🔥 Trending News

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.

ByteDance has started a limited rollout of Seedance 2.0, a next‑generation video‑generation model, inside its Doubao AI assistant app. The grayscale test lets select users try the new model while ByteDance evaluates performance and safety before a wider release, with implications for creators, platform engagement and regulatory oversight.

Henan Mining Crane Co. announced Rmb180 million in year‑end bonuses — two‑thirds of its Rmb270 million profit — and staged a public cash‑counting event that distributed Rmb60 million on site. The spectacle mixes staff incentives, PR and political signalling, but raises practical questions about tax compliance, fairness and sustainability.

The yuan climbed past 6.90 per dollar on February 12, reaching levels not seen since May 2023 as both onshore and offshore markets rallied. The move reflects softer dollar dynamics, renewed foreign inflows and cautious central-bank guidance via a conservative midpoint setting, but risks from U.S. policy shifts and domestic growth surprises remain.

Huawei has announced a wide-ranging Lunar New Year promotion on its official site, cutting prices across phones and other devices with headline discounts stated to reach up to ¥4,000 when combining model reductions, trade-ins and finance offers. The campaign aims to boost short-term sales, clear inventory and reinforce Huawei’s device ecosystem amid tougher market conditions and fierce domestic competition.

Zhipu Technology raised prices for its GLM Coding Plan and launched GLM-5 overseas on February 12, citing surging developer demand and the need for heavier investment in compute and model optimisation. The increase — 30% or higher domestically and substantially larger on overseas API pricing — marks a shift in China’s AI industry from low‑price competition to value-based monetisation.

The PLAN’s carrier Fujian released a New‑Year photograph of its full crew delivering a holiday greeting that doubles as a slogan of leadership. The image underscores both the symbolic role the ship plays in China’s naval modernization and the gap that remains between symbolic displays and sustained operational capability.

Ned Davis Research warns that if the current sell‑off becomes a full crypto winter, Bitcoin could fall to about $31,000 — a drop of roughly 55% from current levels and as much as 70–75% from its October peak. Other banks and strategists offer differing downside targets, but the central risk is that renewed selling, leverage and miner pressure could amplify losses even as greater institutional participation offers some stabilising force.

China’s 2026 Spring Festival Gala became a de facto showcase for humanoid robotics, with four domestic firms presenting polished acrobatics, coordinated dance and domestic task demonstrations. The broadcast signalled that motion control and embodied intelligence are maturing, while shifting investor attention from hardware to the ‘brain’ — large embodied models and task‑general AI.

A major Chinese AI startup raised over $700 million in a round led by Alibaba and Tencent, valuing it above $10 billion. The founder — a post‑1990s entrepreneur — said the company holds more than ¥10 billion in cash and is not pursuing an IPO, highlighting a shift toward long‑term, control‑oriented growth amid an intensely competitive AI funding surge.

Cai Lei, an ALS patient and research organiser in China, remains a central figure in nationwide efforts to push amyotrophic lateral sclerosis research forward despite being in the terminal stage of his illness. Through patient registries, international collaborations, and a high‑profile push for post‑mortem tissue donation, he is building infrastructure that could materially accelerate domestic ALS science even if he does not live to see a cure.

Zhipu AI released GLM-5 and Moore Threads said it adapted the model to its MTT S5000 GPU the same day, claiming H100-class FP8 performance. Qianli Technology nominated former Honor CEO Zhao Ming to its board to speed commercialisation, while Alipay’s AI-native payments surpassed 120 million transactions in one week. Together these moves show China advancing a vertically integrated AI stack from hardware and models to monetised services.

Apple’s refreshed AirTag, launched in China at 249 yuan, improves precision locating with a second‑generation UWB chip, extends Bluetooth range, and makes the speaker louder. The update emphasises recycled materials, deeper Apple Watch integration, and a secure item‑sharing feature for partners such as airlines, while reiterating existing anti‑stalking and privacy protections.

