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Alice Ye

Senior editor with 15 years in news and financial media. Covers China's AI, electric vehicles, and robotics, with a focus on industry trends, technological innovation, and capital markets.

Baidu Takes DuMate Into 55 Million Homes as the AI Agent Race Moves to Hardware

Baidu is embedding its flagship AI agent directly into consumer hardware, using its Xiaodu smart device ecosystem to plant DuMate inside more than 55 million Chinese households — a strategic maneuver that reframes the AI competition from cloud-based user metrics to physical-world penetration. At the Baidu AIDAY·2026 Xiaodu

XPeng Takes Humanoid Robots From Prototype to Production With an 80%-Automated Line

0:00 /2:27 1× XPeng activated its dedicated humanoid robot production line on September 8, becoming the first Chinese automaker to complete a full "R&D-to-mass-production" cycle for a general-purpose humanoid robot — a milestone that shifts the industry's competitive axis

Li Auto Bets RMB 2.65 Billion on Battery Independence, Reshaping Its CATL Dependency

Li Auto is executing a calculated pivot away from commodity battery procurement, investing RMB 2.65 billion (US$368 million) into Sunwoda EVB while simultaneously rolling out proprietary 5C battery technology across its entire vehicle lineup — a dual move that signals the company is building industrial-grade supply chain control,

DeepSeek's $2.56B Huawei Chip Order Exposes China's AI Infrastructure Inflection Point

A single purchase order for 160,000 Ascend 950DT chips signals that China's AI compute stack has permanently bifurcated from the West—and that Huawei Technologies is now the sole credible supplier at scale. Bloomberg reported on September 4, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter, that DeepSeek

Insta360 Pays the Price for Taking on DJI: Profit Collapses 94% as Drone War Turns Attrition

A blitzkrieg against the world's dominant drone maker has left Insta360 with a hollowed-out balance sheet, a stock down 71% in twelve months, and a strategic crossroads that will define the next era of China's action-camera industry. Insta360 Innovation, the Shenzhen-based maker of

ByteDance Secures $29.6B Loan, Doubling Down on AI Infrastructure War Chest

The 50% oversubscription on Asia's second-largest dollar loan of 2026 signals that global banks are betting ByteDance's AI ambitions—and its cash machine—will outlast geopolitical headwinds. ByteDance, the world's most valuable private technology company, has closed a $29.6 billion three-year

The US-China AI Race: Chips, Models, Value Capture and Three Ways to Win

The real competition spans chips, infrastructure, data control, and applications — and the scorecard looks different depending on whether you're a company, a government, or an individual. What Is This Really About? Most coverage of the US-China AI rivalry focuses on benchmark scores and model releases. That framing

Enflame Technology's IPO Exposes the Fault Lines of China's Domestic GPU Race

A chip startup burning RMB 4.3 billion (US$597 million) over eight years, generating 83% of its revenue from a single shareholder-customer, and holding just 1.7% market share is now asking China's public markets to fund its next act — and the terms of that bet

China’s AI Office Race Is Becoming a Test of Enterprise Monetization

A five-month sprint by ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu to dominate AI-powered workplace software masks a deeper commercial imperative: converting runaway AI infrastructure losses into recurring enterprise revenue before shareholders demand accountability. The convergence became unmistakable in the final week of August 2026. On Aug. 25, ByteDance formally

BYD and CATL Race to Lock Up China's EV Charging Grid Before the Window Closes

China's two largest new-energy vehicle and battery companies are spending aggressively to build rival charging and battery-swap networks, betting that whoever controls the energy infrastructure will dictate the next phase of EV market-share gains at the expense of internal-combustion holdouts. BYD crossed 10,000