Juro Osawa
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Reporter for @theinformation covering tech in Asia. Ex-WSJ. DMs open. Tips to: juro@theinformation.com
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Articles by Juro Osawa
Apple Prepares to Debut Apple Intelligence in China in December
Source: Bloomberg Apple is preparing to release its Apple Intelligence on-device AI service in mainland China in December, ending a lengthy wait caused by regulatory hurdles, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Meta Bans ByteDance Ads on Its Platforms
Source: Bloomberg Meta Platforms has banned advertisements from ByteDance on its platforms in the U.S. and several other markets, Bloomberg and other media outlets reported. Meta implemented the ByteDance ad ban in the U.S., Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, according to Bloomberg. The ban also applies to third-party ad campaigns that link to TikTok and other ByteDance apps.
South Korean Banks Were Hacked Using Chinese AI Agent, Researchers Say
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China’s AI Model Race Is Just Getting More Crowded
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China’s AI Model Race Is Just Getting More Crowded
Imagine Epic Games, Apple and DoorDash were developing their own large language models now from scratch to compete against the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. That’s basically what’s happening in China, where a trio of big names from other parts of the tech industry have jumped into an already-crowded race to make cutting-edge AI.
SoftBank’s Son Seeks $100 Billion From Gulf Investors for AI Bets
Source: The Financial Times SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son is looking to raise up to $100 billion from Gulf investors to finance his AI investments, The Financial Times reported. Son has held fundraising discussions in recent weeks in the United Arab Emirates and other parts of the region, according to the FT. He plans to use the money to set up a fund that buys companies and uses AI and other advanced technology to improve their operations, FT reported.
South Korean Banks Were Hacked Using Chinese AI Agent, Researchers Say
Source: The Information The perpetrator of a recent hack of South Korean financial institutions that resulted in data leaks used an open-source Chinese AI agent called Artex and Chinese large language models, according to a report published this week by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
Manus Raises More Than $500 Million After Unwinding Meta Deal
Starlink 4 hours ago Elon Musk blames Indian 'oligarchs' for stalling Starlink launch CNBC - Priyanka Salve • 4h SpaceX founder Elon Musk has accused vested interests of blocking the launch of his company's satellite internet service, Starlink, to protect their … Software 9 hours ago “Software is over”: Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones Ars Technica - Kyle Orland • 9h Opus-built Creative Cloud alternatives are ambitious, free, and nowhere near finished.
Manus Raises More Than $500 Million After Unwinding Meta Deal
Source: The Information The parent company of Manus, the AI agent startup that recently separated from Meta Platforms, said Thursday that it has raised more than $500 million in a new funding round. Butterfly Effect said in a social media post on WeChat that the funding round was led by new investors Boyu Capital and IDG Capital. Its existing investors Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund also participated in the round.
Kuaishou’s Kling Picks Banks for $1 Billion-Plus Hong Kong IPO
Source: Bloomberg Kling AI, a spun-off unit of Chinese video app Kuaishou Technology, has picked banks for a Hong Kong initial public offering that could raise at least $1 billion, Bloomberg reported. Kling, which develops AI video generation models, is aiming for a listing as soon as next year. The company is working with China International Capital Corp., Goldman Sachs and UBS on the share sale, according to the report.
How China’s Token Resellers Create an Anthropic Gray Market
In Beijing’s Haidian District, a bustling hub for local universities and tech companies, six out of the roughly 30 tenants in one run-of-the-mill office building are all in the same business, according to one occupant of the building: selling Chinese customers access to Anthropic’s Claude and other models from U.S. AI companies. They’re not supposed to do that. Anthropic doesn’t offer its services in China for national security reasons, but the demand for Claude tokens is off the charts.
Chinese State-Backed Firm Funded Purchase of Nvidia Chips
Source: Bloomberg A state-backed Chinese financing company has revealed in documents filed with regulators that it funded the purchase of Nvidia chips subject to U.S. export restrictions, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Semi-Tech Leasing Group, owned by several local government entities, has provided another Chinese company called Glory View Technology with capital to purchase more than 700 servers, Bloomberg said, citing the documents.
OpenAI Accuses Moonshot of Distillation Campaign
Source: The Information OpenAI said it recently identified and mitigated a “coordinated model-distillation campaign” involving individuals associated with Moonshot AI, the Chinese developer of Kimi models. OpenAI said the operators of the campaign tried to extract protected reasoning—the model’s hidden thinking process before it generates an answer—by interacting with models in ways that could make their reasoning visible.
DeepSeek Open-Sources Software Tools for Huawei AI Chips
Source: The Information DeepSeek said Wednesday that it would open-source software tools that are customized for Huawei’s AI chips, as the Chinese AI firm steps up its efforts to use domestic semiconductors for training and running its models. The software tools include a Huawei-compatible version of TileLang—a high-level programming language that DeepSeek has also used for Nvidia chips—as well as computing and communication libraries, the company said in a social media post on WeChat.
