Chinese

Chinese companies are designing their AI for an audience the West is ignoring: retirees

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We can adapt the title of that great Cohen film to AI: there is no AI for old people. The majority of AI chatbot users are young and the older ones usually have technical knowledge. The AI ​​boom, like other technological booms, is leaving out the older onesexcept in China. Hello, grandmother. They tell it in Nikkei Asia. Large Chinese technology companies such as ByteDance and Tencent are designing chatbots and apps with AI with older users in mind. Doubao, the most popular chatbot in China, has launched advertising campaigns targeting retirees, highlighting its accessible features; It allows you to converse by voice, understands dialects and even addresses users as grandfather or grandmother. According to data from China Internet Network Information Centerthe number of AI users between 50 and 59 years old represent 10% of the total and those over 60 years old only 5%. They are still a minority, but there is a curious fact and that is that, although the adoption rate in this group is much lower, the users who start using it are more loyal and use it frequently. Everyday help. In Nikkei they tell the story of Chen Bing, a 63-year-old woman who has made AI her personal assistant. He used it to organize an event with alumni of his school, from sharing expenses to generating a video that he used in the background of a poetry workshop. It also helps you identify flowers and read fine print. According to Chen, AI gives him independence and prevents him from having to constantly ask his children for help. And health. There are other AI proposals aimed at the elderly, such as Ant Afu, a health chatbot with which users can get advice and access health services. However, it has generated criticism, first of all due to possible conflicts of interest. In the past, there was a scandal because Baidu recommended hospitals and treatments based on paid advertisements and there are doubts that this system has similar influences. On the other hand, there is the question that AI continues to fail a lot in diagnosis. The silver economy. It is what the market for products and services aimed at older people is called in China. China already has 323 million retirees and the government is promoting these types of initiatives since it sees great potential for consumption by the elderly, something they need to encourage in the midst of an economic recession. It is estimated that by 2035, the silver economy will account for 10% of the country’s entire gross domestic product Aging population. It is one of the problems facing China today. The government is trying literally everything for stimulate birth (without much successby the way) and have also raised raise the retirement age. However, the aging of the population is not something exclusive to China, it is also a problem that Europe and more countries in the northern hemisphere We have been dragging on for a long time. In the European Union there are some initiatives such as digital literacy courses for seniorsbut at the private company level, the proposals are very niche. In Xataka | China knows that its population is going to collapse but it already has a long-term plan to solve it. Of course, thanks to AI

EEEU vetoed the largest Chinese drone manufacturer. He did not expect that he would be left without the largest Chinese drone manufacturer

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In December 2025, the US government banned DJI, making it the Huawei of drones. It was an absolutely crazy idea.with American drone pilots themselves warning about the Trump administration’s terrible decision. To no one’s surprise, the play did not go well. what happened. Late last year, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided ban all drones and critical components of these small aircraft that were manufactured in foreign countries. The measure affected the import of new drones, remaining existing ones operational. But the government did not take into account a small detail: DJI is the main reference in drones worldwide and, literally, there are no alternatives. What is happening. Already in 2025, Greg Reverdiau, co-founder of the Pilot Institute in Arizona, conducted a survey in which 8,000 pilots participated. 85% made it clear that they could stay in business for about two years. From then on, without access to DJI drones, the outlook was unsustainable. Photographers Videographers Farmers Surveyors Emergency services Security forces Major figures in the industry make it clear that no one is going to replace the gap that DJI has left, whether in capacity, affordability, reliability or ease of use. The alternative. GoPro launched a drone, Karma, in 2018. It failed and was never heard from again. Companies like Parrot also launched consumer drones almost ten years ago, but today there is no trace of them. American companies like Skydio have pivoted completely towards defense, with drones worth thousands of dollars and million-dollar contracts with the US military. When asked if they intended to manufacture drones for consumption, the answer was a clear no. Goodbye to 90%. DJI dominated the US drone market with a 90% share, and there are no real alternatives to replace drones that are reaching the end of their useful life. With no possible DJI replacement in sight, the question is no longer who will take over, it’s how long the current fleet will last before volunteer firefighters, farmers and rescue teams run out of work tools. In Xataka | Best drones. Which one to buy and recommended models from 50 to 3,500 euros

After visiting a Chinese factory, the CEO of Honda loudly admitted the noise of the industry

