China
TikTok CEO says company scans public videos to determine users’ ages
Amid questioning about TikTok’s use of biometrics in today’s Congressional hearing, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew offered some insight into how the company vets potentially underage users on its platform.…
TikTok questioned on ineffective teen time limits in congressional hearing
In hopes of heading off concerns over the addictiveness of its app, TikTok earlier this month rolled out new screen time controls that limited minors under the age of 18…
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was questioned in a U.S. government hearing on Thursday over the relationship between the fast-growing social media platform and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. In…
In congressional hearing, TikTok commits to deleting US user data from its servers ‘this year’
In his testimony before the U.S. Congress this morning, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said the company plans to delete all U.S. user data from company servers by year-end. The…
TikTok’s hearing in Congress is a reminder of Chinese startups’ identity crisis
TikTok, which now boasts more than 150 million monthly active users in the U.S., is set to testify before Congress on Thursday morning. Over in China, home to TikTok’s parent…
China’s internet industry is undergoing a major mood shift amid economic headwinds, a slowdown after years of frantic growth and heightened regulatory scrutiny. Companies of all sizes are responding to…
TikTok CEO takes to the app to announce company’s more than 150M active users in the US
Ahead of his testimony before Congress on Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew announced in a TikTok video that the video app now has more than 150 million users in…
Following on the heels of GPT-4’s buzzy debut and the announcement of Microsoft 365’s AI makeover, Baidu, China’s search engine giant, introduced its Ernie Bot. Since ChatGPT blew the world…
KuCoin and Circle back Chinese yuan-pegged stablecoin in $10M round
Circle Ventures, the venture arm of the USDC issuer Circle, has invested in an offshore Chinese yuan-backed stablecoin project, CNHC. It’s hard to overlook the timing and strategic significance of…
China’s robotaxi upstart WeRide confidentially files for IPO
WeRide.ai, one of the most funded Chinese robotaxi operators, has confidentially filed to go public in the U.S., Bloomberg reported on Monday. The company declined to comment when reached by…
Founder of troubled crypto asset unicorn Babel launches new DeFi project, stablecoin
Flex Yang, the former CEO and founder of Babel Finance, is leading efforts to restructure the now embattled crypto asset unicorn while introducing a new decentralized project with hopes to…
As tensions build, Silicon Valley’s Chinese affiliates invest in sensitive space tech
Chinese subsidiaries of U.S. venture capital firms invest in technology that could be sensitive to national security.
Balloon expert explains the challenges of shooting down China’s suspected spy balloon
Earlier this month, a suspected Chinese spy balloon drifted over much of the continental United States before an F-22 military fighter jet shot it down off the east coast. The…
Feishu, ByteDance’s workplace collaboration app, surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue last year, Xie Xin, the chief executive of Feishu, told staff Thursday, according to a person familiar with…
Over the past decade, China’s games industry has seen explosive growth, overtaken the U.S. in market size and given rise to global publishing giants like Tencent and NetEase. The boom…
Amid merger and bankruptcy in the West, lidar maker Hesai nails $190M IPO
Last week, China’s lidar maker Hesai raised an upsized IPO in the U.S. at a time the industry is reeling from layoffs, bankruptcy and consolidation. The Shanghai- and California-based company,…
At a time when venture capital funding is slowing in China, EV is one of the few sectors still keeping investors excited. Case in point, Zeekr, the luxury electric vehicle…
Airtable’s whopping $11 billion valuation attained in late 2021 has lured a raft of ambitious entrepreneurs into the low-code database space. They covet even just a small slice of the…
Featured Article
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…
Chinese influence, loan-collection practices are reasons for India’s crackdown on lending firms
India’s push to ban over 90 lending apps has sent shock waves through the fintech industry as many scramble to understand why they have been impacted. The Ministry of Electronics…
China’s globalizing startups could be a boon to US cloud giants
After quarters of rapid growth fueled by remote work, the cloud market is cooling down as businesses look for ways to curb cloud spending in post-COVID times and an uncertain…
India to block over 230 betting and loan apps, many with China ties
India is moving to block 232 apps, some with links to China, that offer betting and loan services in the South Asian market to prevent misuse of the citizens’ data,…
Damus, one of the fastest-growing Twitter alternatives, has been pulled from China’s App Store just two days after the app was approved by Apple. The app, which runs atop the…
TikTok introduces a strike system for violations, tests a feature to ‘refresh’ the For You feed
TikTok today is announcing several changes to its service, including what it claims will be increased enforcement against bad actors as well as tests of new user-facing tools that will…
China’s EV upstart XPeng ready to take off with flying permit
Xpeng, a Chinese electric vehicle upstart, is gearing up to launch its eVTOL into the air as it secures a key regulatory green light. AeroHT, owned by XPeng and XPeng…
Baidu, China’s top search engine provider and robotaxi developer, is apparently working on its own counterpart to ChatGPT. The news, first reported by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, sent…
After a decade of frantic growth, China’s smartphone market is hitting a speed bump as COVID-19 roils the world’s second-largest economy. The country’s smartphone shipments dropped 14% year-over-year in 2022,…
Shopping app Temu is using TikTok’s strategy to keep its No. 1 spot on App Store
Temu, a shopping app from Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, is having quite the run as the No. 1 app on the U.S. app stores. The mobile shopping app hit the…
Shein valuation reportedly plummets by a third as it seeks $3B
Shein, the fast fashion behemoth that has swept across the world, is raising a significant down round as the startup world braces for a funding crunch. The e-commerce platform known…
Didi gets China’s approval to relaunch after 18-month security probe
Eighteen months after its app was suspended in China, ride-hailing giant Didi made a comeback on Monday. The move came as China showed signs of easing up its sweeping regulatory…
