alibaba
Chinese tech companies are gathering all sorts of resources and talent to narrow their gap with OpenAI, and experiences for researchers on both sides of the Pacific Ocean can be…
China’s Moonshot AI zooms to $2.5B valuation, raising $1B for an LLM focused on long context
The race to build the next big large language model is on, and now a contender out of China has reportedly banked a major round of funding to catapult it…
Alibaba faces reckoning with once-vaunted ‘new retail’ strategy
In 2017, “new retail” began appearing in Alibaba’s earnings reports. Coined by the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, the term “new retail” refers to the seamless integration of online and offline retail.…
We should all be paying more attention to the PDD-Alibaba rivalry
Are we entering an era where Temu rules as the undisputed king of e-commerce?
As Temu shakes up global e-commerce, PDD nears overtaking Alibaba
PDD, the firm behind the fast-growing shopping app Temu, is shaking up China’s Big Tech club. On Thursday, news of Alibaba’s market cap sliding under that of PDD made headlines…
Ontario Teachers’ fund backs Indian logistics unicorn Xpressbees in $80 million funding
Xpressbees, an Indian logistics firm that works with several e-commerce firms in the country, has raised $80 million in a new funding round led by Ontario Teachers’ late-stage venture growth…
Great news for those traveling to China! You can finally enjoy the seamless, cashless payment experience that you may have heard about for years and avoid the awkward interaction of…
China wraps up fintech crackdown with big fines on Tencent, Alibaba
The regulatory crackdown that has shaken up China’s fintech industry since late 2020 appears to be coming to a close with the imposition of hefty fines on the country’s two…
Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang to pass the torch and focus on cloud
Hours after rumors started circling in China about Alibaba’s chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang possibly stepping down, the e-commerce behemoth confirmed midday on Tuesday that the executive will hand over…
Seven weeks after Alibaba announced its historic restructuring plan to split itself into six independent companies, the juggernaut is gearing up to spin off its cloud intelligence group. Alibaba went…
Alibaba founded Damo Academy in 2017 to carve out a program focused on cutting-edge research that is relatively free of short-term money-making pressure. One of the Academy’s 16 labs conducts…
Alibaba Cloud, Avalanche partner to deploy metaverses on the blockchain
The partnership will provide Alibaba’s clients with a launchpad that aims to help businesses launch their own metaverse spaces on Avalanche’s blockchain.
Alibaba unveils ambition for a copilot as China steps up scrutiny over generative AI
Over the last few months, the world’s two biggest economies have been racing to showcase their generative AI capabilities. ChatGPT, Midjourney, the new Bing and others have captivated tens of…
Alibaba never fails to show it’s a fan of restructuring to stay nimble in an ever-changing environment. The e-commerce behemoth said Tuesday that it will split into six business groups,…
Alibaba founder Jack Ma returns to China after a year of uncertainty
Jack Ma’s whereabouts are making headlines again, roughly a year after the billionaire founder of Alibaba disappeared from the public eye. Ma had chosen to stay abroad despite China’s efforts…
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Amid ChatGPT frenzy, a hundred followers bloom in China
Technological breakthroughs in the U.S. never fail to inspire challengers, followers and opportunists in China. It’s ChatGPT’s turn to capture the imagination of the world’s largest internet population. On WeChat, ChatGPT’s “trending index,” an indicator of a keyword’s popularity on the social network, rose 155 folds within the last 30 days. It’s fascinating to watch…
‘Most active investor’ FJ Labs closes on $260M across two new funds
Fabrice Grinda says he never intended to run a venture firm. He just really (really) enjoyed angel investing. In fact, by late 2013, when he was on the verge of…
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Are Arm and Ant Group’s derailed exits back on track?
Once an exit gets off the rails, and under current market conditions, it is just not easy to get back on track.
Alibaba CEO to oversee cloud arm following major server outage
When Alibaba’s former CEO Jack Ma passed the torch to Daniel Zhang, he established a system that regularly rotates executives to ensure the company always stays agile in the fast-changing…
Aigens scales digital menus in Asia with $14M round led by Ant
Aigens, a Hong Kong-based startup that provides online ordering and marketing tools for the food and beverage industry, picked up a fresh $14 million Series A funding round led by…
What do recent e-commerce earnings results tell us about the post-pandemic e-commerce reality?
Yahaha raises $40M more for its user-generated, low-code immersive gaming platform
Yahaha, a Helsinki- and Shanghai-based immersive, user-generated, low-code gaming platform founded by a group of Chinese gaming vets, made a splash in January when it announced a cumulative $50 million…
Alibaba eyes logistics growth in LatAm as China commerce slows
Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba, is traveling far from home to seek expansion for its business. The company recently launched its first parcel distribution center in Brazil, adding to…
Nvidia touts a slower chip for China to avoid US ban
Two months after the U.S. choked off China’s access to two of Nvidia’s high-end microchips, the American semiconductor design giant unveiled a substitute with a reduced processing speed for its…
Ant’s global play is to be a payments aggregator and it now reaches 1B users
After trying for years to replicate the success of its QR code-enabled payments solution overseas, Ant Group seems to have finally found a path to scaling. Instead of going after…
Don’t panic — this isn’t Tencent’s first tie-up with a state-owned firm
News on Tencent and China Unicom caused a stir in China’s tech industry on Wednesday afternoon. The gaming and social networking behemoth and the state-owned carrier have received regulatory approval…
The alternative asset class needs new infrastructure — who will build it?
Just as traditional alternatives are becoming a consistent part of the modern portfolio, a new era of alternative assets is emerging, fueling a broader and more fragmented landscape for investing.
Nvidia, the world’s largest maker of artificial intelligence chips, is at the heart of a new round of U.S. tech sanctions targeting China. Nvidia noted in an SEC filing that…
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A huge Chinese database of faces and vehicle license plates spilled online
A massive Chinese database storing millions of faces and vehicle license plates was left exposed on the internet for months before it quietly disappeared in August. While its contents might seem unremarkable for China, where facial recognition is routine and state surveillance is ubiquitous, the sheer size of the exposed database is staggering. At its…
Eat Just bags $25M, gets Alibaba’s help to sell alternative protein in China
China is a notoriously difficult market for international startups to crack, but one company seems to have found the recipe for wooing the country’s picky consumers. Three years after Eat…
