Talk is growing of a Tesla-SpaceX merger. Will geopolitics throw a spanner in the works?

South China Morning Post - Sep 4, 2026

One by one, Tesla Model Y Ls roll out of the company’s end-of-line inspection bays, gleaming in black, white and gold. They are a mix of left-hand and right-hand drive – one of many signs the electric vehicles (EVs) produced here are destined for ports around the world. The company touts a total assembly time of less than 40 seconds at its sprawling Gigafactory in Lingang, a coastal area on the far southeastern edge of Shanghai. From there, Tesla says, a finished car can reach the port and be...

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Huawei’s new Kirin chip puts LogicFolding to the test, with bigger ambitions in AI

Huawei’s new Kirin chip puts LogicFolding to the test, with bigger ambitions in AI

Huawei Technologies’ latest flagship mobile processor is serving as a high-stakes test of whether the company can bypass US technology sanctions by layering circuits on top of each other to boost performance, according to analysts. The Shenzhen-based firm on Monday launched the Kirin 9050 Pro, the first commercial chip employing its LogicFolding architecture. The new strategy aims to squeeze greater computing power out of semiconductor designs without relying solely on the circuit-shrinking...

Why Tencent is swapping Bilibili equity for debt, and what AI has to do with it

Why Tencent is swapping Bilibili equity for debt, and what AI has to do with it

Tencent Holdings’ pivot from a core shareholder to a major creditor in Bilibili offers a clear window into how China’s Big Tech players are rebalancing portfolio risk while funding expensive artificial intelligence initiatives. The shift, executed through Bilibili’s proposed US$700 million convertible bond package announced on Friday, allows Tencent to lock in capital flexibility without severing ties with one of China’s largest online video platforms, according to analysts. Here is a look at...

Huawei unveils new trifold smartphone powered by Tau Scaling Law-based Kirin chip

Huawei unveils new trifold smartphone powered by Tau Scaling Law-based Kirin chip

Huawei Technologies has unveiled its first smartphone powered by a next-generation mobile processor based on the company’s proprietary Tau Scaling Law, continuing its push to boost chip performance while reducing reliance on advanced foreign semiconductor equipment. Speaking at a launch event in Guangzhou on Monday, Richard Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business group, described the Kirin 9050 Pro as the company’s “most powerful Kirin chip ever”. The processor is based on Huawei’s...

Punching above their weight: how China’s AI giants stretch each dollar in compute race

Punching above their weight: how China’s AI giants stretch each dollar in compute race

The massive gap in artificial intelligence spending between US and Chinese tech titans may not buy the advantage expected for American giants, as lower domestic costs and heavy state support allow Chinese firms to secure far more computing power per dollar, according to a new report by Moody’s Ratings. While US hyperscalers outspent their Chinese counterparts by a staggering margin, the physical gap in computing capacity was nowhere near as wide as those mega-budgets suggested, the report...

Huawei paper shows Tau Scaling Law chip solves overheating ahead of Kirin 2026 launch

Huawei paper shows Tau Scaling Law chip solves overheating ahead of Kirin 2026 launch

Huawei Technologies has released a new research paper showing its Tau Scaling Law-based semiconductor architecture can avoid overheating, which analysts view as a key technical hurdle for its anticipated Kirin 2026 smartphone chip. The paper, authored by He Tingbo, chairwoman of the Huawei Scientist Committee and president of the company’s semiconductor business department, rebutted scepticism that vertically stacking logic circuits would create an insurmountable thermal bottleneck. It was...

Apple poised to unveil most expensive iPhone yet, fuelled by memory price surge

Apple poised to unveil most expensive iPhone yet, fuelled by memory price surge

Apple’s next flagship smartphone, the iPhone 18 Pro, could cost as much as US$1,319 for the base configuration as skyrocketing memory costs push smartphone prices to record highs, according to a recent report. Prices for the new iPhone line-up were projected to rise by 10 to 20 per cent, driven by soaring memory costs, market research firm TrendForce said in a report released on Thursday. Compared with the baselines of US$1,099 for the iPhone 17 Pro and US$1,199 for its Pro Max variant,...

How China Works author on the data economy, robots and AI

How China Works author on the data economy, robots and AI

Lan Xiaohuan is a professor of economics at China Europe International Business School. His book, How China Works: An Introduction to China’s State-led Economic Development, has sold millions of copies in China and has been translated into multiple languages. Here, he discusses the economic realities behind China’s record trade surplus, the case for a stronger social safety net, and how public data infrastructure shapes the artificial intelligence race with the United States. SCMP Plus readers...