Alibaba’s AliExpress Tests Membership Program in Challenge to Amazon
AliExpress, Alibaba Group’s international e-commerce site, is testing a new VIP membership program in some markets, as it tries to attract and retain high-spending customers in a challenge to Amazon, according to a person with direct knowledge of the efforts. The VIP program, called Elite, is available on an invitation-only basis to customers who have spent more than $800 a year on AliExpress purchases, the person said.
Samsung Invests $1 Billion in KKR-Backed AI Infrastructure Firm Helix
Source: The Information Samsung Electronics and five of its affiliates are investing $1 billion in Helix Digital Infrastructure, an AI infrastructure venture established in June by private equity firm KKR, the companies announced on Tuesday. Soaring AI demand has prompted tech companies, energy providers and investment firms to collaborate on deals or projects to expand computing infrastructure worldwide.
Manus Unveils New Personal Agent App in Challenge to Meta’s Muse
Source: The Information Manus, the AI agent startup that recently separated from Meta Platforms, launched on Monday a new standalone app for personal agents that could compete with Meta’s Muse. The new app, Cue, provides each user with multiple personal AI agents. Each agent has access to its own email, phone number, wallet and virtual computer so it can send messages, make payments within the budget set by the user and take a phone call on behalf of the user.
Chinese Leader Xi Calls for U.S.-China Cooperation to Prevent AI Abuse
Source: The Information Chinese leader Xi Jinping said during his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump that the two nations can “jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI” through more cooperation. Trump and Xi held talks on Thursday at the White House, and a major topic on the agenda was AI safety and governance. The Chinese leader said “AI must be kept under human control,” according to a readout of the talks published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Z.ai Open-Sources ZCode After Data Uploading Scandal
Source: The Information Z.ai said that it has open-sourced its coding tool, ZCode, after the Chinese AI firm faced intense backlash from developers who found out that their data was being uploaded to cloud servers without their consent. “In response to the ZCode product security issues reported by the community, we have completed the necessary remediation and sincerely apologize to all our users,” ZCode’s official X account said in a post on Monday.
Alibaba Unveils New AI Chip And Data Center Expansion Plan
Source: The Information Alibaba on Tuesday unveiled a powerful new AI chip for training and running models, highlighting the rapid progress in China’s domestic semiconductor capabilities. During its annual Apsara tech conference, Alibaba said its new AI chip, Zhenwu V900, delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, Zhenwu M890, which was released in May. The V900 is scheduled for mass production and commercial release in the first quarter of next year, it said.
DeepSeek Bets Big on Huawei Chips to Bypass U.S. Export Controls
DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng told investors that a major priority for his company is to use more domestic chips to train its models, adding that he expects Huawei Technologies to start delivering training chips to DeepSeek as early as the fourth quarter this year, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Alibaba Appoints New Head of Qwen LLM Team
Source: The Information Alibaba Group has appointed Dayiheng Liu, one of its senior AI researchers, as the head of its Qwen large language models, according to two employees with knowledge of the matter. Liu’s appointment has brought more clarity to the Qwen team’s leadership after multiple rounds of reorganization earlier this year, according to the people.
A Tsinghua Professor’s Stealth LLM Startup Hits $1.4 Billion Valuation
A secretive Chinese AI model startup founded in February by a Tsinghua University professor is now valued at more than $1.4 billion, after raising $400 million in three funding rounds from investors including Tencent, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Beijing-based Naive AI is preparing to release its first large language model as early as this month, joining the country’s fierce LLM competition as a newcomer, according to the person.
U.S. Lawmaker Ro Khanna Urges Chinese Labs to Help Pace Frontier AI
Source: The Information Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman for Silicon Valley, has sent letters to Chinese AI companies including Alibaba Group, DeepSeek and Moonshot, requesting their commitments to join American AI labs in a binding international agreement to pace the development of the technology. Khanna, a ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, has also convened an emergency hearing to call for a U.S.-China agreement on AI pacing. The hearing will be on Sept.
Why China’s Answer to Surge AI Got a $1 Billion Valuation On Just $30 Million in Orders
Unless you’ve been under a rock over the weekend, you’d know that the debate about AI safety took a big leap forward, as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called for leading AI companies to slow the development of advanced AI, drawing supportive responses from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. On Monday, Microsoft joined in, while Chinese authorities appeared skeptical.
