight Baidu Inc is betting big on digital employees powered by artificial intelligence agents thanks to the rapid development of AI technology, and emergence of new algorithms, models and applications.  

    Industry experts said as AI has been increasingly leveraged to identify people's needs and to solve problems, digital workforces have popped up, and are becoming the core carrier for reconstructing organizational forms of enterprises and improving operational efficiency.  

    Ruan Yu, vice-president of Baidu, said the capabilities of large language models are evolving and advancing at an unprecedented speed, highlighting that the accelerated evolution of models is driving AI to shift from the human-machine collaboration model to AI agent form.

    An increasing number of new types of workers will emerge in people's daily work, and AI agents will participate in all aspects of enterprise operations in the form of "digital employees", who are driving revolutionary changes in organizational productivity, Ruan said.  

    AI agents have gained worldwide attention and witnessed explosive growth since the start of this year. The term refers to a system or program that is capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system by designing its workflow and utilizing available tools.  

    They are more advanced than chatbots because they not only provide suggestions or answers, but autonomously execute complex actions across a multitude of industries, delivering tangible results.  

    According to a report released by Beijing-based market research firm EO Intelligence, the market scale of AI agent marketing and sales in China stood at 44.2 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) in 2024, and this figure is expected to reach more than 1 trillion yuan in the next five years.

    Baidu AI Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Baidu, recently launched the first batch of AI-powered digital employees, covering core business functions like marketing managers, car salespersons, promotion specialists, product managers, course advisers and recruitment specialists.  

    The digital employees, which deeply integrate large language models, digital human technology and industry expertise, can understand and take on complex tasks, be directly integrated into specific business processes and turn responsible for the results.  

    The company said it will create more digital employees for various positions, while expanding the application scenarios of such employees across various fields, including education, automobiles, finance and fast-moving consumer goods.

    It will also collaborate with leading clients to build bank marketing specialists and university admission consultants to enhance productivity, liberate people from repetitive work and bolster the digital transformation of enterprises.  

    Global consultancy Gartner said AI agents will augment or automate 50 percent of business decisions by 2027, and this integration will enhance decision flows by handling complex analysis and data retrieval. It noted that AI agents can plan and automate tasks, make informed decisions and interact with their surroundings.  

    Meanwhile, agentic AI is poised to revolutionize the way service interactions are conducted. Both customers and organizations will leverage this technology to automate interactions through the use of AI agents, fundamentally reshaping the relationship between service teams and their customers.

    "As customers increasingly leverage agentic AI-powered agents to initiate, manage and negotiate service requests on their behalf, service teams must adapt to this transformative shift, embracing new roles and skills to effectively collaborate with these intelligent systems," said Daniel O'Sullivan, senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service& Support Practice.  

    "Agentic AI has emerged as a game-changer for customer service, paving the way for autonomous and low-effort customer experiences," O'Sullivan said. Unlike traditional GenAI tools that simply assist users with information, agentic AI will proactively resolve service requests on behalf of customers, marking a new era in customer engagement.  

    Zhu Min, former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said employment structure will be transformed in the future, and all simple and repetitive work will be replaced. "The entire employment system will undergo a fundamental structural change, rather than a change in the total number of jobs."

    Source: By Fan Feifei | China Daily | Updated: 2025-08-13 09:19

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  3. (China Daily) A Chinese tech firm in Wuhan, Hubei province, has achieved a breakthrough in mass-producing silicon carbide (SiC) wafers at record speeds by using lasers instead of diamond wires. This marks a major technical advancement for electric vehicle makers working on faster charging systems.  

    SiC ingots, a third-generation semiconductor material, outperforms traditional silicon in high-voltage and high-temperature environments, making it a key component in next-generation electric vehicles that demand faster charging and longer range.

    Traditionally, SiC ingots were cut using 100-micrometer diamond wires, a method akin to slicing a carrot. From a 1-cm-thick ingot, only 10 wafers (each 500 μm thick) could be produced, with each cut taking 24 hours and resulting in 50 percent material loss.  

    In response, Si LAL, the tech firm in Wuhan, has developed laser spalling technology. Instead of "cutting", it uses ultra-precise lasers to focus energy a billion times inside the ingot, altering the SiC structure and "peeling" wafers off layer by layer, similar to how sunlight causes skin to peel.

