TMTPOST -- Microsoft Corporation again was rumored to pull back its data center project and this time, the company seems to step up its shift, raising more fears about the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. Credit：Microsoft Microsoft has scaled back on data center constructions around the world, from the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia to Indonesia, according to a  Bloomberg report on Thursday, which signaled the software heavyweight is wary of too rapid expansion of its cloud computing infrastructure. In U.S., the company was said to have halted negotiations for data center space at a site near Chicago. It was  also has put on hold some planned expansion at a site in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, part of a complex visited by then-President Joe Biden, the report cited a person fam

TMTPOST -- U.S. President Donald Trump and his team on Thursday suggested openness to making deal on tariffs and strove to play down concerns about market volatility after the U.S. stock market suffered its worst day since 2020 following announcement of the sweeping reciprocal tariffs. Credit：China Central Television “I think it’s going very well,” replied Trump when asked about how he thinks hings are going as U.S. markets continue plunging in response to his tariffs announced on Wednesday. “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom,” the president said as he left the White House to fly to one of his Florida golf clubs. Trump then indicated his tariff plan is forcing trading partners to change their way to take advantage U.S. with their t

TMTPOST -- Canada on Thursday immediately responded to the Trump administration with new auto levies at the same tariff rate as the U.S. Credit：China Central Television Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on Thursday the country will impose 25% tariffs on all vehicles imported from the U.S. that are not compliant with United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The new tariffs will also apply to on the “non-Canadian content” of cars and trucks that are assembled in the U.S., Carney said in a news conference. While signaling Ottawa’s decision is to copy the U.S. government, Carney noted Canada won’t put new tariffs on auto parts as U.S. President Donald Trump had done. And vehicle content from Mexico under the USMCA will not be targeted, because, according to Carney, the M

Seres official website AsianFin -- After suffering cumulative losses of nearly 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in four consecutive years, Chinese EV maker Seres has staged a dramatic turnaround, with its AITO-branded premium EVs driving the company into profitability for the first time since 2020. Seres achieved a revenue of 145.176 billion yuan in 2024, marking a staggering 305.04% year-on-year surge and surpassing the 100-billion-yuan threshold for the first time in the company's history, according to its financial reports. Most notably, Seres recorded a net profit of 5.946 billion yuan in 2024, reversing its 24.5 billion yuan loss from 2023. This milestone makes Seres the fourth globally profitable new energy vehicle (NEV) company, following Tesla, BYD, and

TMTPOST --  Rumors about Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk’s leaving the Trump administration swirled on Wednesday after the U.S. electric vehicle (EV) giant posted steeper-than-expected sales decline amid mounting backlash against Musk. Credit：Tesla U.S. President Donald Trump told his cabinet members and other his inner circle people that Musk will be “stepping back” as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), “in the coming weeks”, reported Politico, citing Trump insiders. It was reported that Trump is still pleased with Musk and the DOGE spending cuts, but the two people agreed that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role.   It was said that Musk could remain an informal role as an adviser of the governm

TMTPOST -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced his long-awaited worldwide tariff plan, ranging from 10% to 50%. Credit：China Central Television In his first event from the White House Rose Garden, Trump touted April 2 as a day America's destiny was reclaimed and a day “that we began to make America wealthy again.” He said America has for decades been “ looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike”, and his new tariffs will bring back a “golden age” for the country. "Today we are standing up for the American worker and we are finally putting America first," he said, calling it "one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history." Specifically, Trump said his tariff plan consists of a baseline tariff of

Photo taken by editor TMTPOST – Hong Kong-listed AI company Fourth Paradigm reported a significant reduction in losses and strong revenue growth, according to its 2024 financial results. The company recorded a total revenue of 5.261 billion yuan (US$ 724 million), a 25.1% year-on-year increase. Gross profits hit 2.245 billion and gross profit margin was as high as 42.7%. The company reported an annual net loss attributable to shareholders of 269 million yuan, representing a decrease of 640 million yuan compared to 2023 or  a 70.4% reduction. Adjusted net loss for the year stood at 292 million yuan, down by 29.6% year-on-year. This marks the fourth consecutive year of loss reduction since 2021. Its core business, the Sage AI Platform, d

