Rita Liao

Rita covers Asia for TechCrunch, with a special interest in Chinese companies going global and web3 projects with real-world applications.

Before her previous writing stints with Tech in Asia and TechNode, Rita managed communications for SOSV’s accelerators in Asia. At one point, she worked for a documentary production company and a mindfulness retreat center in New England.

She studied political science and visual arts at Bowdoin College.

Contact: ritaliao@pm.me

The Latest from Rita Liao

Taiko raises $37M to build web3 infrastructure for a censorship-free internet

Amid the speculation and volatility in the casino-like crypto land, there remains a subset of individuals who espouse blockchain’s potential to decentralize various aspects of human activities f

Ex-Meta employees’ Aptos tests Hong Kong’s crypto appetite

Ever since Hong Kong legalized cryptocurrency trading last June, blockchain projects from the West have been paying more attention to the Asian financial hub. Aptos, the a16z- and Tiger Global-backed

Morph Studio lets you make films using Stability AI–generated clips

Want to weave various Stability AI–generated video clips into a movie? Now there’s a tool for that. Morph Studio, which has its own text-to-video model, just introduced an AI filmmaking platfo

Initia raises $7.5M seed round to simplify blockchain development

It’s hard to keep track of crypto’s technical development, but one thing hasn’t changed much: blockchain applications are notoriously hard to build. This stems in part from their dec

Alibaba staffer offers a glimpse into building LLMs in China

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 surprisingly similar.

Armenia’s 10Web brings AI website-building to WordPress

Generative AI has done an impressive job in improving productivity in a wide range of areas, including website building. There’s no lack of tools that now allow one to generate web designs by si

Backed by Chinese carmaker Great Wall, Haomo raises $14M for autonomous driving tech

After a few years of funding frenzy, autonomous driving companies in China are experiencing a slowdown in investment. Some companies are still hauling in capital, though the era of bankrolling several

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 to the front of the pack. Moonshot AI, an arti

Tencent’s gaming cash cow Honor of Kings sets sights on MENA

Honor of Kings, Tencent’s massively popular mobile game, has its eye set on the international market in 2024. Starting on February 21, the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game will be ava

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 o

This gaming startup tries to show ‘AI + crypto’ is not a fad

Before the world became fixated on artificial intelligence, thanks to generative AI’s advances, cryptocurrency was the darling of many investors. So when some venture capital firms started swift

AR glasses with multimodal AI nets funding from Pokémon GO creator

In the week when gadget lovers around the world are enchanted by Vision Pro, a young, brave startup is trying to carve out a space for its augmented reality device that features a form factor starkly

China’s generative video race heats up

On Monday, Tencent, the Chinese internet giant known for its video gaming empire and chat app WeChat, unveiled a new version of its open source video generation model DynamiCrafter on GitHub. It&#8217

Despite global frenzy, investor enthusiasm in China’s AI startups wanes

In 2023, the global frenzy around artificial intelligence, fueled by the advent of ChatGPT, swept across the world. In China, where OpenAI’s chatbot is unavailable, startups and tech incumbents

China’s XPeng is bringing its Tesla FSD equivalent to overseas owners

XPeng, Tesla’s challenger from China, has its eye on the international market and plans to use its smart driving software as a selling point. The Guangzhou-based electric vehicle upstart said at

Facing roadblocks, China’s robotaxi darlings apply the brakes

A few years ago, robotaxis were the darlings of venture capitalists in China. A cadre of audacious startups, including Deeproute.ai, WeRide.ai, Pony.ai and Momenta reeled in hundreds of millions of do

Propelled by ‘science for humanity,’ this Chinese AI startup sets sight on US

Amid rising geopolitical tensions, many Chinese tech companies find themselves recalibrating their overseas pursuits, often sidestepping any reference to their origin. One bold startup called DP Techn

EthSign brings DocuSign-like features to Line, Telegram with a web3 twist

Despite the ongoing regulatory crackdown on the crypto industry and the collapse of some of its poster children, the underlying decentralized technology continues to drive internet incumbents into the

Datalogz raises $5M to deal with your business intelligence sprawl

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of business intelligence tools that aim to help companies make critical business decisions based on data analytics. There’s a catch. As data adopt

Your robotaxi ride in China is monitored – with video and audio recordings

When it comes to spurring the development of cutting-edge technologies, the Chinese government is rather pragmatic in its policymaking process. In the field of autonomous driving, the country has made
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