Beijing
China has made a massive move of barring central government officials from using iPhones at work, part of its grand plan to restrict foreign influence as its relationship with the…
With Beijing’s green light, mobility unicorns Zeekr and WeRide inch closer to US IPOs
Six months ago, China’s securities authority announced a set of new rules to facilitate overseas IPOs of Chinese companies, allowing Beijing to tighten its grip on businesses seeking to sell…
President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order barring U.S. investments in certain tech sectors of China, confirming months of rumors that Washington would ramp up efforts to squeeze…
The regulatory crackdown that has shaken up China’s fintech industry since late 2020 appears to be coming to a close with the imposition of hefty fines on the country’s two…
Hot on the heels of Elon Musk’s visit to China earlier this month, the country welcomed another American tech billionaire. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill…
As large language models from Western tech firms show the potential to disrupt everything from marketing to teaching to coding, China is rushing to cultivate its home-grown AI pioneers by…
News on Tencent and China Unicom caused a stir in China’s tech industry on Wednesday afternoon. The gaming and social networking behemoth and the state-owned carrier have received regulatory approval…
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‘The Merge’ could be good news for China’s Ethereum enthusiasts
When China banned cryptocurrency mining and trading, many saw it as putting an end to a burgeoning industry in the world’s second-largest economy. As it turned out, the country’s crypto investors, developers and hobbyists continue to play a critical role in building the backbone and applications of web3. The Merge, the…
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A huge Chinese database of faces and vehicle license plates spilled online
A massive Chinese database storing millions of faces and vehicle license plates was left exposed on the internet for months before it quietly disappeared in August. While its contents might seem unremarkable for China, where facial recognition is routine and state surveillance is ubiquitous, the sheer size of the exposed…
Zilliz, the startup behind the Milvus open source vector database for AI apps, raises $60M, relocates to SF
In 2020, Chinese startup Zilliz — which builds cloud-native software to process data for AI applications and unstructured data analytics, and is the creator of Milvus, the popular open source…
Oracle now monitoring TikTok’s algorithms and moderation system for manipulation by China’s government
Oracle has begun auditing TikTok’s algorithms and content moderation models, according to a new report from Axios out this morning. Those reviews began last week, and follow TikTok’s June announcement…
Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company valued at $8.5 billion as of late, has sued two former employees over alleged trade secret infringement. The lawsuit is arriving months after Frank…
There are plenty of autonomous driving vehicles testing on the roads of Shenzhen today: Pony.ai, Baidu, DeepRoute, AutoX, you name it. But these vehicles are not really the unmanned vehicles…
Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant that has plowed money into AI and autonomous vehicle technology, unveiled Wednesday a new all-electric robotaxi that it plans to deploy at scale across…
Didi, the Chinese ride-hailing behemoth that has undergone a year of regulatory overhaul, faces a fine of over 8 billion yuan ($1.28 billion) from the country’s authorities, The Wall Street…
Syrius Robotics, a Chinese startup that makes autonomous robots for warehouses, just secured 50 million yuan ($7.4 million) in a Series B funding round, lifting its total raised so far…
China’s Tesla challenger XPeng isn’t content with just making electric vehicles. It’s also betting on ridable robot unicorns for kids. XPeng Robotics, a bionic robot maker affiliated with XPeng, just…
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Despite crypto ban, China’s tech talent rides the global web3 wave
Despite China’s sweeping bans on cryptocurrencies, domestic web3 talent is quietly flourishing, with many venturing beyond the country’s border. From offering crypto derivative products to making NFT games, Chinese web3 entrepreneurs’ footprint is far-reaching worldwide. We spoke to a dozen Chinese founders and investors to find out how this group…
This Week in Apps: Period tracking app privacy, Snapchat’s paid subscription, calls for TikTok ban
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues…
Duolingo, the Nasdaq-listed language learning app, is back in China’s Apple App Store and Android stores nearly a year after it disappeared from the country’s app stores. Users in China…
Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi has voted to delist from the U.S. stock market, a long-expected result of Didi finding itself in hot water with the Chinese government after a troubled…
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, has gained regulatory approval to provide digital asset services in France, the first European country where it has acquired such permission, the…
Only four months after Deeproute.ai announced it planned to sell its self-driving solution at an attractive $10,000, the Shenzhen and Fremont-based startup said it has further slashed the cost by…
An ambitious Chinese startup wants a slice of the flourishing global work automation market. Laiye, a Beijing-based company that provides a one-stop platform for automating office tasks of varying degrees…
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Wrapped in red tape, China’s startups give up their mainland dreams
Like many ambitious Chinese who graduated college abroad during the 2010s and aspired to be the next Jack Ma or Pony Ma, Lucas returned to his motherland to build his own internet startup. Two years into running the business, however, his enthusiasm has waned. The regulatory risks and compliance costs…
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‘Always on and watching’: A former Xinjiang prisoner describes life inside China’s detention camps
For 10 months in 2018, Ovalbek Turdakun was a prisoner in one of China’s notorious detention camps, where he was tortured, subject to horrific conditions and under constant surveillance. In a makeshift courtroom inside the detention camp he was being held, Turdakun was not permitted to speak and was made…
Cocos Technologies, a China-based game engine provider that has been around since 2010, just announced it has picked up $50 million in a Series B funding round in a bid…
Tencent, the world’s largest video games company, said it will shutter its game streaming platform Penguin Esports by June due to “changes in business strategies.” Twitch-like Penguin Esports never achieved…
TikTok has once again delayed the timeline for opening its first data center in the European Union, in Dublin, Ireland — saying the facility is now not expected to be…
Yes, you read it correctly. The fast fashion e-commerce company that few in the tech industry had even heard of two years ago is aiming to raise $1 billion at…
