Technology News
Latest technology news and updates
Total: 297

From Books to Models: Shanghai Scholar Urges Humanities to Supply Quality Data and Embrace AI-Age Reform
Meng Zhongjie, president of Shanghai International Studies University and a Shanghai people's congress deputy, urged humanities scholars to prepare high-quality corpora and actively collaborate with AI as part of a broader disciplinary transformation. His call highlights both an opportunity to shape Chinese-language AI and a tension between instrumental collaboration and preservation of critical scholarship.

From a $100bn Promise to a $20bn Reality: Why Nvidia and OpenAI Are Choosing Caution Over Romance
Nvidia and OpenAI have publicly reaffirmed their partnership after reports that a previously announced $100 billion‑scale LOI had stalled. Sources now say Nvidia is likely to commit about $20 billion in the current financing round, signalling a shift from aspirational headlines to staged, pragmatic investments amid a tight AI hardware supply environment.

WeChat Blocks Viral Red‑Packet Links as Tencent Cracks Down on Incentivised Sharing
Tencent limited the ability to open Yuanbao red‑packet campaign links directly in WeChat after user complaints that the promotion used task‑based incentives to induce high‑frequency sharing in group chats. Citing its external link rules against share inducements, Tencent moved to restrict the links while Yuanbao says it is urgently revising its sharing mechanism.

Turkey Opens Fresh Antitrust Probe into Google’s Android Deals, Targeting ‘Optional’ Contracts and Anti‑Fork Rules
Turkey’s competition authority has launched an investigation into Google’s mobile contracts, alleging the company uses financial incentives and contractual clauses to maintain the default status of its search and browser apps. The probe will assess whether new contract structures and anti‑fork provisions let Google evade prior remedies and harm competition in the mobile ecosystem.

Kunlun Wanwei Unveils Skywork Desktop — an AI Agent That Runs Directly on Your PC
Kunlun Wanwei has launched Skywork Desktop, a desktop AI agent that runs locally and processes files on a user’s machine without uploading them to the cloud. The move reflects demand for privacy‑preserving, low‑latency AI but brings its own security and management challenges for organisations.

Smartphone Recovery Delayed Until Late 2027–Early 2028, Forcing OEMs to Trade Off Cost, Performance and Innovation
Counterpoint Research warns that the smartphone market will not normalise before late 2027 and could stretch into early 2028 as rising storage‑chip costs and weak demand squeeze margins. OEMs are responding by cutting models, delaying launches, optimising high‑end configurations and considering cloud offload to reduce hardware pressure.

Musk’s Space Data‑Centre Ambition Meets AWS’s Reality Check
Elon Musk and other tech leaders have promoted the idea of orbital data centres to solve terrestrial limits on AI compute. AWS chief Matt Garman and other experts argue the concept remains economically and technically impractical today, citing launch cadence, radiation, thermal management and maintenance challenges. The gap between headline visions and engineering reality suggests continued experimentation but little prospect of mass migration of hyperscale AI into orbit in the near term.

Alibaba’s Qianwen Open-Sources an 80B Coding Model Optimized for Agents and Local Development
Alibaba’s Qianwen has open‑sourced Qwen3‑Coder‑Next, an 80B parameter model designed for coding agents and local deployment that combines hybrid attention with MoE to lower inference costs. The release aims to accelerate enterprise adoption in China by enabling on‑premise use and customization, while raising questions about IP, safety and the infrastructure needed to realize claimed efficiency gains.

Fei‑Fei Li Says the Next AI Frontier Is Not Language but the World Itself
Fei‑Fei Li told the Cisco AI Summit that AI’s next major frontier is spatial intelligence: models that understand and simulate 3D physical space. Her company World Labs has produced Marble, a “world model” designed for persistent, physically consistent virtual environments with applications from robotics training to therapy, while cautioning that data scarcity and real‑world complexity make general‑purpose robots a distant prospect.

AMD Delivers Record 2025 but Tepid Q1 Guidance Sparks Sell‑Off — China Exports and AI Race Loom Large
AMD closed 2025 with record revenue and profit, driven by strong data‑centre and client CPU performance, but its Q1 2026 revenue guidance — a midpoint implying a small quarter‑on‑quarter decline — disappointed investors. Export restrictions on the MI308 product and limited visibility into future China sales added uncertainty, triggering a sharp after‑hours sell‑off despite management’s bullish long‑term growth targets.

Wenchang Poised for a Busy Year: Hainan Firm to Support Nearly 30 Launches in 2026
Hainan International Commercial Space Launch Company says Wenchang Aerospace Launch Support Co. will back nearly 30 launches in 2026, including maiden flights and new ground-workstations. The announcement highlights a significant ramp-up in China’s commercial launch activity, with implications for industry capacity, regional economics in Hainan, and global competition in satellite deployment.

China’s No.1 Document Puts AI at the Centre of a Push to Modernize Agriculture
China’s 2026 No.1 document elevates artificial intelligence as a central tool for agricultural modernization, pairing technical directives with institutional reforms to accelerate real‑world deployment of drones, IoT and robotics. The move aims to convert pilot successes into whole‑chain improvements in productivity, while creating market opportunities and testing the resilience of Chinese rural governance and financing models.