Zhu Xiaohu, managing partner at GSR Ventures AsianFin -- After the recent announcement of GSR Ventures' mass exit from humanoid robotics companies due to a lack of commercialization potential, Chinese venture capitalist Zhu Xiaohu, managing partner at GSR Ventures, has once again stirred debate in the AI industry. Reflecting on China's internet and venture capital history, Zhu compared the current AI industry to past technology booms, saying that while AI is in its "valley of death," there is still hope. He cited Apple's flashy but commercially underwhelming AI efforts compared to Microsoft's successful monetization strategies. Zhu made the remarks at the 2025 Zhongguancun Forum on Monday. Zhu noted that in February 2020, software companies were hot commodities for Chinese investors.

TMTPOST -- Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers kicked off 2025 with a strong growth as data released on Tuesday showed a range of them posted double-digit, or even, triple-digit increases in deliveries for the first quarter. Credit：Xpeng BYD Co. Ltd in March sold 377,420 new energy vehicles (NEVs), including electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, cementing its leadership in China’s EV sector. The sales gained 23.1% year-over-year (YoY), cooling from a 164% YoY increase a month earlier, but on month-over-month (MoM) basis, sales growth accelerated to16.9% following a 7.4% MoM increase for February. While sales last month didn’t match the record BYD broke in December with a delivery of 514,809 NEVs, the company sold 1.0008 million units from January to March, topping the one-million mar

CFP AsianFin -- Huawei reported on Monday a significant year-over-year increase of 22.4% in 2024 revenue and the highest growth rate in five years, after a few years in the “survival mode.” The 2024 revenue hit 862.1 billion yuan ($118.2 billion), representing the company's second-highest revenue to date, just shy of its record 891.4 billion yuan in 2020. Despite the revenue boost, net profit fell by 28% to 62.6 billion yuan due to growing investments in research and development. The company continues to navigate the challenges posed by U.S. sanctions, which have restricted its access to crucial technologies like semiconductors. “In 2024, Huawei's team united to overcome external challenges while improving product quality, operations, and efficiency,” said Huawei's

TMTPOST -- The Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs could be implemented at a universal rate of 20%, but some of U.S. trading partners may face new tariffs lower than that level, according to reports on Tuesday. Credit：Xinhua News Agency White House aides have drafted a proposal for U.S. President Donald Trump to impose around 20% tariffs on most American imports,  The Washington Post cited people with the knowledge of the matter. It was said that White House advisors cautioned that several options are still on the table, meaning the 20% tariffs on almost every country beyond U.S. may not come to pass.  When announcing an executive proclamation to impose a 25% tariff on all automobile imports,effective on eastern daylight time April 3, Trump said last week the auto tariff, w

TMTPost -- Senior officials from China, the European Union and Canada warned on Tuesday that the United States may face their countermeasures ahead of the Trump administration’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs that is scheduled to announce on Wednesday, April 2. Credit：Xinhua News Agency China has never bowed to hegemony, and will definitely take resolute measures if the U.S. continues to exert pressure or even blackmail, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in an interview with RIA Novosti on Tuesday during his visit to Russia, when asked about where the China-U.S. trade war will go and whether Beijing will further additional tariffs on American goods. Wang claimed the US has imposed tariffs on China twice on the pretext of addressin fentanyl concerns. He tressed the fact that China has put

(Image Source: Unsplash) AsianFin – RIVAI, a leader in RISC-V architecture, launched its Lingyu CPU processor in Shenzhen on Tuesday, marking a significant milestone in China's tech development. This is the nation's first fully self-developed high-performance RISC-V server chip, designed to support high-performance computing, all-flash storage, and large open-source language models like DeepSeek. Tan Zhangxi, the founder and CEO of RIVAI, revealed that the Lingyu processor is based on the company's proprietary CPU core and on-chip network IP. It features a "one core, dual architecture" design, with 32 general-purpose computing cores (CPU) and 8 specialized intelligent computing cores (LPU). This design optimizes tasks like inference for open-source large language models, enhancing ene

