Technology News
Latest technology news and updates
Total: 510
A Night of Acceleration: Zhipu’s GLM‑5 Debuts as MiniMax and DeepSeek Race to Keep Up
Three leading Chinese AI firms unveiled near‑simultaneous upgrades that signal a shift from demo‑level coding assistants to production‑oriented, agentic systems. Zhipu launched GLM‑5 as an open‑source foundation for long‑horizon engineering tasks, while MiniMax and DeepSeek pushed product and context upgrades aimed at real‑world throughput and extended interactions.
China’s Tech Giants Turn Spring Festival into an AI‑Fuelled Red‑Envelope Arms Race
China’s leading tech platforms have launched an extraordinary Lunar New Year promotional battle that blends cash red packets, steep discounts and AI features, with announced spends approaching 10 billion yuan (~$1.4bn). The campaigns aim not only to drive immediate consumption but to train users on AI interactions and lock them into each firm’s ecosystem.
Meituan Turns Its AI Concierge into a Lunar New Year Sales Engine as Holiday AI War Heats Up
Meituan has upgraded its AI concierge “问小团” for the Lunar New Year to offer verified, transaction‑ready local recommendations and holiday coupons, aiming to convert queries into on‑platform purchases. The move highlights a broader industry push to make generative AI the primary interface for commerce, raising questions about accuracy, merchant obligations and regulatory oversight.
Big Bets on Humanoids: Apptronik Raises $520m as Google and Mercedes-Ben z Join Strategic Backers
Apptronik has closed a $520m A‑X round, bringing its Series A total to over $935m and nearly $1bn raised overall. The financing attracted strategic investors from tech, automotive, telecom and agriculture, underscoring renewed appetite for commercialising humanoid robots and signalling a new phase where big corporate money supports the transition from lab prototypes to industrial pilots.
Musk’s Moon Plan: Build a Lunar Factory to Mass‑Produce AI Satellites
Elon Musk told xAI staff that the company should build a factory on the Moon to manufacture AI satellites, arguing lunar production would provide unmatched compute and deployment advantages. The plan leverages SpaceX’s heavy‑lift ambitions but faces significant technical, economic and regulatory hurdles and could reshape strategic competition over AI infrastructure in space.
Apple’s Siri Upgrade Stumbles in Testing, Forcing Staggered AI Rollout and New Timetable
Apple has delayed and will stagger the rollout of major Siri AI features after internal tests exposed stability, accuracy and routing problems. Privacy constraints and underperforming in‑house models are slowing development, while some search and image features may still ship on schedule.
Seedance 2.0: China’s Groundbreaking AI Video Engine That Both Liberates and Alarm
Seedance 2.0, a Chinese generative video model, can produce hyper-realistic footage by integrating image, motion, audio and text, lowering the barriers to making sophisticated video. Its realism has sparked copyright backlash and deepfake concerns even as China’s large user base, open-source releases and supportive AI policy accelerate development and adoption.
China’s Mianbi AI Unveils SALA and a 9B Model That Promises Million‑Token Contexts and Faster Long‑Context Inference
Mianbi Intelligence has released SALA, a hybrid sparse‑linear attention architecture, and a 9B model called MiniCPM‑SALA that claims large inference speed gains and support for up to one million token contexts. If independently validated, the design could make very long‑context applications feasible on mid‑sized models and a range of inference hardware.
Meta Commits Over $10 Billion to a 1‑GW Data Centre in Indiana, Betting on an AI‑Heavy Future
Meta will build a 1 GW data‑centre campus in Lebanon, Indiana, with more than $10 billion invested in the facility and nearby community, creating roughly 4,000 construction jobs and 300 permanent roles. The scale of the project signals a strategic push for large‑scale AI and content infrastructure but raises questions about power supply, local benefits and long‑term demand for such massive compute sites.
Airbus Certifies Fully Automated Boom Refuelling — A Milestone That Rewrites Air-to-Air Logistics
Airbus has secured INTA certification for fully automated boom refuelling on the A330 MRTT, covering daytime and night operations. The milestone automates a historically manual, high-risk task, provides a procurement advantage against rivals such as Boeing, and paves the way for refuelling of unmanned aircraft — with attendant security and industrial-policy implications.
Google Turns AI Answers into a Checkout: Shopping Moves Inside Search and Gemini
Google is experimenting with a feature that enables direct purchases inside Search and its Gemini chatbot, aiming to monetise AI-driven interactions by turning answers into transactions. The initiative could reshape digital advertising and e-commerce economics, while raising privacy and competition questions.
Meta Commits $10bn+ to a 1‑Gigawatt AI Data Hub in Indiana — Big Bet on Power, Not Just Servers
Meta has started building a more than $10 billion, 1‑gigawatt data centre in Lebanon, Indiana, to serve AI and core product workloads. The project underscores the massive power, water and infrastructure demands of generative‑AI at scale and highlights the trade‑offs between local impacts and corporate investment.