    The challenge lies in ensuring uniform wafer thickness, requiring nanoscale precision in laser focus depth. Thus, Si LAL developed a hybrid laser system, achieving 100 percent domestic control over hardware and software and placing China at the global forefront of SiC wafer production.  

    The results showed that the company can produce 15 to 16 500-μm-thick wafers in every 1-cm-thick ingot. The time required for each wafer has been reduced to 15 minutes, and material loss has been reduced to 15 percent. The cost per wafer has been slashed by more than 20 percent, and the yield rate exceeds 99 percent.

    In May, the company's first SiC wafer cutting production line was put into operation in Optics Valley, a high-tech development zone in Wuhan, with an annual production capacity expected to exceed 30,000 wafers.  

    Si LAL plans to build four or five new production lines in Wuhan to create an expected annual output value exceeding 1 billion yuan ($139 million).

    Source: By Liu Kun in Wuhan and Wang Songsong  | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2025-07-29 19:56

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  4. (Xinhua) China's commercial vehicle sector registered solid year-on-year growth in both output and sales in July, according to industry data released Monday.  

    Commercial vehicle output last month totaled 298,000 units, marking a 16.3-percent increase from a year earlier, while sales climbed 14.1 percent to 306,000 units, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) showed.  

    Within this sector, sales of natural gas-powered vehicles, however, declined 5.9 percent year on year to 16,000 units in July.

    Commercial vehicle production rose 6 percent year on year to 2.4 million units in the January-July period, while sales reached 2.43 million units -- up 3.9 percent.  

    Separate CAAM data released last month revealed that China's overall auto output in the first six months of the year rose 12.5 percent year on year to 15.62 million units, with sales up 11.4 percent at 15.65 million units.  

    Specifically, new energy vehicle production surged 41.4 percent year on year during the first half of 2025 to nearly 6.97 million units -- while sales jumped by 40.3 percent to around 6.94 million units.

    Source: Xinhua  2025-08-11 17:13:15

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  5. (China Daily) The auto market hit its usual midsummer lull in July, with growth easing, but some carmakers bucked the trend and set new monthly records.  

    According to the China Automobile Dealers Association, passenger vehicle retail sales reached approximately 1.9 million units in July, slightly exceeding expectations. The figure in 2024 was 1.73 million units.  

    The association noted that July saw the auto market enter its traditional offseason. With some regional subsidies phasing out, auto finance rebates falling, and automakers cutting promotions, consumer wait-and-see sentiment grew.

    In terms of brands, BYD remained the leader with 344,300 vehicles sold in July, a modest year-on-year increase of 0.6 percent and down 8.8 percent compared with June.  

    Its performance in overseas markets jumped 159.5 percent in July, with sales of passenger cars and pickups reaching 80,200 units.  

    SAIC Group followed with 338,000 units sold in July, up 34.2 percent year-on-year. Its sub-brands and new energy vehicle sectors have emerged as the primary growth engines for SAIC.  

    Sales of its sub-brands including MG and IM Motors reached 214,000 units, a 39.4 percent year-on-year increase. Meanwhile, NEV sales amounted to 117,000 units, showing year-on-year growth of 64.9 percent.

    Geely achieved sales of 237,700 units in July, up 58 percent year-on-year and 0.7 percent compared with June.  

    Its NEV sector soared 120 percent year-on-year to 130,100 units, accounting for 55 percent of the total.  

    Chery achieved vehicle sales of 224,400 units in July, up 14.7 percent year-on-year but down 3.9 percent over June. Among these, export vehicles accounted for 119,100 units, a 31.9 percent year-on-year increase, maintaining its position as the top Chinese auto exporter.  

    The competition among NEV startups intensified, with multiple players setting delivery records.

    Leapmotor continues to hold top position among its peers with July deliveries at 50,100 units, a year-on-year growth of over 126 percent. This was the first time that its monthly delivery surpassed 50,000 units.  

    XPeng delivered 36,700 new vehicles in July, showing a 229 percent year-on-year growth and a 6 percent increase from June. It also set a record for monthly deliveries.  

    In contrast, Li Auto's deliveries fell, with 30,700 vehicles delivered in July, down 39.74 percent year-on-year. The automaker faced challenges following a public relations crisis triggered by a crash test video released during its i8 electric SUV launch event in late July.  

    Xiaomi's car deliveries hit a record high, exceeding 30,000 units in July.

    The CADA said August is expected to outperform July because of the back-to-school season, car festival promotions, and auto shows.  