Z.ai Plans $5 Billion Fundraising as Compute Cost Grows
Source: The Information Z.ai is raising about $5 billion through equity and convertible bond offerings, seeking to replenish its warchest in the increasingly costly race to develop frontier AI models. Hong Kong-listed Z.ai said in a regulatory filing on Sunday that it plans to raise $2 billion through a share placement, and another $3 billion through issuance of convertible bonds. The new fundraising comes just two months after Z.ai raised $4 billion through a share placement.
Chinese CEO Laments Many Robotics Firms Fabricate Revenue
Source: The Information The co-founder and CEO of Mech-Mind Robotics, a Beijing-based robotics firm that recently went public, said in a post on WeChat on Thursday that many Chinese embodied AI companies are “creating false and unsustainable revenue,” in response to The Information’s scoop on Chinese regulators tightening the approval of humanoid startups’ listings.
China Hits Back at U.S. Accusation of “Industrial-Scale” AI Distillation
Source: The Information China’s Ministry of Commerce rejected U.S. accusations that some Chinese AI firms are conducting “industrial-scale distillation” of American AI models, describing Washington’s latest move as an attempt to politicize a “normal technical and commercial issue.” “China’s open-source models are shared with global companies, including US companies, facilitating the development of related models.
U.S. Accuses DeepSeek, Alibaba and Other Chinese AI Firms of Large-Scale Distillation
Source: The Information The U.S. government has accused six Chinese AI firms of using large-scale distillation to copy the capabilities of American models, in a move that highlights the intensifying AI rivalry between the two nations. The six Chinese firms under accusation are DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba Group, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.ai.
ByteDance Secures $30 Billion Loan as AI Investments Grow
Source: The Information ByteDance is borrowing about $30 billion in the company’s biggest-ever loan, according to a person with knowledge of the financing. The Chinese tech giant was originally seeking to borrow $20 billion. At $30 billion, it is the second-largest dollar-denominated loan in Asia this year, after a $40 billion bridge loan SoftBank borrowed earlier this year, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the upsized $30 billion loan.
Saudi Firm Humain Unveils Arabic Language Model Developed With China’s MiniMax
Source: The Information Humain, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned AI company, announced on Thursday an Arabic large language model developed based on Chinese AI firm MiniMax’s model. The humain-m3 model, built on MiniMax’s M3 open-source model, was pre-trained on more than 1 trillion tokens of Arabic content, according to Humain. The model demonstrates strong performance in Arabic language understanding and reasoning, it said.
Moonshot AI Files Confidentially for Hong Kong IPO
Source: The Information Moonshot AI, whose Kimi K3 open-source model has become a global hit, has filed confidentially an application for a Hong Kong initial public offering, Chinese media outlet LatePost reported Wednesday. Moonshot’s path to its IPO hasn’t been easy. The company went through an overhaul to unwind its original corporate structure with an overseas holding company, after Chinese regulators’ new stance made it harder for companies with such a structure to go public.
Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs Unveils New World Model
Source: The Information World Labs, a startup led by Stanford University professor Fei-Fei Li, on Tuesday unveiled Atlas, a new world model that can generate and modify photorealistic, interactive virtual environments based on text, image and video prompts. In a blog post, the startup said Atlas, pretrained from scratch, allows users to create a three-dimensional environment and view it from any camera position and angle they specify.
Chinese AI Model Firm Z.ai’s API Sales Surge in First Half
Source: The Information Chinese AI firm Z.ai’s revenue in the first half jumped nearly fivefold from a year earlier to 954 million yuan ($142 million), boosted by skyrocketing sales of cloud-based AI model services. Z.ai, whose stock is listed in Hong Kong, said its “open platform and API revenue,” which includes the sales of its models through application programming interfaces and other services such as coding plans, surged more than 28 times to 825 million yuan.
Tencent’s New Flagship AI Model Shows Major Progress
Source: The Information Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings on Friday launched a preview version of its new flagship open-source model, Hy4, which demonstrates a significant improvement in performance from its predecessor. Benchmarks and early feedback on Hy4 suggest that Tencent is emerging as a more formidable competitor to leading Chinese AI model makers such as Moonshot AI, DeepSeek and Alibaba Group.
Z.ai’s Latest Model Intensifies Competition for Low-Cost Offerings
Source: The Information Chinese AI firm Z.ai’s new open-source model is generating a lot of buzz because of its near-frontier capabilities at super low costs. This further intensifies the price competition in the global AI model market. The new GLM-5.3 Flash model, officially released earlier this week, is ranked eighth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 57, matching OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Terra.
Chinese AI Firm MiniMax’s ARR Jumps to $800 Million
Source: The Information Chinese AI developer MiniMax said its annualized revenue run rate jumped to $800 million this month, from $150 million in February, thanks to demand from enterprise customers for its new AI video model and large language models. The growth reflects an ongoing shift in the Shanghai-based company’s business model.