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We are witnessing a great change in the automobile industry, led above all by the great presence of China in more and more global markets and a transition to electric which seems to still be difficult for him. The traditional automobile industry is going through a delicate point, and the president of Honda saw it clearly when visiting a supplier factory in Shanghai. The surprise. At the end of February, Toshihiro Mibe, president of Honda, visited the facilities of a large Chinese manufacturer of components in Shanghai. What he found was a completely automated plant, without workers on the production line, and capable of supplying parts to both Tesla and local builders, minimizing labor costs and operating constantly. “We have no chance against this,” counted Mibe when leaving, according to statements reported by the Nikkei Asia media. It is certainly not the type of statement that one would expect from someone who runs one of the most historic brands in world motorsport. Why does it matter? Honda is not an isolated case. It is the latest symptom of an industry that has been looking at China with concern for years. Chinese manufacturers have managed to compress the development time of a new model to between 18 and 24 monthsabout half of what the Japanese or Europeans need. And it’s not just speed: it’s cost, automation and software. It is a change that is costing the traditional automobile industry, and that is not easy to replicate either. Numbers. In 2020, Honda sold 1.62 million vehicles in China. In 2025, that figure fell to 640,000 units, a decrease of 24% in the last year alone and the fifth consecutive year of decline, according to data published by the media. Its factories in the country operate at 50-60% capacity, well below the 70-80% necessary to be profitable. By 2026, the planned production is less than 600,000 units. “It is an extremely disappointing plan,” acknowledged an executive from a Chinese supplier company to Nikkei Asia. “But it doesn’t surprise me either,” he continued. Honda is not alone in this. Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, warned in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning last October that China has enough production capacity to “supply the entire North American market and put us all out of business.” “Unless things change, we will not survive,” counted for his part, also the then president of Toyota, Koji Sato. And coming from Toyota, which is basically the largest automaker in the world, that says a lot. Vgo back to the past to go towards the future. Honda’s reaction goes through resurrect your R&D division as an autonomous entity, something that has already existed since 1960 and that in 2020 was dismantled in favor of centralized management. It was that independent structure that, in 1972, developed the low-emission CVCC engine (the first to meet US regulations) and turned the original Civic into a global success. Now, thousands of engineers return to a subsidiary with greater operational freedom. “Five or six years ago it was good for the headquarters to take the reins,” recognized a Honda executive to Nikkei Asia. “But now the world has changed drastically,” he continued. Doubts. The movement does not convince everyone. Takaki Nakanishi, chief analyst at the Nakanishi Research Institute, said to the media that “it is doubtful what will change just by restoring the organization.” Honda’s own management team admits that recovering the structure does not guarantee winning China. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to raise the white flag,” added a company executive, according to Nikkei Asia. In parallel, Honda cancels two of its electric planned for the US, the 0 SUV and the 0 Sedan, and assumes losses of up to 15.8 billion dollars. Also have been left in the air the two vehicles under the Afeela brand, the joint project with Sony. The alternative bet: India. While Toyota and Nissan choose to ally with Chinese partners to learn from their speed and launch affordable electric cars, Honda prefers another path. The brand is betting on India as a manufacturing base for its next generation of electric cars. The Model 0 Alpha, its global strategic EV planned for 2027, will be produced there. In mid-March, the Indian subsidiary shared images of the Alpha in rolling tests, describing the moment as “a new milestone in Honda’s electrification journey.” Imbalance. The automobile sector is going through one of its most profound transformations. China has stopped being just a market to become the main global competitor, with brands like BYD already reaching 1.8% share in Europe in the first two months of 2026, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). Honda, with just 0.5% in the same period, illustrates this imbalance well. Cover image | Sling In Xataka | Sensors, luminous tires and fish scales: the crazy (and stinky) story of the first “autonomous” car

Chinese AI models boasted of being good, pretty and cheap. There are only two of those three things

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It is not as well known as its rivals, but Zhipu AI (z.ai) has become one of the most promising Chinese AI startups. It is responsible for the family of open GLM models that have always offered a solvent and, above all, very cheap alternative. That, unfortunately, is no longer so true, but we are witnessing a change in strategy both between it and its competitors in the Asian giant. Chinese AI models are no longer such a bargain. GLM-5.1 is better… Z.ai announced yesterday the launch of its shiny new AI model, GLM-5.1. I did it with my chest out because we are facing a promising evolution of this LLM (744B parameters, 40B assets with Mixture of Experts architecture) that certainly surpasses its predecessors but that in some metrics even seems to be above GPT-5.4, Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1. Agentic tasks and those that require autonomy for long periods work better than ever, but if you want to benefit from these improvements, you have to check out: the price of the model is now at least 8% more expensive than previous versions. …but also more expensive. According to prices managed by OpenRouter, the well-known platform that serves as a “distributor” of multiple free and commercial models, the prices of the new Z.ai model have risen significantly. Thus, GLM-5.1 costs between 8 and 17% more than GLM-5 Turbo, also recently launched. It is the second time that the Chinese company has raised prices for its users in 2026, and that is a worrying sign. The excuse, of course, is the same as always. We are in high demand. When Z.ai launched GLM-5 at the beginning of February, it took the opportunity to raise the prices of its plans for programmers between 30 and 60%while the API rose between 67% and 100% (doubling). Its shares on the stock market perked up significantly after the launch and the price increase – logical, investors saw that income was probably going to increase thanks to these increases – but the company indicated that demand was very high and that its models had to reflect that circumstance. From the three B’s to just two. The Chinese open models had been demonstrating remarkable quality and a fantastic price/performance ratio for months. They were good, pretty and cheap, but Zhipu AI has just been the latest to end up raising prices. Most of its competitors have been doing it too: Moonshot AI (Kimi), MiniMax and StepFun did it already in 2025, but Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent and Baidu have also adopted increasingly ambitious pricing strategies. as indicated on TrendForce. OpenClaw as a trigger. Much of the blame for this great demand lies with AI agents like OpenClaw, which has become viral but has a problem: it consumes tokens at an extraordinary rate. A conversation with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini has a cost, but the use of tokens in “chat mode” is much lower than that carried out by AI agents, who do not stop “thinking” and analyzing different possibilities and chaining processes to resolve our requests. The Chinese models have become a good alternative if one wants to save because using Claude Opus 4.6 was very expensive —and now, prohibited—, but these models are slowly becoming high-end AI models. At least, for price. I already know how this story ends. What we are experiencing with AI models we already saw with smartphones. Chinese manufacturers broke the market with bargain phones that offered high-end features for mid-range or low-range prices, but then they evolved and over the years most manufacturers have ended up focusing on the super-high ranges and at most have launched “cheap” sub-brands. Xiaomi has done it with Redmi and POCO, for example, and now we are seeing something similar with Chinese AI startups, which gained popularity with good, pretty and cheap models, but are now beginning to transition to that new batch of capable but no longer so affordable models. First they catch you, then they squeeze you. What we are seeing with the Chinese AI models we were also seeing with the models of companies like OpenAI or Anthropic. Both they and their competitors release increasingly better but also increasingly more expensive models, and that means that those tokens that these companies sell us are becoming more and more precious: the quotas for the ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro plans, for example, seem to be running out. faster than beforeand the users they take time complaining about it. On Reddit They have a “megathread” dedicated precisely to that, but here we have bad news: this doesn’t look like it will go down, but rather more. In Xataka | Anthropic has shut down OpenClaw for a reason: it’s building the “walled garden” that Nintendo perfected

