DeepSeek reportedly in talks to raise $1.5B, then IPO

DeepSeek, the Chinese large language model developer, is said to be preparing for a 2027 IPO debut as it also looks to raise around $1.5 billion in new funds at a $71 billion valuation.

‘Listing is a must’: China’s LimX raises $200m as the humanoid IPO race heats up
‘Listing is a must’: China’s LimX raises $200m as the humanoid IPO race heats up

China’s humanoid gold rush just minted another contender. LimX Dynamics has raised $200m at a $2.21bn valuation. And its founder says the race to list has become do-or-die. A Shenzhen humanoid startup has become the latest name in China’s robot boom to…

Seoul court suspends the order making Coupang’s founder its controlling person
Seoul court suspends the order making Coupang’s founder its controlling person

Coupang has won the first round of its fight with South Korea’s competition regulator. The Seoul High Court on Tuesday suspended the Fair Trade Commission’s decision to name founder Bom Kim as the e-commerce group’s controlling figure, freezing the dis…

China smartphone shipments fall for a fifth quarter as memory costs bite
China smartphone shipments fall for a fifth quarter as memory costs bite

For the fifth quarter running, fewer phones left Chinese warehouses than a year earlier. Shipments fell 4.3% to 66 million units in the second quarter, according to figures published on Tuesday by IDC, as manufacturers raised prices to cover the rising…

Decoupling from China would cost the West $23.6tn
Decoupling from China would cost the West $23.6tn

Cutting the West’s reliance on China would carry a staggering price. A new study puts the cost of decoupling from China at $23.6tn over 25 years, and warns the bill would land hardest on the industries building Europe’s tech future. The West has spent …

A $5M startup claims rare earth-free electric motor breakthrough
A $5M startup claims rare earth-free electric motor breakthrough

A Bengaluru startup called Vimag Labs just secured its fifth Indian patent for an electric motor that runs without any rare-earth magnets, using software and power electronics to generate its magnetic field instead.
It’s a small, $5-million company tak…

Shein is set for its Hong Kong listing hearing on Thursday
Shein is set for its Hong Kong listing hearing on Thursday

Shein is scheduled to face the Hong Kong stock exchange’s listing committee on Thursday, Reuters reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. It is the final procedural gate before the fast-fashion group, which has spent three years and …

Xi Jinping will give the keynote at China’s flagship AI summit for the first time
Xi Jinping will give the keynote at China’s flagship AI summit for the first time

Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai and deliver a keynote speech, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson announced on Monday. It is the first time China’s leader has appeared at …

Zhipu’s founder says frontier AI should stay open to everyone. His own government may disagree.
Zhipu’s founder says frontier AI should stay open to everyone. His own government may disagree.

The founder of China’s most prominent AI lab has made an unambiguous case for openness. Frontier AI should stay broadly accessible rather than controlled by a select few, Zhipu’s Tang Jie wrote in an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg. His argument in…

Chinese developers are climbing the firewall to pay more for GPT-5.6, and doing the maths on why
Chinese developers are climbing the firewall to pay more for GPT-5.6, and doing the maths on why

OpenAI’s new GPT-5.6 models are winning praise from an unlikely group. Users in mainland China, where the service is blocked and reachable only by VPN or third-party proxy, told the South China Morning Post the models are worth the extra cost. That is …