Moonshot AI – creator of Kimi K3 model – has filed for Hong Kong IPO: sources

Moonshot AI – creator of Kimi K3 model – has filed for Hong Kong IPO: sources

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Moonshot AI – developer of the leading Kimi K3 model – has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, as the firm seeks to tap public markets to fund its rapid expansion. The Beijing-based company was targeting a Hong Kong listing as early as the first quarter of 2027, the sources told the South China Morning Post, asking not to be identified as the information was private. The...

Are Z.ai and MiniMax heading down opposite financial paths months after Hong Kong IPOs?

Are Z.ai and MiniMax heading down opposite financial paths months after Hong Kong IPOs?

When two of China’s leading AI pioneers went public in Hong Kong in January, they pitched investors on a shared promise: capturing the explosive demand for artificial intelligence at home and abroad. Their first-half earnings, however, suggest that narrative could be splintering into two different trajectories. While Beijing-based Z.ai, also known as Zhipu AI, is winning over market analysts on the back of surging revenue and top-tier model performance, its Shanghai rival MiniMax is facing...

ByteDance to expand massive AI data centre cluster in Inner Mongolia, source says

ByteDance to expand massive AI data centre cluster in Inner Mongolia, source says

TikTok parent ByteDance is seeking to expand its computing capacity by building out more data centres in north China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region in the next two years, according to a person familiar with the matter, another example of a Chinese tech giant stepping up its investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company had been in preliminary talks with local data centre vendors to add between five and six gigawatts’ worth of compute in the city of Ulanqab, the person...

Tech race flashpoint: Huang, Musk push back on AI guard rails amid heated US-China rivalry

Tech race flashpoint: Huang, Musk push back on AI guard rails amid heated US-China rivalry

US tech titans including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla’s Elon Musk are pressing global powers to curb artificial intelligence regulations, warning that strict guard rails risk suffocating innovation as the US and China compete in an intensifying technological arms race. Speaking at a G20 meeting alongside US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Huang urged policymakers to pursue AI regulations targeting “actual and pragmatic harm” rather than...

Chinese chipmaker Enflame 4,073 times oversubscribed in Shanghai IPO amid Nvidia race

Chinese chipmaker Enflame 4,073 times oversubscribed in Shanghai IPO amid Nvidia race

Enflame Technology, one of China’s leading AI chipmakers, has sparked a retail frenzy for its 6.12 billion yuan (US$910.9 million) initial public offering in Shanghai’s tech-heavy Star Market, underscoring growing investor appetite for home-grown alternatives to Nvidia. The Tencent Holdings-backed chipmaker saw the retail portion of its IPO oversubscribed by 4,073 times, with about 7 million online investors alone submitting orders for 42.1 billion shares, according to its filing to the exchange...

Frontier AI at a cost: what Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 means for the US-China model race

Frontier AI at a cost: what Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 means for the US-China model race

Anthropic’s powerful new Claude Fable 5.1 model has widened its lead in performance benchmarks over Chinese rivals, even as budget-friendly open-weight models from China continue to gain commercial traction globally. The American company said on Wednesday that Fable 5.1, along with a restricted-access version called Mythos 5.1, was the world’s most advanced model for software coding and complex knowledge work. The standard version scored 66 on Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index, taking the...

China’s No 2 foundry Hua Hong invests US$2b in new fab to meet surging AI-driven demand

China’s No 2 foundry Hua Hong invests US$2b in new fab to meet surging AI-driven demand

Major Chinese foundry Hua Hong Grace Semiconductor is pouring US$2 billion into a massive capacity expansion in the Chinese chip production hub of Wuxi, racing to meet skyrocketing domestic demand for AI infrastructure and bypass US tech curbs. The fresh capital would fund the construction of a new 12-inch speciality line, its third facility in the eastern Chinese city, the country’s second-largest contract chipmaker said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday. Once fully...

China’s AMEC unveils 6 chip-making machines in a day, boosting self-reliance ambitions

China’s AMEC unveils 6 chip-making machines in a day, boosting self-reliance ambitions

Chinese chip equipment giant Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) has unveiled six new machines – at different stages of commercialisation – in a single day as the company accelerates research and development to feed soaring local demand driven by Beijing’s self-reliance push. The new line-up, announced at an industry conference in Wuxi on Tuesday, spans several steps in chip production, including etching tools that carve microscopic patterns into wafers, deposition systems that build...

