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Start-ups
Articles about early-stage companies; pre-IPO, including those still being funded by angel investors, private equity or venture capitalists.
Unitree Robotics founder and CEO Wang Xingxing stands beside one of the firm’s G1 humanoid robots in January. Photo: Unitree
Robotics

Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree sees significant delivery growth in 2025

CEO Wang Xingxing says China’s humanoid robots have caught the world’s attention, signalling a potentially vast market for the sector.

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Artificial intelligence

Manus AI lays off China staff, scrubs social media, shelves mainland service

US-China trade war

What if Chinese, US firms make humanoid robots together? CEO calls for a collab

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Robotics

Robot makers AgiBot, Unitree, UBTech land more orders from Chinese enterprises

A subsidiary of China Mobile has ordered US$17.3 million worth of humanoid robots from AgiBot and Unitree.

A robot from UBTech on display at the 137th Canton Fair in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, in April. Photo: Edmond So
Artificial intelligence

OpenAI delays its first open-source AI model challenging DeepSeek

Founder and CEO Sam Altman says the release will be indefinitely delayed for additional safety tests.

United States

Musk’s xAI apologises after Grok chatbot praises Hitler

The company blamed the offensive posts on a software update meant to make the artificial intelligence assistant act more like a human.

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Artificial intelligence

Chinese unicorn Moonshot launches AI model Kimi K2 in red-hot open-source market

Kimi K2 reflects a broader trend in the AI sector towards open-source development to improve efficiency and gain wider product adoption.

With its open-sourced Kimi K2 model, Moonshot is looking to gain fresh attention in the global AI market. Photo: Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence

Robinhood CEO raises US$100 million to build AI models for maths

Harmonic adopts a maths-first approach, which it hopes will make its model better at solving complicated problems than large language models.

American Samoa

US tech stocks remain top draw despite de-dollarisation trend, Swiss banks say

Swiss banks advise investors to keep US tech stocks as core holdings due to their innovation and strong earnings.

Robotics

Robot maker AgiBot seeks stake in Shanghai firm in potential back-door listing

The Tencent-backed start-up plans to acquire a controlling stake in Swancor Advanced Materials for US$279 million.

AgiBot’s acquisition plan reflects the growing need in China’s robotics industry to raise more funds, as a number of humanoid robot makers aim for mass production this year. Photo: AFP
Hong Kong innovators

Hong Kong start-up wins EQT Impact Challenge with precision surgical system

Syngular Technology tops 200 hopefuls to secure €100,000 (US$117,000) investment in pitch competition organised in partnership with the Post.

Louis Sze (centre), CEO of Syngular Technology, receives first prize in the 2025 EQT Impact Challenge from EQT Asia’s chairperson Jean Eric Salata (right) and EQT Foundation’s investment lead Anjum Rangwala (left) in Hong Kong on July 10, 2025. Photo: SCMP
DeepSeek

Head of China’s state-owned firm regulator visits DeepSeek, Unitree

Zhang Yuzhuo says state-owned enterprises should learn from the agile innovation practices of private firms.

Artificial intelligence

Hong Kong’s IntelliGen AI takes on Google DeepMind in drug discovery

The start-up, which aims to raise tens of millions of US dollars in an angel funding round, hopes to compete globally, founder says.

Artificial intelligence

Elon Musk unveils xAI’s updated chatbot, Grok 4, after antisemitism controversy

The world’s wealthiest person says Grok 4 is ‘smarter than almost all graduate students, in all disciplines, simultaneously’.

“At times it may lack common sense,” Elon Musk says of Grok 4, the latest iteration of start-up xAI’s chatbot. Photo: Vincent Feuray/Hans Lucas/AFP
United States

Musk’s AI company scrubs posts after Grok chatbot makes antisemitic remarks

The incident, which included praise for Hitler, adds to a string of controversies for Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI.

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Grok AI, developed by Musk’s xAI, faced backlash for antisemitic remarks on X, prompting efforts to remove offensive content and ban hate speech. Photo: AFP
Artificial intelligence

Chinese start-up Manus AI relocates to Singapore amid US chip curbs

Manus AI has begun recruiting in the city state, offering positions such as data analyst and AI agent engineer.

Artificial intelligence

Hong Kong’s financial centre status gives it an edge in AI market, experts say

SenseTime chief financial officer Wang Zheng says ‘having easy access to capital is extremely important’ for AI companies.

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Robotics

Chinese start-up Mirror Me’s robot dog outpaces Boston Dynamics’ WildCat

Shanghai-based start-up’s Black Panther II robot dog achieves a top speed of 9.7 metres per second versus 8.8 metres per second for WildCat.

A four-legged robot developed by Mirror Me completed a distance of 100 metres in 13.17 seconds. Photo: Handout
DeepSeek

DeepSeek’s LinkedIn AI job listings show hunger for international Chinese talent

DeepSeek joins a global scramble for AI talent that includes the biggest players, from Meta and OpenAI to ByteDance and Alibaba.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba AI model-based agentic framework tops global ranking

DeepSWE, trained on the Qwen3-32B model, scored 59 per cent accuracy in the latest industry benchmark to outperform a DeepSeek-V3 variant.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba leads US$14 million funding round in Chinese AI agent start-up

AI agents, designed to perform specific tasks, are increasingly seen as the future of business automation.

AI agents are programs that are capable of autonomously performing tasks on behalf of a user or another system. Photo: Shutterstock Images
ByteDance

ByteDance pushes recruitment of fresh robotics talent as AI remains a priority

The new recruits are expected to work under ByteDance’s Seed department, which handles AI-related research and development initiatives.

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Recruitment of fresh robotics talent has become a new focus of social media giant ByteDance. Photo: Shutterstock
Icons and Influencers

Why In Lieu is sourcing ‘premium water’ from Henan’s mountains

In Lieu works with Hong Kong hotels, and organisations like Art Central and the Midnight Runners, but is inspired by the wider choice of water in the US where even Beyoncé and Jaden Smith have founded water businesses.

China technology

From Cambridge to Suzhou: a Chinese AI start-up’s journey to unicorn status

For AI Speech, swapping Britain for bustling Suzhou was key to propelling the company to a billion-dollar valuation.

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Hong Kong politics

Hong Kong leader taps 2 tech heads from Hangzhou’s ‘Little Dragons’ as advisers

Han Bicheng, CEO of BrainCo, and Wang Xingxing, head of Unitree Robotics, are among three new additions to John Lee’s advisory council.

Among the new advisers are Wang Xingxing (left), founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics, and Bicheng Han, founder and head of BrainCo. Photo: Handout
China economy

Opinion | China is taking Silicon Valley’s market ‘hacks’ to a whole new level

From ‘blitzscaling’ to leveraging network effects, China is using these same methods to dominate supply chain and disrupt markets.

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Companies and industrial hubs like Hangzhou are implementing a “whole of society” approach towards developing and deploying emerging technologies. Photo: Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence

Anthropic wins ruling on use of copyrighted books to train AI

A US judge rules that training AI on copyrighted books is fair use, but the downloading of pirated books is not.

DeepSeek

How DeepSeek founder’s doubt led serial entrepreneur to embrace his gift of gab

Founder of defunct smartphone brand Smartisan said DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng told him he was among the best in China at ‘earning a living by talking’.

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