Apple’s ambitious upgrade to Siri, built on its own model platform and integrating Google’s Gemini, has hit new testing problems that may delay key features previously slated for iOS 26.4 in March. Core capabilities such as expanded personal‑data search and advanced app voice controls are the most likely to slip into later iOS releases, underscoring the engineering and strategic challenges of deploying generative AI within Apple’s privacy framework.

Donald Trump publicly chastised Israeli President Isaac Herzog for not pardoning Benjamin Netanyahu, prompting Herzog’s office to seek clarification from Netanyahu’s team. Netanyahu’s office denied involvement, saying Trump acted independently, while Herzog reaffirmed that any clemency decision will follow standard legal review. The episode highlights tensions over judicial independence in Israel and raises questions about the propriety of foreign leaders publicly weighing in on another country’s legal processes.

President Isaac Herzog rebuked Donald Trump after the former U.S. president urged him to pardon Benjamin Netanyahu. Herzog’s retort underscored the independence of Israel’s presidential office and highlighted tensions between foreign political pressure and domestic legal procedures concerning Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial.

The 62nd Munich Security Conference exposed a quieter, deeper rift between the United States and Europe over the distribution of security responsibilities and the future of the Western order. European leaders publicly signalled a push toward greater strategic autonomy even as they remain materially dependent on US security guarantees, while civil society protests underscored domestic opposition to expanded militarisation.

Alibaba plans to take its AI‑chip unit T‑Head public, a move that boosted the parent company’s U.S. pre‑market shares. The listing aims to fund and legitimise Alibaba’s push into in‑house AI accelerators, but faces manufacturing, software and competitive hurdles amid broader geopolitics over semiconductors.

Yushu Technology’s founder Wang Xingxing argued that the company or group that builds a large-scale AI model tailored to robots will become the leading global AI and robotics firm. The remark underscores a wider industry shift toward embodied, multimodal foundation models that fuse perception and action, but success requires massive embodied data, hardware–software integration and viable commercial deployments.

A candid 31‑minute video by former actor Li Yapeng about Yanran Angel Children’s Hospital’s unpaid rent reversed public opinion and triggered millions of yuan in donations and surge in livestream sales. The episode illuminated the power of transparency but underscored structural weaknesses in charity hospital financing and the risks of celebrity‑dependent philanthropy.

Li Auto is assessing the closure of some low‑efficiency retail stores after an aggressive multi‑year network build‑out, denying plans to close 100 outlets but confirming a targeted optimisation. The retrenchment follows a 19% fall in 2025 deliveries and recent quarterly losses, and accompanies a product and organisational reset aimed at restoring growth and margins amid fiercer competition in the range‑extended EV segment.

China’s 2026 Spring Festival Gala has become a focal point for AI platforms and robotics firms seeking to convert national TV reach into user habits and investor momentum. While tech companies flood the event with prizes and live demonstrations, traditional sponsors such as baijiu distillers have sharply reduced their presence, underscoring a broader commercial shift toward hard tech.

Helion Energy says its Polaris prototype reached 150 million °C, a milestone the company frames as a three‑quarters step toward temperatures it considers necessary for commercial fusion. The firm pursues an FRC design and direct magnetic‑to‑electric conversion, targets a 50 MW Orion plant for Microsoft by 2028, and faces significant technical and fuel‑supply challenges before true commercialization.

Energy Singularity’s HTS tokamak, Honghuang‑70, has achieved successive long‑pulse plasma runs — culminating in a 1,337‑second steady state — demonstrating engineering reliability in a privately built device. The results strengthen China’s private fusion push amid rising investment and new national law support, though net energy gain and reactor‑scale engineering remain unresolved challenges.

A public photograph confirms the J-15T carrier fighter is operationally paired with the supersonic YJ-15 anti-ship missile, signalling a meaningful upgrade in China's carrier-based strike capability. The combination enhances the PLA Navy's tactical ability to threaten large surface ships, while practical constraints and modern allied defenses temper its reach.