Huang Xiaoqing, Founder and CEO of Datta Robotics AsianFin – Datta Robotics, a leading unicorn in China’s humanoid robotics sector, is facing severe financial and operational difficulties. Over the past year, the company has struggled with salary payment delays and layoffs. Employees disclosed that Datta Robotics initially implemented temporary measures such as halving monthly salaries of above 10,000 yuan (US$ 1,376) to manage cash flows, but the situation escalated to a complete halt in salary payments and the suspension of social security contributions. Huang Xiaoqing, the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Datta Robotics, told AsianFin on Monday that the company is "operating normally" and plans to release an official statement soon. Founded in 2015 by Huang, a former head&nb

TMTPOST -- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Monday the artificial intelligence (AI) star will have a major launch, its first “open” language model since GPT-2 that was unveiled in February 2019. Credit：Freepik “We are excited to release a powerful new open-weight language model with reasoning in the coming months,  and we want to talk to devs about how to make it maimally useful,” said Atman in a post on social media X, attaching a link to a feedback form that OpenAI published on its website. “We’re planning to release our first open language model since GPT-2 in the coming months. We’re excited to collaborate with developers, researchers, and the broader community to gather inputs and make this model as useful as possible. If you’re interested in joining a feedback sessio

TMTPOST -- China, Japan and South Korea officials overseeing economic and trade affairs reached a consensus that three countries should work in close collaboration in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs, according to Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV). Credit：Xinhua News Agency In a meeting held on March 30 that both Tokyo and Seoul attached great importance to, the economic and trade ministers of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) expressed their willingness of cooperation, Yuyuan Tantian said in a post at Monday night. As part of issues that are highly concerned in the meeting, all of officials in attendance agreed to strengthen supply chain cooperation and dialogues on export controls, accord

TMTPOST -- The White House confirmed on Monday U.S. President Donald Trump will announce details of reciprocal tariffs, his most sweeping tariff plan so far, on Wednesday, April 2. Credit：China Central Television In his first event from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, Trump will unveil the reciprocal tariff plan featuring country-based levies and the  full cabinet will be present there, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Leavitt told reporters all of members of  Trump’s “brilliant team of trade advisers”, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, trade adviser Peter Navarro, senior aide Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance, have proposed their plans on how to apply th

AsianFin -- Hefei-based Xingming AI has raised several hundred million yuan upon completing A+ financing round, according to its announcement released on Monday. The fundraising effort was led by Kaiyuan Industrial, with Hefei Industrial Investment and West Hefei Industrial Investment participating as co-investors. The funds raised will primarily be used for the research and development of next-generation spatial intelligent chips and products, the advancement of digital intelligence operations, and the enhancement of team development. Xingming AI also unveiled a new brand strategy, signaling a key move towards accelerating the industrialization of spatial intelligent products and solutions. Founded in 2020, Xingming AI specializes in spatial computing, AI chip design, and product dev

Sheng Qiuping, Member of the Party Leadership Group, Vice Minister, and Secretary of the Party Committee of the Ministry of Commerce TMTPOST -- In 2024, China's new energy vehicle (NEV) market achieved significant milestones, with production and sales surpassing 10 million units for the first time. The country also saw its electric vehicle (EV) exports in 2024 increase 23% year over year to exceed 2 million units, contributing to a total of 6.41 million automotive exports.. This achievement reaffirmed China's position as the world's largest auto exporter. At the 2025 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, Sheng Qiuping, the Deputy Minister of Commerce, outlined the government's continued support for the NEV sector in 2025. The Ministry of Commerce plans to bolster its policies an

(Image credit: TMTPost AGI Editor Lin Zhijia) TMTPOST -- The possibility of a bifurcated global semiconductor ecosystem, led by China and the United States, appears increasingly plausible amid intensifying geopolitical tensions, warned Wei Shaojun, Chairman of the Integrated Circuit Design Branch of the China Semiconductor Industry Association and a professor at Tsinghua University. However, such a division could be detrimental to all parties involved, potentially leading to losses on both sides, Wei added. Speaking at the SEMICON China 2025 Semiconductor Exhibition during the Global Semiconductor Industry Strategic Summit and SEMI Industry Innovation Investment Forum (SIIP China), Wei characterized China's chip industry as being in a "peculiar" state while the international land