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China’s 2026 Spring Festival Gala became a de facto showcase for humanoid robotics, with four domestic firms presenting polished acrobatics, coordinated dance and domestic task demonstrations. The broadcast signalled that motion control and embodied intelligence are maturing, while shifting investor attention from hardware to the ‘brain’ — large embodied models and task‑general AI.

Zhipu Technology raised prices for its GLM Coding Plan and launched GLM-5 overseas on February 12, citing surging developer demand and the need for heavier investment in compute and model optimisation. The increase — 30% or higher domestically and substantially larger on overseas API pricing — marks a shift in China’s AI industry from low‑price competition to value-based monetisation.

ByteDance has started a limited rollout of Seedance 2.0, a next‑generation video‑generation model, inside its Doubao AI assistant app. The grayscale test lets select users try the new model while ByteDance evaluates performance and safety before a wider release, with implications for creators, platform engagement and regulatory oversight.

ByteDance has launched Doubao 2.0, a family of production‑oriented large models (Pro, Lite, Mini, and a Code variant) focused on efficient inference, multimodal ability and long‑chain task execution. The company claims strong benchmark performance versus rivals but faces scrutiny over IP and international review requests, highlighting the tension between rapid commercialisation and the need for independent validation and regulatory compliance.

Iran’s nuclear chief said Tehran can defend itself without nuclear weapons and warned the IAEA board may refer its nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council in March. The comments signal a diplomatic standoff in which Western capitals press for accountability while Iran stresses conventional deterrence and limited cooperation with safeguards.

Apple is reportedly preparing an iOS 26.4 developer beta the week of Feb 23 that will include parts of a new Siri, and plans a product event the week of Mar 2 unveiling an iPhone 17e, a new A18-powered entry iPad with Apple Intelligence, and an M4-upgraded iPad Air. The moves signal Apple’s strategy to push AI features and accessory monetisation into broader parts of its product line while maintaining competitive entry pricing.

Infineon’s CEO says humanoid robots represent a major growth opportunity that could boost revenues and stabilise margins for the Munich‑based chipmaker. Success will hinge on the company’s ability to win integrated design partnerships amid stiff global competition and uncertain adoption timelines.

Seedance 2.0, a Chinese generative video model, can produce hyper-realistic footage by integrating image, motion, audio and text, lowering the barriers to making sophisticated video. Its realism has sparked copyright backlash and deepfake concerns even as China’s large user base, open-source releases and supportive AI policy accelerate development and adoption.

The U.S. has approved a $9 billion sale of 730 PAC-3 MSE Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia and a separate $6.67 billion package to Israel that includes Apaches and JLTVs. Washington frames the transfers as defensive steps to protect forces and advance regional security, but the moves carry risks of prompting countermeasures and political scrutiny in Congress.

Israeli forces carried out a cross‑border raid into southern Lebanon on 9 February, detaining a Lebanese man described by the IDF as an ally of Hamas. The incident, and reported accompanying strikes that killed civilians, heighten tensions along the Israel‑Lebanon frontier and threaten the fragile ceasefire in place since late November.

Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief security adviser, said indirect talks with the United States continue and signalled that American engagement indicates a move toward pragmatism, while warning that Israel is trying to undermine the negotiations. Meeting Qatar’s leaders, Larijani said Iran has not received concrete US proposals and reiterated that an attack on Iran would bring retaliatory strikes on US bases in the region.

Apple has delayed and will stagger the rollout of major Siri AI features after internal tests exposed stability, accuracy and routing problems. Privacy constraints and underperforming in‑house models are slowing development, while some search and image features may still ship on schedule.

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.

Ahead of the Lunar New Year, Chinese cities and civic groups shipped regional foods, letters and supplies to border and coastal troops to boost morale and signal civilian support. The campaign blends cultural ritual with practical care, strengthening civil-military ties and demonstrating local administrative capacity to mobilise society for state objectives.

China’s central bank says the recent shift of household and corporate savings into asset-management products is reshaping the composition of bank funding rather than draining funds from the banking system. Most AMP assets are invested in fixed income and interbank deposits, meaning that much reallocated money ultimately remains within bank balance sheets when viewed on a consolidated basis.

Mark Gurman reports Apple will release the first iOS 26.4 developer beta the week of Feb 23 with partial Siri enhancements, followed by a hardware push the week of March 2. Planned devices include a $599 iPhone 17e with new chip and MagSafe tweaks, an entry iPad with A18 and Apple Intelligence, and an iPad Air upgraded to M4 silicon.

Apple will slash the 256GB iPhone Air price in China’s Tmall New Year festival from Rmb7,999 to Rmb5,499 through an official Rmb2,000 cut plus a national subsidy, part of broader discounts across its product range. The move highlights Apple’s tactical use of platform promotions to stimulate demand amid fierce competition from domestic rivals and a maturing smartphone market.