    The China Passenger Car Association upgraded its predictions for full-year sales and exports last week based on "better-than-expected "performance.  

    The CPCA now projects a 6 percent growth in China's car sales this year, with car export growth likely to reach 14 percent. This compares with the CPCA's June estimates of a 5 percent increase in car sales and a 10 percent rise in exports.

    Source: By Cao Yingying | China Daily | Updated: 2025-08-11 09:28
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  6. (China Daily) Nvidia's H20 artificial intelligence chip, designed specifically for the Chinese market in compliance with Washington's export controls, is encountering tepid demand, according to industry sources.  

    In the rapidly developing market, this reluctance opens a strategic window for ambitious Chinese AI chip designers to expand their market share amid growing domestic efforts to hone chip prowess, they added.  

    "The demand for H20 chips was lower than expected, according to the latest feedback of our customers," said a regional manager of a major Chinese information technology distributor, on condition of anonymity.

    The manager said that for chips like the H20, demand depends heavily on large corporations, which are reluctant to buy the products of Nvidia, a United States-based semiconductor company, after the Cyberspace Administration of China summoned the US company for alleged cybersecurity threats in late July.  

    An engineer at a Chinese internet company, also on condition of anonymity, said: "Cybersecurity is of crucial importance to us. We cannot tolerate any potential risks. Even if H20 chips are available now, we are not that eager to buy."  

    Pan Helin, a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy, said: "If Nvidia's chips really have backdoor risks, that will become its self-dug grave. Users, not only companies in China, but also clients across the world, may abandon their chips over fears of remote shutdowns or data theft."

    The Financial Times reported on Monday that Nvidia has agreed to pay the US government 15 percent of its revenue from H20 chip sales in China as part of a deal to secure export licenses to Beijing.  

    In response to the report, Nvidia said in a statement to China Daily, "We follow rules the US government sets for our participation in worldwide markets."  

    Charlie Dai, vice-president and principal analyst at market research company Forrester, said the 15 percent fee agreement represents an "unprecedented" move.

    "It starkly underscores how trade tensions drive up market access costs, creating substantial financial pressure and strategic ambiguity for technology firms worldwide," Dai said.  

    Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, a telecom industry association, said, "The US government's move will fuel Chinese companies' distrust toward Nvidia, which will accelerate the adoption of domestic AI chips."  

    According to Xiang, Nvidia's dominance in the global AI chip market relies not only on chip performance, but also on its entrenched CUDA ecosystem — a 20-year-old framework for AI compatibility. While Chinese chips such as Huawei's Ascend series can rival the H20 technically, they lack CUDA's universal adaptability for AI large language models.  

    "However, if security concerns and the 15 percent 'geopolitical premium' drive users toward Chinese chips, developers could shift their focus to compatibility layers for domestic alternatives, eroding Nvidia's ecosystem advantage," he added.  

    Ecosystem booming

    China's domestic AI chip ecosystem is moving quickly. In July, StepFun, a Shanghai-based Chinese AI company, formed a "model-chip synergy ecosystem innovation alliance" with nearly 10 leading domestic AI chip and infrastructure companies, including Huawei, Moore Threads, Beijing Biren Technology Development Co and Cambricon Technology.  

    The alliance's core mission is clear: to collaboratively optimize large language models to run efficiently on domestic AI chips.  

    The goal is to create a virtuous cycle. As more AI workloads shift to Chinese chips, economies of scale will drive costs down and improve performance and ecosystem maturity — making homegrown solutions increasingly viable and attractive, according to StepFun.  

    "For domestic AI chips to better support China's homegrown large language models, the first priority is ensuring a sufficient supply of advanced computing power," said Zhang Wen, founder, chairman and CEO of Beijing Biren Technology Development Co. "The production capacity of advanced domestic AI chips will be crucial for the future of China's AI industry."

    Source: By Ma Si | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2025-08-12 22:28

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  7. (Xinhua) China's auto industry registered solid year-on-year growth in both output and sales in July, according to industry data released Monday.  

    In July alone, the country's auto output was 2.591 million units -- a 13.3 percent year-on-year increase -- while sales grew 14.7 percent to 2.593 million units, per data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).  

    China's total auto output in the first seven months of the year rose 12.7 percent to 18.24 million units, with sales up 12 percent to 18.27 million units.

    Commercial vehicle output last month totaled 298,000 units -- a 16.3 percent increase from the same month a year earlier -- while sales climbed 14.1 percent to 306,000 units, according to the CAAM data.  

