China - Maginative

China Robotics

Astribot S1 Shows off Impressive Capabilities in New Video

Chris McKay• August 20, 2024 • 2 min read

In the video, the Astribot S1 can be seen executing a variety of tasks, from household chores to delicate manual operations. For example, it effortlessly prepares a waffle, makes kung fu tea, shoots a basketball and plays the yangqin.

China Robotics

Zhiyuan Robotics Unveils Five New Humanoid Robots, Open-Source Plans, and Outlines Technology Roadmap

Chris McKay• August 20, 2024 • 4 min read

Zhiyuan aims to ship over 300 robots in 2024, including about 200 bipedal and 100 wheeled models. Mass production is slated to begin in October.

Robotics China

Unitree Launches Production Version of G1 Humanoid Robot

Chris McKay• August 19, 2024 • 3 min read

This version can perform even more complex actions such as spinning, navigating stairs, bouncing, and maintaining balance when pushed or stumbled.

China

Kuaishou Unveils Kling: A Text-to-Video Model To Challenge OpenAI's Sora

Chris McKay• June 6, 2024 • 3 min read

Kling uses a 3D spatio-temporal joint attention mechanism which enables it to effectively model complex movements, resulting in fluid and natural-looking motion in its generated content.

Robotics China

Meet Tiangong, China's First Full-Size Electric Running Humanoid Robot

Chris McKay• April 28, 2024 • 2 min read

It is equipped with advanced sensors, including a high-precision Inertial Measurement Unit capable of an impressive 550 trillion operations per second, 3D vision sensors, and six-axis force sensors for accurate force feedback.

China

China Unveils Vidu: A Powerful Text-to-Video Generator

Chris McKay• April 27, 2024 • 1 min read

Vidu is based on a Universal Vision Transformer architecture, which the company says allows it to simulate the real physical world with multi-camera view generation.

Robotics China

Stardust Intelligence's Impressive S1 Robot Demo Raises Eyebrows

Chris McKay• April 26, 2024 • 1 min read

If the claims made by Stardust Intelligence are indeed accurate, and the S1 robot's performance in the video demo is genuine, it would undoubtedly represent a significant leap forward in humanoid robotics.

China Alibaba Venture Capital Startups

Alibaba Leads $600 Million Funding Round for Chinese AI Firm MiniMax

Chris McKay• March 6, 2024 • 2 min read

If confirmed, the MiniMax deal would mark Alibaba's second major AI investment this year, following its lead role in a $1 billion funding round for Beijing-based Moonshot AI in February.

Venture Capital Startups China

Chinese AI Startup Moonshot Raises $1 Billion with $2.5 Billion Valuation

Chris McKay• February 22, 2024 • 2 min read

The company was founded less than a year ago (march 2023) by 31-year-old AI luminary Yang Zhilin, a Carnegie Mellon PhD graduate formerly with Google Brain and Meta AI.

AI Safety China

Beware: Multi-National Company Loses HK$200 Million in Elaborate Deepfake Scam

Chris McKay• February 4, 2024 • 2 min read

Posing as headquarters executives, they convinced the Hong Kong employees to make a series of large money transfers, claiming it was for a confidential corporate transaction.

China

China Approves 14 New AI Models for Commercial Use

Chris McKay• January 29, 2024 • 2 min read

This latest batch of approvals covers more specialized models catered to individual sectors compared to previous general-purpose AI systems.

China

Zhipu AI Unveils Next-Gen Foundation Model GLM-4, Claims Performance Comparable to GPT-4

Chris McKay• January 17, 2024 • 3 min read

GLM-4 supports a context length of 128k tokens (equivalent to about 300 pages of text), and the ability to maintain almost 100% accuracy even with extensive text lengths.

China Open Source

Chinese Startup DeepSeek Unveils Impressive New Open Source AI Models

Chris McKay• December 2, 2023 • 3 min read

DeepSeek LLM's 67B Base version has demonstrated superior performance compared to the Llama2 70B Base, particularly in areas like reasoning, coding, math, and Chinese comprehension.

Alibaba China

Alibaba Pilots Commerce-Focused AI Suite for its International Market

Chris McKay• November 6, 2023 • 2 min read

The pilot includes testing over 15 Aidge APIs with software partners. These span key commerce areas like consumer insights, content localization, marketing, design, and customer service.

China Venture Capital Startups

Chinese AI Startup 01.AI Reaches Unicorn Status with Open-Source Model Yi-34B

Chris McKay• November 5, 2023 • 2 min read

The brainchild of renowned computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee, 01.AI aims to develop AI systems tailored for the Chinese market.

Alibaba China

Alibaba Cloud Unveils Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 and Industry-Specific AI Models

Chris McKay• November 5, 2023 • 2 min read

The new model demonstrates remarkable capabilities in understanding complex instructions, copywriting, reasoning, memorizing, and preventing hallucinations.

China AI Tech

Baichuan Intelligent Unveils Baichuan2-192K Claiming New Breakthrough with Longest Context Model

Chris McKay• October 31, 2023 • 4 min read

The model can process around 350,000 Chinese characters at once. This vastly exceeds the previous benchmark of 75,000 English words set by Anthropic's Claude2 model earlier this year.

Venture Capital Startups China

Chinese Tech Giants Bet Big on AI Startup Zhipu in Heated Race With the US

Chris McKay• October 20, 2023 • 2 min read

The substantial funding from Chinese tech stalwarts reflects their eagerness to cultivate domestic alternatives at a time when advanced US AI firms are increasingly out of reach.

Geopolitics AI Tech China

U.S. Announces New Restrictions on China's Access to Advanced A.I. Chips

Chris McKay• October 17, 2023 • 2 min read

The rules expand on export controls first imposed in October 2022 and represent the latest move in an escalating tech standoff between the two superpowers.

China Venture Capital Startups

Chinese AI Startup Baichuan Joins Unicorn Club with $300 Million Funding from Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi

Chris McKay• October 17, 2023 • 2 min read

The fresh influx of capital sets a new record for the fastest rise to unicorn status among Chinese startups.

China AI Safety AI Policy

China Seeks Stricter Oversight of Generative AI with Proposed Data and Model Regulations

Chris McKay• October 14, 2023 • 3 min read

By emphasizing corpus safety, model security, and rigorous assessment, the regulation intends to ensure that the rise of AI in China is both innovative and secure—all while upholding its socialist principles.

Alibaba Open Source China

Alibaba Releases New Generative AI Capable of Complex Image Understanding and Dialog

Chris McKay• August 25, 2023 • 2 min read

The new models represent a significant step forward for multimodal AI that can process both visual and textual data in English and Chinese.

China Baidu

Baidu Unveils ERNIE Bot Updates and Major AI Advancements at Wave Summit 2023

Chris McKay• August 17, 2023 • 3 min read

The ERNIE Bot plugins, combined with the release of an array of innovative AI solutions underscore Baidu's pole position in pioneering AI advancement in China.

NVIDIA China

China's Tech Giants Rush to Buy $5B NVIDIA Chips for AI Ambitions

Chris McKay• August 9, 2023 • 2 min read

Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba are aggressively stockpiling GPUs in light of tighter U.S. export controls.