Alibaba Seeks to Raise $10 Billion in Share Sale to Fund AI Investments
Source: The Information Alibaba Group said Sunday that it is looking to raise 80 billion Hong Kong dollars ($10.2 billion) through a major share placement to fund its fast-growing AI investments. The Chinese tech giant, listed in New York and Hong Kong, is selling shares to investors outside the U.S. The deal is already oversubscribed due to interest from sovereign wealth funds and other international investors, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
TikTok Reaches $400 Million Settlement With DOJ Over Child Privacy Lawsuit
Source: The Information The Department of Justice said Friday that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a lawsuit regarding their alleged violation of federal children’s privacy laws. The DOJ originally filed its complaint in 2024, alleging that TikTok had violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by allowing children aged under 13 to join the platform and by gathering their personal information without parental consent.
Alibaba CEO Expects AI-Related ARR to Reach $10 Billion by September
Source: The Information Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu said on an earnings call Thursday that the company expects the annualized revenue run rate for its AI-related products to reach $10 billion in the current quarter through September, up from $7.3 billion in the previous quarter.
Chinese Humanoid Maker Unitree Shares Soar on Shanghai Debut
Source: The Information Shares of Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree Robotics soared on the debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Wednesday, after raising 6.1 billion yuan ($905 million) in an initial public offering. The shares surged more than seven times its IPO price before closing 460% up, valuing the company at slightly more than $60 billion, underscoring Chinese investors’ euphoria in humanoids.
Alibaba’s Small, On-Device Model Gains Traction
Source: The Information Alibaba Group said its new small-size AI model that customers can run on their own personal computers has been downloaded more than 1 million times in just a few days since its release, making it one of the company’s fastest-growing models.
China’s Z.ai Touts New GLM-5.3 Model as Cyber Defense Tool
Source: The Information Chinese AI developer Z.ai on Friday released its new open-source model, GLM-5.3, saying its cybersecurity capabilities are on par with Anthropic’s Mythos 5. Beijing-based Z.ai, also known as Zhipu in Chinese, said GLM-5.3 has achieved significant improvements from its predecessor, GLM-5.2, in both coding and cybersecurity.
DeepSeek Announces Price Hikes for V4 Models
Source: The Information DeepSeek announced a significant increase in the prices of its models, a day after it released its flagship model, V4-Pro. From this Sunday, the cost of V4-Pro’s application programming interface will rise to $3.96 for output per 1 million tokens at peak hours and $1.98 at non-peak hours—up sharply from the current price of $0.87.
Tencent’s Capex Nearly Triples on More Compute for AI Models and Tools
Source: The Information Tencent Holdings said its capital expenditures in the second quarter nearly tripled from a year earlier to 52.8 billion yuan ($7.8 billion), as the Chinese tech giant beefed up its computing infrastructure to train better AI models and meet growing demand for its coding and productivity tools.
Former Alibaba Researcher Announces New Startup on Digital and Physical AI Agents
Source: The Information Former Alibaba star researcher Junyang Lin announced that he had started a new AI company, confirming The Information’s earlier reports. Lin, who left Alibaba in March, said in a post on X that his Shanghai-based startup, Pragmatik Labs, is focusing on “next-generation agents across digital and physical worlds.” Lin also said Chinese venture capital firms Gaorong Ventures and HongShan led the funding round for Pragmatik, while Tencent also participated.
Meta to Open-Source Flagship Muse Spark 1.2 Model
Source: The Information Meta Platforms said it plans to release an open-weight version of its most advanced Muse Spark 1.2 model soon. The Facebook owner also announced a new small-size open-source model called Muse Glimmer that can run on personal computers. Meta’s move could provide customers with alternatives to popular open-source models from China, especially appealing to certain U.S. customers that prefer U.S. models out of national security reasons.
Sony, TSMC to Invest $6.3 Billion in Image Sensor Joint Venture in Japan
Source: Nikkei Sony Group and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are planning to invest about 1 trillion yen ($6.3 billion) in a joint venture that will start mass producing next-generation image sensors in Japan as early as 2029, the Nikkei newspaper reported. The new joint venture, expected to be established by March 2027, plans to supply high-performance camera sensors for Apple’s iPhones, according to the Nikkei.
SK Hynix to Start Building Two New Chip Fabs Next Year
Source: The Information South Korean memory maker SK Hynix said on Friday that it will start the construction of two new chip plants next year, after its board approved its plan to invest about 54 trillion won ($38 billion) in the new fabs. The company’s announcement of the timelines for its new fabs comes as demand for memory chips continues to surge amid a global AI boom.
Beijing Launches Cybersecurity Review of Palo Alto Networks’ Products
Source: The Information China’s top internet regulator said on Thursday it had launched a cybersecurity review of products sold in the country by U.S. security software firm Palo Alto Networks.
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