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Dora Zhang

Editor covering China's business and technology, focused on AI, electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and robotics, tracking industry developments, innovation, and market dynamics.

China’s AgiPhant Raises Nearly RMB 10M to Build the Neural Interface Layer for Embodied AI

Shanghai startup AgiPhant has closed an angel round of nearly RMB 10 million (approximately US$1.39 million), betting that the wrist — not the skull — is the most commercially viable entry point into human-machine interaction for the next generation of AI hardware. The June 2026 round was led by

China's Auto Market Share Slips to 31% as Emerging Markets Seize Momentum

Beijing's dominance in global auto sales is showing its first meaningful cracks in six years, with China's world market share sliding 4.2 percentage points to 31.2% in the first five months of 2026 — a structural warning signal that analysts say reflects suppressed entry-level

China’s Embodied AI Startup X Square Robot Hits RMB 20B Valuation on “Brain-First” Bet

Completing three undisclosed funding rounds in just two months, X Square Robot has crossed a RMB 20 billion (US$2.78 billion) post-money valuation — making it the first and only embodied intelligence company in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to clear that threshold, and crystallizing a

AGIBOT Rolls Out 15,000th Unit of Humanoid Robot, Marking New Scale Milestone

AGIBOT announced Sunday that it has completed mass production of its 15,000th Jiling G2 general-purpose embodied robot, marking the latest output milestone for one of China's most closely watched humanoid robotics companies. The rollout underscores an accelerating production cadence at AGIBOT. The company delivered its 5,

DeepSeek’s DSpark Shifts AI Competition From Model Scale to Inference Economics

Co-authored by founder Liang Wenfeng, the open-sourced framework delivers up to 85% per-user speed gains on live production traffic — signaling a strategic pivot from parameter races to compute economics just weeks after a RMB 50 billion fundraise. DeepSeek, in collaboration with Peking University, published a research paper

ChinaBiz Briefing | LineShine Tops TOP500, China Shapes UN AV Rules, CATL's Battery Pivot

China's technology and industrial sectors delivered a cluster of structurally significant signals on June 26: a domestically built supercomputer reclaimed the world's top computing rank, ByteDance's AI ambitions collided with brutal unit economics, and Li Auto made a high-stakes bet to escape a

Kimi Takes on OpenAI as Overseas Revenue Surges 400%, AWS Ties Deepen

Moonshot AI's lean 300-person team is betting that frontier model capability — not enterprise headcount — will determine who wins the global AI race. Moonshot AI, the three-year-old Beijing-based large language model startup behind the Kimi assistant, disclosed at the Amazon Web Services China Summit on

Li Auto Abandons the Market It Created, Betting a Five-Seat Pivot Can Restore Margins

The Chinese EV maker is repricing its entire L-series lineup — pushing the new L8 up to RMB 370,000–430,000 (US$51,400–59,700) and the L7 below RMB 300,000 — in a high-stakes attempt to escape a margin trap of its own making, even as

Seres’ 60% Stock Rout: Can the Huawei-Backed EV Maker Stand Alone?

Seres Group's A-share stock has shed more than 60% from its September 2025 peak, exposing a structural tension between surging revenue and collapsing core profitability—raising urgent questions about whether the automaker can sustain its premium valuation without Huawei exclusivity. Shares of Seres hit a fresh 60-

ByteDance's AI Engine Captures Half of China's MaaS Market — But the Unit Economics Are Bleeding

Volcano Engine's token dominance masks a deepening cost crisis: Doubao generates under RMB 1 million daily while consuming tens of millions in compute, forcing ByteDance to bet RMB 200 billion on a monetization race it has yet to win. ByteDance has quietly seized control of China's