45 h. ago Chinese delivery giant Meituan releases AI model to take on Alibaba, DeepSeek

On-demand local services giant Meituan has become the latest Chinese Big Tech company to release an open-source large language model (LLM) to market, more than two years after it acquired mainland AI start-up Light Year for US$281 million. Beijing-based Meituan, the long-standing leader of China’s food delivery market, on Monday released and open-sourced its own LLM, called LongCat-Flash-Chat, via artificial intelligence developer platforms Hugging Face and GitHub, as well as the model’s...

Politics

6 d. ago Chinese AI model developers seek fast commercial adoption as training costs fall

Open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models from China are seeing increased adoption across various industries, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan, as major developers step up the commercial application of their systems. Developers such as DeepSeek, Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu have shifted from pushing their models’ “extreme performance” towards prioritising usability, cost efficiency and broad ecosystem support to accelerate industry adoption, according to Neil Wang, global...

Culture

7 d. ago Chinese food delivery company Meituan's profit slides as competition intensifies

Chinese food delivery company Meituan's profit slides as competition intensifies  Reuters

Society

7 d. ago Meituan sales weaken, profit plummets amid ‘irrational’ delivery price war

Chinese on-demand local services giant Meituan saw second-quarter earnings fall, as it faced off against Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com in a costly instant delivery price war. Beijing-based Meituan on Wednesday reported weaker-than-expected revenue of 91.8 billion yuan (US$12.8 billion) in the quarter ended June 30. That was up 11.7 per cent from 82.2 billion yuan a year earlier, but fell short of the 93.7 billion yuan estimate by analysts. Net profit for the period tumbled 96.8 per cent to...

Economics

8 d. ago DeepSeek’s V3.1 model emerges as ‘key pillar’ for China’s chip self

DeepSeek’s recently released V3.1 AI model has unleashed fresh optimism about the prospects of mainland China developing advanced artificial intelligence semiconductors, according to analysts. The Hangzhou-based start-up’s updated model, which supports the innovative data format called UE8M0 FP8, was “ushering in a booming domestic computing power chain”, Huatai Securities analysts said in a research note on Tuesday. That architecture showed that the synergy between mainland-designed software...

Politics

1 week ago Tech war: DeepSeek hints China close to unveiling ‘next generation’ AI chips

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek said that China will soon have home-grown “next generation” chips for AI stacking, fanning speculation over breakthroughs China may have achieved. In a one-line note on its official WeChat account explaining the “UE8M0 FP8 scale” of its newly released model V3.1, the Hangzhou-based firm said that the model was particularly designed “for the home-grown chips to be released soon”. It did not specify the vendor of these chips or whether their use...

Events

1 week ago DeepSeek’s upgraded AI model absorbs reasoning feature in agentic shift

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek said on Thursday that its newly released V3.1 model supported both “think” and “non-think” modes, marking the firm’s “first step towards the agent era” – a shift that suggests a change in its research focus and and the possibility it would forgo the highly anticipated R2 reasoning model. The “think” mode on DeepSeek’s namesake chatbot was previously powered by its R1 reasoning model that garnered global attention after its release in January,...

Politics

1 week ago Chinese AI startup DeepSeek releases upgraded model with domestic chip support

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek releases upgraded model with domestic chip support  Reuters

Politics

2 w. ago DeepSeek’s V3.1 update sparks speculation over fate of next AI model

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has updated its foundational V3 model and removed references to its reasoning model R1 from its chatbot, prompting speculation about a shift in the company’s research focus. DeepSeek announced on Tuesday the release of the V3.1 model in a brief message to one of its WeChat user groups. The update expands the context window to 128k, allowing the model to hold more information – equivalent to a roughly 300-page book – during user interactions. The...

Politics

2 w. ago China’s DeepSeek Releases V3.1, Boosting AI Model’s Capabilities

China’s DeepSeek Releases V3.1, Boosting AI Model’s Capabilities  Bloomberg.com

Politics

2 w. ago Smoke grenades, live animals delivered to Hong Kong? How sellers evade crackdown

Smoke grenades, live animals and fresh meat are among the heavily regulated items readily available on mainland Chinese e-commerce sites for delivery to Hong Kong despite an official crackdown, the Post has found. Listings on Taobao and Pinduoduo have been subject to increased scrutiny following the arrest last month of a 13-year-old Hongkonger who allegedly bought smoke grenades online. Sources earlier said that the boy had bought the three smoke grenades for HK$92 (US$11.70) on Pinduoduo on...

Events

2 w. ago Speculation grows on DeepSeek’s next AI model after OpenAI’s GPT

China’s leading artificial intelligence start-up, DeepSeek, finds itself at the centre of speculation about the release of its next-generation R2 reasoning model, following OpenAI’s launch of its GPT-5 model last week. DeepSeek – which made waves in the industry with its V3 model in December and the R1 model in January – has not introduced major updates to its products in the past months, aside from two minor revisions. While the market had expected DeepSeek to introduce a new foundation model...

Politics

4 w. ago Alibaba unites online shopping, travel booking under new loyalty scheme

Alibaba Group Holding is set to launch a new membership programme spanning a range of services from an online marketplace to food delivery and travel booking, according to Chinese media reports and a person with knowledge of the matter, as the tech giant strives to recapture its leading position in China’s competitive e-commerce market. Alibaba’s e-commerce group, led by Jiang Fan, will provide members of Taobao – China’s largest online marketplace – with subsidised access to various other...

Economics