Xiaomi founder Lei Jun will livestream from the company's Beijing auto factory lab on February 1 at 8 p.m., a move that spotlights his personal backing of Xiaomi's electric-vehicle push. The broadcast aims to demonstrate production and engineering progress but also invites immediate scrutiny of Xiaomi’s readiness to scale in a fiercely competitive EV market.

China has tightened crypto regulation by banning onshore tokenisation of real-world assets and forbidding domestic parties from issuing RMB-pegged stablecoins overseas. The twin actions aim to curb disguised fundraising, clarify legal ties between tokens and underlying assets, block cross-border regulatory arbitrage, and steer activity into sanctioned, supervised channels.

Zhipu AI released GLM‑5 as open source on Feb. 11, and Haiguang DCU completed Day‑0 adaptation and joint fine‑tuning to provide immediate, deployable solutions for developers and enterprises. The move highlights accelerating integration between Chinese model creators and infrastructure providers, shortening the path from research release to commercial use.

A recent sharp sell‑off wiped about $381 billion off Microsoft’s market value after Azure growth showed signs of slowing and the company flagged more than $100 billion of capital spending for the year. The market reaction underscores a broader investor scepticism about whether massive AI‑related investments across big tech will be monetised, shifting the emphasis from spending to demonstrable returns.

Oracle intends to raise $45–50 billion in 2026 through equity-linked securities, common stock and a senior bond to expand cloud capacity for large AI customers including OpenAI. The move highlights the enormous capital required for AI-scale data centres and has intensified investor concerns about returns, credit risk and the feasibility of the company’s expansion plans.

A data-entry error at South Korean exchange Bithumb mistakenly credited 620,000 BTC to prize winners, prompting immediate sell orders that caused a 17% intraday price drop. The exchange says it recovered 99.7% of the coins and will compensate customers harmed by the forced selling, while regulators have opened reviews of exchanges’ internal controls.

ByteDance has begun grey testing Seedance 2.0 in its Doubao app, allowing select users to generate short (4–15s) multimodal videos that use images, audio and text as references. The staged rollout, short-duration limits and quota system show a cautious path to embedding advanced generative video tools into ByteDance’s creator ecosystem while managing technical and policy risks.

Chinese authorities released footage showing a Philippine Coast Guard vessel discarding an unidentified object near the Spratly Islands on Feb. 16, a small incident that nevertheless amplifies tensions in the contested South China Sea. The episode highlights how filmed encounters and the deployment of equipment at sea serve as instruments of strategic signaling between Manila and Beijing.

The CCP Politburo, chaired by Xi Jinping, reviewed and approved 2026 work plans for five major party‑led state organs and the Central Secretariat, praising their 2025 performance and demanding strict implementation of the party centre’s directives. The meeting frames 2026 as the start of the 15th Five‑Year Plan and emphasises political unity, disciplined party governance and a stability‑first approach to economic and institutional priorities.

China’s finance ministry has outlined a 2026 fiscal strategy that raises the overall spending envelope while reallocating funds toward consumption, social services and high‑impact projects. The plan marries a larger deficit and bond issuance with zero‑base budgeting, better performance management and reforms to transfer payments and tax preferences to boost domestic demand and sustain growth.

China ended 2025 with 5% GDP growth and its economy topping RMB 140 trillion. For 2026 economists expect coordinated fiscal and targeted monetary easing to prioritise domestic demand, with consumption and services leading a structural shift toward technology-driven growth.

Kweichow Moutai’s stock rallied after the company expanded direct sales of its flagship Feitian product and implemented more flexible pricing, pushing its market value to about ¥1.94 trillion and lifting consumer sectors. The move has sharpened investor perceptions of Moutai as a consumption bellwether, even as precious metals saw a sharp, leverage‑driven pullback.

ByteDance has declared its 2026 priority: make the Doubao/Dola AI assistant the central interface that links its consumer apps and cloud services. The company has scaled user adoption rapidly, advanced its model capabilities and pushed into phone‑level automation, but now faces fierce competition from Alibaba and Tencent, regulatory scrutiny, and practical permission barriers from other app and device owners.

U.S. stock indexes opened higher while Amazon tumbled over 9% after announcing a $200 billion capital expenditure plan, triggering investor concern. Storage suppliers such as SanDisk and Western Digital gained on expectations of increased demand from cloud and data-centre expansion.

An F-35C from the USS Abraham Lincoln shot down an Iranian drone about 500 miles off Iran’s coast, a move the U.S. called defensive and Iran described as a reconnaissance aircraft that lost contact after transmitting images. The incident exposes limits in carrier stealth, demonstrates Iran’s surveillance reach, and raises the risk of inadvertent escalation amid rising regional military activity and arms transfers.

Big U.S. tech companies plan roughly $660 billion of AI-related capital spending in 2026, triggering a sharp market sell-off despite strong revenue growth. Investors worry the large, front-loaded investments will lengthen return timelines and concentrate risk, while Apple’s lower-spend, partnership-led approach has been rewarded.