Tencent’s Hy4 model gains in open-source AI rankings after ecosystem-driven training

Tencent’s Hy4 model gains in open-source AI rankings after ecosystem-driven training

Tencent Holdings’ use of its vast product ecosystem to train its new Hy4 preview model gives it an edge in developing AI agents and brings its flagship model suite back into the top tier of open-source offerings, according to analysts. The Chinese tech giant’s “differentiated product-plus-model strategy”, where preview models were first deployed across Tencent’s suite of products, enabled it to collect user data before feeding the information back into subsequent rounds of training, Goldman...

Chinese internet giants set to reap artificial intelligence profits in 2 to 3 years: UBS

Chinese internet giants set to reap artificial intelligence profits in 2 to 3 years: UBS

Internet platforms with vast data and large user bases will capture a larger share of artificial intelligence profits in two to three years, even though macro headwinds have temporarily fuelled investor caution over aggressive AI spending by Chinese tech giants, UBS analysts said. Investors have been cautious over a weak macro environment in the second half of the year, and greater AI spending for hardware and infrastructure would drag down short-term profits, but the industry’s power balance...

Enflame’s US$900m IPO tests appetite for China’s ‘little dragon’ AI chipmakers

Enflame’s US$900m IPO tests appetite for China’s ‘little dragon’ AI chipmakers

As Enflame Technology gears up for a 6.12 billion yuan (US$910.3 million) initial public offering on Shanghai’s Star Market, the Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaker must convince investors that its specialised chip strategy can withstand fierce competition from Huawei Technologies and other domestic rivals, while reducing its heavy revenue dependence on major backer Tencent Holdings. Online and offline subscriptions open on Wednesday, after the Shanghai-based start-up announced on Monday...

Manus resumes solo operations after collapse of US$2 billion Meta deal

Manus resumes solo operations after collapse of US$2 billion Meta deal

The Chinese-founded artificial intelligence start-up Manus announced on Tuesday that it had formally resumed independent operations, more than four months after Beijing blocked its US$2 billion acquisition by Meta Platforms. The company’s founding team would continue to lead Manus as an “independent agent lab”, the firm said in a blog post on its website, as it sought to move on from a months-long saga that has sent ripples through the Chinese and global technology sectors. The announcement came...

As Chinese chipmakers snap up local gear, self-sufficiency drive faces commercial test

As Chinese chipmakers snap up local gear, self-sufficiency drive faces commercial test

Chinese chipmakers are setting increasingly aggressive targets to source production equipment locally, adding pressure on domestic toolmakers to come up with machines that are reliable in the exacting environment of high-volume wafer production. Several new wafer fabrication plants, or fabs, in the country were setting explicit localisation targets, according to Jie Chen, chairman of Britech Semiconductor Equipment (Shanghai) Corp, who spoke at an industry conference in eastern China’s Wuxi on...

Pallas-1 sees China’s Galactic Energy join reusable launch push, closing in on SpaceX

Pallas-1 sees China’s Galactic Energy join reusable launch push, closing in on SpaceX

Chinese rocket maker Galactic Energy has successfully sent its Pallas-1 medium-to-large reusable rocket into orbit, marking the latest milestone in Beijing’s drive to develop reusable launch capabilities and narrow the gap with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The two-stage, liquid-propellant rocket lifted off at 10am on Tuesday from a self-built launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre’s commercial pilot zone in northwestern China’s Gansu province before entering its designated orbit, according to...

China’s Z.ai revenue jumps 400% as total losses narrow on explosive cloud gains

China’s Z.ai revenue jumps 400% as total losses narrow on explosive cloud gains

Chinese artificial intelligence company Z.ai on Monday reported a 400 per cent increase in first-half revenue, driven by explosive growth in its open platform and application programming interface business, which helped narrow total losses despite higher research and development spending. Revenue for the six months ended June 30 rose to 953.89 million yuan (US$142 million). Full-year sales were expected to expand 514 per cent to 4.45 billion yuan, according to consensus estimates from analysts...

Huawei, with an eye on self-reliance, ploughs 25% of revenue into R&D at expense of profits

Huawei, with an eye on self-reliance, ploughs 25% of revenue into R&D at expense of profits

Huawei Technologies poured more than a quarter of its first-half revenue into research and development, prioritising long-term technological independence over short-term earnings as first-half profit plunged 36 per cent. R&D expenses jumped 25 per cent year on year to 121.4 billion yuan (US$18 billion) for the six months through June, accounting for over 25 per cent of total revenue, according to a filing on Monday with the Shanghai Clearing House, the primary central clearing counterparty in...