    Sales of natural-gas-powered vehicles, however, declined 5.9 percent year on year to 16,000 units in July.  

    Commercial vehicle production rose 6 percent year on year to 2.4 million units in the January-July period, while sales reached 2.43 million units -- up 3.9 percent.  

    CAAM data has also revealed that new energy vehicle (NEV) production in the first seven months of 2025 surged 39.2 percent to over 8.23 million units, while sales jumped 38.5 percent to 8.22 million units.

    Monday's data also shows that the country's auto exports maintained steady growth momentum, with a year-on-year increase of 12.8 percent recorded during the January-July period. Notably, NEV exports during that time soared 84.6 percent to nearly 1.31 million units. 

    Source: Xinhua  2025-08-11 19:56:30

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  8. (China Daily) Chinese autonomous driving company WeRide said on Tuesday that its founder and CEO, Tony Han, has been invited by the Singapore government to join the country's steering committee on autonomous vehicles.  

    The committee brings together leaders from the autonomous vehicle and public transport industries, union representatives, and various government bodies to guide the progressive rollout of autonomous vehicles in Singapore.  

    WeRide and Waymo are the only two international enterprises represented on the committee.

    In his role, Han will serve as a key figure in shaping Singapore's national policies, operational standards, and technical roadmaps for autonomous driving, said WeRide.  

    His appointment highlights WeRide's leadership in autonomous driving technology and marks a major recognition of China's smart mobility capabilities on the global stage.  

    "WeRide will continue to prioritize a technology-driven approach, leveraging our extensive global deployment experience, and work together with various progressive governments and partners to accelerate the development and deployment autonomous mobility solutions," said Han.

    WeRide has built a strong presence in Singapore, with multiple deployments across vehicle types.  

    In November, WeRide's Robosweeper S6 and Robosweeper S1 obtained Singapore's T1 and M1 autonomous driving licenses.  

    Within just one week, both products were successfully deployed along Marina Coastal Drive and at the Esplanade, launching Singapore's first commercialized autonomous sanitation projects.  

    Last month, WeRide's Robobus began fully driverless operations at Resorts World Sentosa, becoming the first autonomous vehicle in Southeast Asia to operate without a safety driver on board.

    Source: chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2025-08-13 16:41

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  9. (China Daily) Geely Holding Group has finished its fourth satellite launch for the Geely Future Mobility Constellation in Rizhao, Shandong province.  

    All 11 satellites launched have now entered their planned low-earth orbits and are functioning normally, said the Chinese conglomerate in a statement on Monday.  

    With the latest launch, which was finished on Saturday, the number of satellites in the Geely Future Mobility Constellation has increased to 41.  

    The constellation is independently built and operated by GeeSpace, a commercial aerospace company under Geely Holding Group.

    Low-orbit satellite communications have quickly become integral to intelligent connected vehicles.  

    By leveraging the constellation, GeeSpace has established partnerships with telecom operators in over 20 countries across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  

    GeeSpace's proprietary satellite communication chips and high-precision positioning modules have entered mass production and are utilized in thousands of passengers and commercial vehicles from Geely Holding Group.

    The group said it will conduct further launches in the next two months, to raise the number of satellites deployed to 64. By the end of 2025, there will be 72 satellites deployed in the constellation, said the group.  

    Geely Holding Group's portfolio brands sold over 3.33 million vehicles in 2024, with Volvo Cars sales reaching 763,389 units globally and Geely Auto Group's Hong Kong listed entity reporting sales reaching 2.18 million units.  

    Cumulative sales in the first six months of 2025 reached 1.93 million vehicles, up 30 percent with electrified vehicles accounting for over 1 million units, marking an increase of 72.8 percent year-on-year and representing 52 percent of the group's aggregated total.

    Source: By Li Fusheng | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2025-08-12 16:20

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  10. (Xinhua) China successfully launched a new group of low Earth orbit satellites from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in the southern island province of Hainan on Wednesday.  

    This satellite group, the eighth of its kind that will constitute an internet constellation, was launched at 2:43 p.m. (Beijing Time) aboard a Long March-5B carrier rocket, featuring a Yuanzheng-2 (Expedition-2) upper stage at the top of the rocket.  

    The satellites successfully entered their preset orbit.  

    This launch marked the 588th mission of the Long March series carrier rockets. 

    Source: Xinhua  2025-08-13 17:19:15

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