Inferact, founded by the creators of open‑source vLLM, raised $150 million in a seed round at an $800 million valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed. The deal signals strong investor conviction in companies that can commercialize efficient LLM inference, but Inferact will face competition from cloud providers and specialized rivals as it seeks to translate open‑source credibility into enterprise revenue.

An Israeli airstrike on Feb. 15 hit a vehicle near the Syrian border in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, killing at least four people. The IDF said it targeted Palestinian Islamic Jihad members in Majdal Anjar, a development that raises the risk of wider escalation in a fragile border zone.

China is effectively easing its "three red lines" deleveraging rules for property firms, with some developers no longer required to file monthly metrics. The move reflects a sector-wide shift from aggressive deleveraging to stabilisation, but analysts remain split on the timing and strength of any sustained recovery.

China's PCB industry is racing to capture a rising share of the booming low‑Earth‑orbit satellite market by investing in high‑frequency, high‑reliability boards and scaling production. Domestic firms have manufacturing scale and supply‑chain advantages, but still face certification and materials hurdles before they can fully capitalise on mass deployments.

Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi warns that the current memory-chip shortage, driven by heavy demand from AI data centres, is likely to last through 2026 and potentially into 2027. Concentrated production, long lead times for new fabs and booming demand for HBM mean elevated prices and allocation pressures may persist, benefiting memory suppliers but squeezing device makers and other industries.

Trump’s public manoeuvres over Greenland and a vague NATO “agreement framework” have prompted European pension funds to reduce U.S. Treasury holdings, exposing how geopolitical unpredictability can transmit into markets. The episode sits alongside fresh military tensions with Iran, commodity rallies and corporate guidance shocks, underlining a fragile intersection of politics, finance and strategic resources.

A livestream‑built Shenzhen gold retailer, Jieweirui, suspended withdrawals after leveraged, option‑style products it sold to retail customers blew up amid sharp rises in precious‑metal prices. The firm's unlicensed, high‑leverage mini‑program ecosystem created large asymmetric exposures and possible illegal fundraising, affecting investors across many provinces and threatening Shuibei’s reputation as a jewellery hub.

Tencent announced that Yuanbao has exceeded 50 million daily active users and 114 million monthly active users, reporting a strong engagement ratio. While the figures signal notable audience scale, their commercial significance hinges on monetisation, user composition, and regulatory constraints.

Paramount has amended its offer for Warner Bros. Discovery by adding a quarterly "timing fee" and offering to pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee if WBD’s deal with Netflix collapses, while keeping its $30 per‑share headline bid intact. The package is intended to provide cash certainty and a clearer regulatory route, but analysts caution it may not be enough to convince shareholders to abandon the larger Netflix proposal.

President Trump has set a roughly one‑month timeline for a U.S. deal with Iran, warning of severe consequences if talks fail. Iran says it received no direct U.S. message — only Omani notes — and both sides say they want to continue indirect negotiations while conducting internal consultations. The mix of public ultimatums, Israeli red lines and a stepped‑up U.S. military presence raises the risk that diplomatic pressure could harden stances or lead to escalation.

A family reunion at a remote border post in the Greater Khingan Range illustrates the human cost and symbolic power of China’s frontier defence. After a 40-hour journey, a soldier who has served 19 years met his wife and daughters at Triangular Mountain, a site steeped in local military memory and used by state media to underscore the virtue of sacrifice.

China’s NDRC and NEA have instructed provinces to strengthen capacity‑price mechanisms for coal, gas, pumped storage and new grid storage, mandating that capacity payments recover at least 50% of coal units’ fixed costs and establishing rules for reliable capacity compensation tied to spot market development. The package aims to stabilise dispatchable revenues, encourage storage participation in markets and support reliability as renewables expand, while requiring provincial assessments of consumer affordability and stricter performance oversight.