China’s AI chip drive: MetaX and Iluvatar swing to profit, as Biren narrows losses

China’s AI chip drive: MetaX and Iluvatar swing to profit, as Biren narrows losses

China’s home-grown artificial intelligence chipmakers are starting to cash in on Beijing’s self-reliance drive, but a fresh wave of first-half earnings reveals a stark divide between the industry’s rising profit stars and loss-making players. Shares of Chinese AI chipmakers traded mixed on Monday as investors digested the financial updates. MetaX Integrated Circuits saw its Shanghai-listed stock rise 2.4 per cent to 691.2 yuan on Monday after reporting a swing to profitability late on Sunday....

Sony Music, Warner accuse Anthropic of ‘blatant theft’ in major new lawsuit

Sony Music, Warner accuse Anthropic of ‘blatant theft’ in major new lawsuit

Some of the world’s biggest music publishers have launched a fresh lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the artificial intelligence giant of conducting “one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history”. The case adds to the legal challenges facing Anthropic as the firm eyes a potential blockbuster initial public offering, as the AI industry confronts growing pushback over its use of human-made material to train its models. Sony Music Publishing, Warner...

CXMT joins growing list of Chinese tech firms suing US Pentagon over blacklists

CXMT joins growing list of Chinese tech firms suing US Pentagon over blacklists

Leading chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has joined a growing list of Chinese technology companies suing the US government over their additions to Pentagon blacklists, as legal experts said US courts had shown a willingness to hold the Department of Defence to account. Recent rulings involving Chinese tech firms including lidar sensor maker Hesai Group, drone manufacturer DJI and biotech firm WuXi AppTec indicated that judges were prepared to scrutinise the US government’s evidence...

China’s CXMT posts massive 870% revenue surge as ‘aggressive expansion’ pays off

China’s CXMT posts massive 870% revenue surge as ‘aggressive expansion’ pays off

Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) reported a sharp surge in first-half revenue on Friday, as the firm released its first financial results since becoming China’s most valuable publicly traded company in a blockbuster Shanghai listing last month. The Hefei-based firm – China’s leading maker of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) products – posted revenue of 150.31 billion yuan (US$22.4 billion) for the six months to June, up 873.64 per cent year on year, according to a filing...

Meituan snaps losing streak with profitable June quarter though Douyin threat looms

Meituan snaps losing streak with profitable June quarter though Douyin threat looms

On-demand delivery giant Meituan swung back to profitability in the second quarter as China’s price war in food delivery cooled, allowing the company to scale back subsidies and target higher-value customers. Beijing-based Meituan posted an adjusted net profit of 2.5 billion yuan (US$372 million) for the June quarter, snapping a three-quarter losing streak according to its earnings report on Friday. The figure beat average analyst forecasts of 340 million yuan compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue rose...

MiniMax expands Alibaba cloud pact as compute needs surge for training and inference

MiniMax expands Alibaba cloud pact as compute needs surge for training and inference

Chinese artificial intelligence firm MiniMax has raised the three-year purchase ceiling on its cloud computing deals with Alibaba Group Holding by 220 per cent to US$1.2 billion, underscoring surging demand for computing power among the country’s top AI developers. The Shanghai-based company planned to spend up to US$300 million on Alibaba Cloud services this year, nearly triple its original US$115 million cap, after burning through two-thirds of its budget by the end of June, according to its...

China thinks big on brain-computer interfaces after world-first surgery

China thinks big on brain-computer interfaces after world-first surgery

Chinese surgeons last month completed the world’s first commercial surgery to implant an invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) device in a patient with a spinal cord injury, a milestone in the neurotechnology development race with US companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink. This month a Chinese company, state-owned PICC Property and Casualty, launched the world’s first commercial insurance policy covering BCI implantation surgery. September will see the first undergraduates in China to major in...

Alibaba pushes into South America’s AI market with launch of Brazil data centres

Alibaba pushes into South America’s AI market with launch of Brazil data centres

Alibaba Group Holding has launched its first data centres in South America, as the Chinese technology giant ramps up its artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout in emerging markets amid an intensifying US-China AI rivalry. The Hangzhou-based company announced on Thursday that its new Brazilian venture would operate two data centres offering local enterprises secure cloud infrastructure and a suite of “agentic AI services”. “Brazil is one of the world’s most dynamic digital economies and...

