Technology News
Latest technology news and updates
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Alibaba Readies Spin‑off of 'Pingtouge' AI‑Chip Unit as Investors Flock to a New China AI‑IPOs Wave
Alibaba is preparing to spin off its Pingtouge AI‑chip unit and explore an IPO after years of quiet development, a move that lifted Alibaba’s share price sharply. The reorganisation—creating a partly employee‑owned entity—would strengthen Alibaba’s AI stack and feed investor appetite for China’s domestic alternatives to Western accelerators, though production scale, valuations and regulatory risks remain key uncertainties.

Musk at Davos: China Holds the Key to Powering an AI Future as Tesla Counts Down to FSD and Optimus Sales
At Davos, Elon Musk argued that electricity — not chips — will be the binding constraint on large-scale AI and robot deployment, praising China’s massive solar build-out as the practical remedy. He set aggressive timelines for RoboTaxis, FSD regulatory approvals in Europe and China, Optimus humanoid sales by late 2027, and space-based AI data centres enabled by fully reusable Starship launches.

TikTok Survives US Crackdown by Keeping Its Algorithm and Carving Out a US Data Guardrail
TikTok has set up a US data‑security joint venture and preserved its core algorithm IP by licensing it, while ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake in the new entity and full ownership of US commercial operations. The deal secures the app’s presence in America, attracts major American and global investors, and establishes a template for managing tech‑national security tensions without dismantling the business.

China’s Kimi Says Algorithmic Ingenuity, Not Massive Compute, Powered Its Leap — and the AI Race May Be Changing
At Davos, Kimi’s leadership said it achieved state‑of‑the‑art results with its K2 series while using a fraction of the compute typical of leading US labs, crediting deep algorithmic and engineering innovation. The company plans to use fresh capital to expand hardware for a next‑generation K3 model, underscoring a broader Chinese push to compete via efficiency rather than brute‑force compute.

JD.com Bets on an AI Consumer Boom: 2025 Named the Year Smart Products Exploded
JD.com executives said 2025 marked a breakout year for AI consumption, with platform searches for “AI” up about 100x and sharp sales gains across smart devices. The company is consolidating AI products under a new business arm, investing in embodied-intelligence firms and leaning on a C2M supply-chain approach to scale consumer AI rapidly.

Musk Warns AI Growth Will Run Up Against Power Limits — and Plans Solar AI Satellites
Elon Musk cautioned that electricity supply, not chip inventory, may soon cap AI deployment, predicting that chip output could exceed the number of units actually powered. He also proposed launching solar-powered AI satellites with SpaceX in the coming years as a way to sidestep terrestrial power constraints.

Musk Hints Tesla Will Try Selling Humanoid Robot to Consumers by End of Next Year — But Timetables and Technical Hurdles Persist
At Davos, Elon Musk said Tesla may start selling its humanoid robot Optimus to consumers by the end of next year, while predicting more complex capabilities by the end of 2026. The remarks sharpen an ambitious timetable but leave open significant technical, production and regulatory questions; early deployments are likely to target controlled industrial settings before any mass consumer rollout.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard Flies Six on Another Brief Suborbital Joyride — A Small But Persistent Chapter in Commercial Space Tourism
Blue Origin’s New Shepard completed a crewed suborbital flight on 22 January, carrying six passengers for about ten minutes of microgravity. The mission underscores steady demand for short, commercial space experiences and highlights the company’s role in the maturing suborbital tourism market amid competition and regulatory scrutiny.

China’s Unitree Says It Shipped Over 5,500 Humanoid Robots in 2025, Signalling a Shift to Mass Market Scale
Unitree Technology said it shipped over 5,500 pure humanoid robots in 2025 and produced more than 6,500 robot bodies, clarifying earlier online confusion. The disclosure, if borne out, signals a shift in robotics from proof-of-concept demos toward mass production, but questions remain about verification, commercial viability and post-sale support.

Chinese AI-Compute Upstart Suiyuan Clears STAR Market IPO Hurdle, Seeks Rmb6bn to Build Homegrown GPU Stack
Shanghai Suiyuan Technology’s STAR Market IPO has been accepted as it seeks Rmb6 billion to scale AI accelerator cards, clusters and integrated solutions. Backed by Tencent and state-affiliated investors, the company sits at the intersection of China’s push for domestic AI compute capacity and growing demand for alternatives to Western GPUs.

Alibaba to Float T‑Head Chip Unit as AI Hardware Ambitions Boost Shares
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.

Alibaba Open‑Sources Qwen3‑TTS, Bringing Multilingual Voice Cloning to Developers
Alibaba’s Qwen team has open‑sourced Qwen3‑TTS, a family of text‑to‑speech models in 1.7B and 0.6B sizes supporting voice cloning and multilingual, dialect‑aware synthesis. The release aims to broaden developer access and accelerate voice applications while raising urgent questions about misuse, detection and governance.