DeepSeek is testing a new long‑context model in its web and app interfaces that supports roughly one million tokens, while its public API remains limited to 128K token context on version 3.2. The trial highlights the commercial and technical trade‑offs involved in bringing ultra‑long context windows to production and signals intensifying competition in China’s AI landscape.

ByteDance has begun grey testing Seedance 2.0 in its Doubao app, allowing select users to generate short (4–15s) multimodal videos that use images, audio and text as references. The staged rollout, short-duration limits and quota system show a cautious path to embedding advanced generative video tools into ByteDance’s creator ecosystem while managing technical and policy risks.

Google has added Lyria 3, a music generation model, to its Gemini app enabling 30‑second songs from text or images and integrating with YouTube Shorts. The move raises competitive pressures on streaming platforms, offers new tools for creators, and revives questions about copyright, attribution and monetization of AI‑generated music.

Rapid advances in AI video tools have slashed production costs and unleashed a surge of short animated dramas in China, but oversupply has driven hit rates below 5% and forced the industry out of its early ‘easy‑money’ phase. The market is now shifting from volume to IP‑driven, platform‑bound business models, with interactive formats, overseas distribution and B2B brand work seen as the most promising routes to sustainable revenue.

The Geneva nuclear talks ended without agreement as US military deployments and Iranian naval drills hardened positions on both sides. Fundamental disagreements over Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, Israeli security demands, and the timing of sanctions relief mean the risk of escalation remains high unless negotiators find a politically credible compromise.

China’s 10,000‑ton destroyer Lhasa has adopted a ship‑wide anti‑unmanned warfare deployment, integrating sensors, electronic and kinetic defenses to counter drone swarms. The move signals a wider PLA Navy effort to harden surface ships against proliferating low‑cost unmanned threats that complicate maritime operations.

An online storm of donations for Li Yapeng’s Yanran hospital revealed a legal and structural divide: funds raised for the Yanran Angel Fund cannot legally pay the hospital’s rent because the fund and hospital are separate entities under Chinese charity law. The episode spotlights the limits of celebrity-driven philanthropy and the need for sustainable financing and clearer regulations for China’s non-profit medical sector.

NATO launched Steadfast Dagger‑2026, a large amphibious exercise on Germany’s Baltic coast involving about 10,000 troops from 13 countries, aimed at practising rapid reinforcement of the alliance’s eastern flank. The United States did not directly participate, highlighting growing European responsibility for regional deterrence and testing allied logistics and interoperability.

A steep Bitcoin sell‑off since late 2025 inflicted a $12.4 billion quarterly loss on MicroStrategy, revealing the fragility of a buy‑and‑hold strategy financed with equity and debt. The rout has pushed the company toward potential restructuring, altered corporate and investor behaviour across the crypto ecosystem, and undermined the narrative of Bitcoin as a reliable store of value.

Jinlang Technology and Tongguang Cable publicly denied involvement in supplying components for space-based photovoltaic systems, pushing back on market rumours. Their statements highlight the technical, commercial and regulatory gaps between terrestrial solar manufacturing and the nascent industry of space photovoltaics.

Canada has become the first non‑European participant in the EU’s large defence financing instrument, gaining access for its defence industry to European procurement supported by up to €150 billion in loans. The move deepens transatlantic industrial ties, signals a pragmatic streak in EU strategic autonomy, and raises questions about procurement, export controls and future partner participation.

NASA has moved its SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to Pad 39B in Florida, marking a key step ahead of Artemis 2—the first crewed Orion flight. The mission, a roughly ten-day free-return circumlunar test carrying three NASA astronauts and one Canadian, will validate life-support and integrated operations ahead of later, landing-focused missions.

Haiguang Information’s DCU has completed Day‑0 adaptation and joint fine‑tuning of Zhipu AI’s newly open‑sourced GLM‑5 model, using its DTK stack to optimise operators and hardware acceleration. The move highlights China’s push to pair domestic models with domestic compute, reducing reliance on foreign accelerators and accelerating production deployment.