Zhipu AI shares jump as viral Ox Alpha model revealed as GLM-5.3-Flash on Chinese chips

Zhipu AI shares jump as viral Ox Alpha model revealed as GLM-5.3-Flash on Chinese chips

China’s Zhipu AI has launched its latest open-weight model, GLM-5.3-Flash – previously code-named Ox Alpha – saying that the system ran entirely on a cluster of 100,000 domestically produced chips during a high-profile stealth trial. The announcement followed a week of heavy traffic on artificial intelligence model marketplace OpenRouter and agent platform OpenCode, where the model processed 62 trillion tokens before its formal release on Wednesday, according to Zhipu. On OpenRouter, the system...

Nvidia ships first H200 chips to China, but forecasts no data-centre computing revenue

Nvidia ships first H200 chips to China, but forecasts no data-centre computing revenue

Nvidia has confirmed its first shipments of H200 data-centre processors to China under a new US licensing scheme, ending a months-long lockout. However, the sales accounted for less than 1 per cent of the company’s US$89 billion data-centre revenue in its second quarter, which ended on July 26. The H200 disclosure marked a shift from the previous quarter, when Nvidia said it had made no shipments of Data Centre Hopper products to China. Although Washington approved H200 exports in January,...

MiniMax revenue surges 283% but remains behind pace to meet forecast amid crowded AI race

MiniMax revenue surges 283% but remains behind pace to meet forecast amid crowded AI race

Chinese artificial intelligence firm MiniMax on Wednesday posted a 283 per cent surge in first-half revenue to US$116.6 million, powered by a 700 per cent jump in its enterprise business, though top-line growth remains off pace to hit full-year analyst forecasts. Revenue for the six months ended June 30 accounted for roughly 32 per cent of the US$363.77 million expected by analysts for the full year 2026, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company reported full-year revenue of...

AI boom, profit surge fuel China’s ambitious chip assembly buildout

AI boom, profit surge fuel China’s ambitious chip assembly buildout

China’s leading semiconductor packaging and testing companies have launched a multibillion-dollar capacity expansion drive, as they ride a surge in artificial intelligence demand, stellar first-half profit growth, and Beijing’s urgent push for tech self-sufficiency. In the first half of the year, China’s three leading outsourced chip packaging companies – Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET), Tongfu Microelectronics and Huatian Technology – announced capacity expansion investments...

DeepSeek nears pre-IPO funding round as 2027 market debut takes shape: sources

DeepSeek nears pre-IPO funding round as 2027 market debut takes shape: sources

DeepSeek is nearing the completion of a new funding round valuing the company at about 500 billion yuan (US$74 billion) before investment, as the Chinese artificial intelligence start-up moves closer to a potential listing on Shanghai’s Star Market, according to people familiar with the matter. The company was seeking to raise about 50 billion yuan in the round, which was expected to close before the end of August, according to one person. Investors included incumbents from the company’s last...

Huawei, HP settle disputes with multi-year Wi-fi patent cross-licensing deal

Huawei, HP settle disputes with multi-year Wi-fi patent cross-licensing deal

China’s Huawei Technologies and US personal computer giant HP announced on Wednesday that they had reached a deal to license each other’s Wi-fi patents. The two companies signed a multi-year global patent cross-licensing agreement, which granted HP the right to use certain Huawei Wi-fi patents on its PCs for a fee. “This agreement is a strong testament to Huawei’s persistent independent innovation in cutting-edge fields in information and communications technology,” said Alan Fan, Huawei’s chief...

Divergent results for Apple suppliers highlight memory price squeeze ahead of new iPhone

Divergent results for Apple suppliers highlight memory price squeeze ahead of new iPhone

Two major Chinese suppliers to Apple posted divergent first-half results, underscoring how soaring memory prices are squeezing profits even as component makers pin their hopes on upcoming iPhone releases for a second-half rebound. Lens Technology, a Shenzhen- and Hong Kong-listed maker of smartphone glass screens, saw its net income nearly halve to 577 million yuan (US$85.8 million) in the six months through June, as revenue dropped 12.4 per cent to 28.9 billion yuan. The company blamed the...

Moon mission delay a hiccup, but Chinese rocket city Wenchang remains on the march

Moon mission delay a hiccup, but Chinese rocket city Wenchang remains on the march

For generations, Wenchang, on Hainan’s northeastern coast, was better known for coconuts, its namesake chicken and the emigrants who left for Southeast Asia in search of a living. Now the rhythms of life here have been altered, gradually and then all at once, by China’s space programme. Wenchang Space Launch Site staged its first launch in 2016. Since then it has become one of the country’s top name-cards for rocket launches. I was near the site over the weekend, excited to witness the planned...

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