To The Moon

NextFin News -- In the summer of 2026, a series of control experiments quietly upended the foundational assumptions of the smart robotics sector. An elite research alliance led by Stanford Professor Fei-Fei Li, Nvidia’s Embodied AI lead Jim Fan, and Georgia Institute of Technology Assistant Professor Danfei Xu—alongside top-tier automation scholars Pieter Abbeel, Jitendra Malik, Ken Goldberg, and Trevor Darrell—encountered a striking setback when testing a classic industry AI model known as $\pi_{0.5}$. The researchers had attempted what seemed like a logical optimization: feeding continuous digital touch data into the system alongside its existing visual inputs. The underlying thesis was standard for modern software engineering—that giving a machine more data should naturally yield greate

TMTPOST —The final exam at one of China's top universities began without exam papers, proctors or even questions for students to answer. Instead, 51 undergraduates sat in front of computer screens and tried to trick some of the world's most advanced artificial-intelligence models into making mistakes. Their assignment: design exam questions difficult enough to defeat Anthropic's Claude, China's DeepSeek and MiniMax. The better the AI performed, the worse the students' grades. The unusual experiment at Fudan University in Shanghai reflects a challenge confronting schools, employers and governments around the world as AI systems become increasingly capable: If machines can already outperform humans on many traditional academic tasks, what exactly should humans be learning—and how should they

TMTPOST -- June 30 is a bad day for many employees of China’s large technology companies. This year, HR departments were hurrying to complete the layoff process by that date. “There is a layoff list, and you are on the list,” the HR lady told Ni Ping bluntly in mid-May. Ni had been expecting it. In March and April, rumors were circulating that a new wave of layoffs would happen in internet companies. AI-themed training sessions, token-use competition and hidden performance assessments were the new normal.   Even with much preparation for this, he broke down emotionally. “I do not want to go through it again,” he told NextFin. Ni had worked in CTrip as a back-end software engineer for about a year, with a monthly salary of 25,000 yuan. He worked in CTrip’s most lucrative hotel business

Text | Giant Tide WAV, Author | Lao Yuer, Editor | Yang Xuran NextFin News -- In June 2023, a prominent red storefront emerged in Tokyo’s upscale Omotesando district, marking the official entry of Mixue Bingcheng into the Japanese market. At the time, China’s largest ice cream and tea franchise harbored aggressive expansion goals. According to contemporary reports from The Nikkei, the corporation intended to establish approximately 1,000 stores across Japan by 2028, aiming to capture a significant market share in an already highly consolidated and mature beverage sector. Three years later, this ambitious footprint target remains stalled in the single digits. Data published by Nikkei Chinese Network indicates that as of June 2026, Mixue operates only four physical storefronts across Japan.

NextFin News -- "A lot of Chinese people in Brazil have bulletproof glass installed on their cars." That was the one thing Enki Technology founder Cheng Hai remembered most vividly from his recently concluded fact-finding trip to Brazil. Public safety concerns are one of the stereotypes outsiders often hold about Latin America. But in Cheng Hai’s view, that stereotype is only skin-deep. He spent two weeks in Brazil without running into any safety issues at all—what boosted his confidence instead was the rapidly growing local demand for e-commerce. After entering the Brazilian market in the first half of this year, Enki Technology used a distribution-heavy model to drive monthly revenue up 15-fold, while net profit margins have consistently held at 30%. "If you’re doing legitimate business,

Text | New Entropy, Author | Zhizi Editor | Jiuli NextFin News — When Midea turned its PortaSplit portable air conditioner into a European cult product—prompting consumers to drive hundreds of miles to buy secondhand units at twice the retail price—market observers heralded it as a milestone for premium Chinese manufacturing. With major brands like Midea and Haier pushing their overseas proprietary brand shares to between 40% and 90%, Chinese consumer electronics are undergoing a historic transformation from factory suppliers to global household names. Yet, a quieter and far more aggressive flanking maneuver is unfolding across the tropics. Sidestepping direct, capital-intensive confrontations with industry giants in Europe and North America, a lean contingent of Chinese small appliance br

Text | Bao Bian, Author | Gao Ze, Editor | Xing Yun  Job seekers often feel their applications vanish into a corporate black hole, while hiring managers find themselves buried under mountains of identical resumes. This disconnect remains the classic conflict of corporate recruitment. In 2026, as the graduation season peaks and the autumn recruitment cycle begins early, this structural friction has not disappeared—but it has acquired a disruptive new variable. Artificial intelligence is no longer a peripheral novelty in the hiring pipeline; it has deeply penetrated every stage of the employment lifecycle. Candidates routinely deploy AI to engineer role-specific resumes and simulate high-stakes interviews, while corporate HR departments rely on automated screeners to filter bulk applica

By | Yi En NextFin News — "Starting July 8, 2026, all imported consumer goods regulated by the CPSC that require a CPC or GCC must submit core compliance data electronically to the ACE system before the cargo arrives at the port for customs clearance." "Goods without this declaration face customs detention, clearance delays, or forced returns. The old model of clearing customs first and providing certificates later will no longer be supported." As this deadline approaches, detailed policy warnings are flooding cross-border e-commerce groups. Panic over compliance is spreading. While most merchants want to comply, the industry currently lacks a standardized, clear blueprint for execution. This leaves many operators unsure how to proceed. At the same time, high testing and certification fees

Momenta launches its share offering For years, the capital markets treated autonomous-driving startups less like businesses and more like futuristic research labs. Valuations were untethered from reality, buoyed entirely by grand, long-horizon promises of Level 4 autonomy and fleets of driverless robotaxis roaming science-fiction cityscapes. That era of speculative idealism is officially over. On June 29, Momenta released its global offering prospectus, launching a high-profile share sale that marks its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the ticker "6880." The autonomous-driving frontrunner is presenting public markets with a fundamentally altered thesis: the industry’s defining metric is no longer the sophistication of its algorithms, but the cold mechanics of its balance sheet.

Europe has historically resisted the adoption of residential air conditioning—until this summer. Last week, France recorded its hottest week on record. The national daily average temperature reached an unprecedented high, with some localized sensors peaking at 44.3°C. In response, 72 departments—covering roughly three-quarters of the country—were placed under the highest-level red alert for extreme heat. Meanwhile, in Andalusia, Spain, temperatures surged to 45.1°C, marking continental Europe’s highest temperature extreme of the century. Amid this unprecedented heat wave, a Chinese-made portable air conditioner has become a runaway sensation across the continent. Midea Group’s "PortaSplit," a portable split-system air conditioner, has entirely sold out across Germany, Spain, and France. On