January 2026 saw 4.92 million new A‑share accounts opened — the most in any month of 2025 and the fifth‑highest monthly total on record — coinciding with record turnover and positive index performance. While the surge and strong liquidity support a medium‑term ‘‘slow bull’’ case, seasonal funding pressures and margin rule changes created a late‑month pullback that highlights ongoing volatility risks.

China’s Foreign Ministry highlighted a Chamber of Commerce survey and robust GDP figures to argue that US firms’ success in China proves mutual benefits from engagement. Beijing framed 2026 as the start of a new five‑year cycle of growth and invited foreign companies to seize opportunities, positioning economic ties as a stabilizing force amid geopolitical tensions.

Xibei founder Jia Guolong said he will stop cultivating a personal brand and return to frontline operations as the group forecasts more than RMB 600 million in losses and prepares to close about 30% of its stores. New investors have increased the company's registered capital modestly, signalling both concern and continued faith in the chain’s underlying assets.

Iran’s IRGC conducted the main phase of naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz on 17 February 2026, with commanders asserting the ability to close the waterway quickly if required. The move underscores a persistent vulnerability for global energy shipments and raises the prospect of heightened naval deployments, insurance costs, and diplomatic friction.

During the Lunar New Year, Tencent, ByteDance and other Chinese tech firms launched a wave of AI‑branded giveaways and UI changes to drive engagement. From gold‑coloured WeChat Moments and ten‑thousand‑yuan vouchers to hourly red‑packet rains and gala‑tie‑in prizes, companies are using festive incentives to rebuild user habits and showcase AI features.

A firm reported buying 2,486 bitcoins for about $168.4 million, bringing its holdings to 717,131 BTC with a total spend of roughly $54.52 billion and an average cost of $76,027 per coin. The move underscores growing corporate adoption of bitcoin but raises questions about market concentration, accounting, and financing risks.

Haidilao’s founder Zhang Yong has returned as CEO after four years amid a sharp deterioration in traffic and profitability: first‑half 2025 revenue fell 3.7% and net profit 13.7%, with customer visits down 10 million. The chain’s high labour costs, failed expansion, and mixed results from incubated sub‑brands have left it vulnerable to increasingly price‑sensitive young consumers, forcing a management rethink on efficiency and product strategy.

A partisan standoff over federal immigration enforcement has left the Department of Homeland Security without a full appropriation as Congress goes into recess, creating the first DHS shutdown. Essential staff will keep working unpaid, but prolonged funding gaps could disrupt TSA screening, FEMA response, the Coast Guard and Secret Service duties, and revive memories of last year’s debilitating federal shutdown.

Major Chinese provinces have trimmed their 2026 GDP growth targets, with six of the top ten lowering their goals and Guangdong setting its target below 5% for the first time since 2000. Analysts see the moves as a realistic response to structural limits, debt adjustment and a policy tilt toward quality over quantity, raising the likelihood of a national target in the 4.5–5% range.

Yushu Technology’s founder Wang Xingxing argued that the company or group that builds a large-scale AI model tailored to robots will become the leading global AI and robotics firm. The remark underscores a wider industry shift toward embodied, multimodal foundation models that fuse perception and action, but success requires massive embodied data, hardware–software integration and viable commercial deployments.

China says the ChuanYue‑1 test cabin has successfully validated a landing buffer system intended to protect crews and equipment during touchdown. The verification is an important safety milestone that reduces program risk but does not yet constitute a fully certified crewed spacecraft.

The US has increased its Middle East naval presence to at least ten warships with the destroyer Delbert D. Black joining the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. Movements of CV‑22 Ospreys and HC‑130J rescue aircraft suggest preparations for contingencies, raising the risk of escalation with Iran and pressure on regional security and global energy markets.

A recent Chinese-language article claims commercial Chinese satellites have captured and publicized U.S. military movements amid a U.S.–Iran standoff, intensifying the information war around the crisis. The piece argues that visible U.S. deployments may be more about signaling than sufficient force for a sustained strike, while Iran deepens ties with Russia to deter action and raise the costs of escalation.

China’s central government has made rural consumption and NEV adoption a policy priority while issuing stricter rules on automotive data leaving the country. Complementary municipal support in Shanghai and robust private financing in autonomy and supply-chain contracts signal expanding demand and deepening domestic capabilities, even as data governance raises compliance costs for foreign firms.

At Davos President Trump said Greenland is a U.S. "core national-security interest" and implied he would prioritise speaking with a NATO official over Denmark's foreign minister after Copenhagen refused to discuss selling Greenland. The exchange has prompted Danish rebukes, emergency EU consultations and renewed attention to Arctic geopolitics and alliance cohesion.

Tencent announced that Yuanbao has exceeded 50 million daily active users and 114 million monthly active users, reporting a strong engagement ratio. While the figures signal notable audience scale, their commercial significance hinges on monetisation, user composition, and regulatory constraints.

Bitcoin rose above $68,000 with a modest intraday gain of 0.85%, a small rebound following recent volatility that saw it trade below $67,000. The move reflects the market’s sensitivity to ETF flows, derivatives positioning and macro risk sentiment rather than a decisive structural shift.