DeepSeek promised them happiness as the great Chinese AI. I didn’t count on a small detail: Kimi

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Just a year ago, DeepSeek was one of the biggest scares that Silicon Valley had received dwarves. A Chinese model trained with a fraction of OpenAI’s budget equal to GPT-4 in benchmarks. Upon its arrival the message seemed clear: Western dominance of AI had its days numbered. Today, the story stands, but not thanks to DeepSeek. The DeepSeek case. DeepSeek carries months late for its V4 and, to date, has already lost three of the authors of R1, the model that catapulted them to success. The monthly downloads fell 72% in the second quarter of the year, seeing how Doubao (ByteDanec) snatched the lead. With missed dates, usage errors due to cyber attacksand the difficulty of split from NVIDIA To bet almost entirely on Huawei’s Ascend chips, Chinese alternatives like Kimi have been gaining ground. Meanwhile, on the other side of China. Moonshot AI was not born surrounded by noise like DeepSeek. It was founded in March 2023 by three former colleagues from Tsinghua University: Yang Zhilin—PhD from Carnegie Mellon, former Google Brain and Meta AI—, along with Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin. There were no visible or media faces behind it, only product. That product is Kimi, and in early January 2026 the company launched it in its K2.5 version. In code and video benchmarks managed to surpass GPT-5 and Gemini Pro 3with the key to Chinese AI: its API costs between 4 and 17 times less than OpenAI’s. Those responsible for Moonshot explained how Kimi was almost at Claude’s level in software development testing, encouraging the race for open models. The money arrived. The commercial results are what really attract attention. In less than 20 days Following the launch of K2.5, Kimi’s cumulative revenue exceeded everything billed during 2025. API’s international revenue increased fourfold since November of the previous year. The consequence in valuation has been dizzying: 4.3 billion dollars in December 2025, 10 billion in February 2026, 18 billion in March. Three months, valuation multiplied by four. Kimi has thus become the fastest decacorn in Chinese business history. The Chinese maelstrom. DeepSeek was born a year ago as the great revolution that questioned the closed model of Silicon Valley. It only took a few months for Moonshot to steal the limelight and manage to be on par with – or even above – giants like Google and OpenAI in the most used models in the world. In favor of DeepSeek, it should be noted that its objective is different: it does not follow the typical startup pattern with pressure for immediate monetization and it is a gigantic AI laboratory that can afford not to win in the short term. In Xataka | DeepSeek API: what it is, what it is for, prices and how you can get one to use in your projects

I thought Chinese cars were going to be the new Android. They are actually the new iPhone

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For a few years, the nightmare of European manufacturers has had a specific name: the Android scenario. That Google, or Apple, or Amazon, would turn the car into interchangeable hardware. that the value will migrate to third-party software and they will be reduced to outdated manufacturerslike PC manufacturers in the nineties. That fear has kept them on guard, looking towards Silicon Valley, investing a lot of money in their own connectivity and infotainment systems, trying not to be left out. They’ve been guarding the wrong door. The movement that is happening is not the equivalent of Android. It’s exactly the opposite, at least where it hurts the most: BYD makes its own batteries, your own operating systemand operates its own charging network. Xiaomi does practically the same with HyperOS. The logic is not to create a platform where others monetize but to control every centimeter of the experiencewithout intermediaries. That has a name that we all recognize, and it is not Google. It’s Apple’s. The paradox is that the Android scenario that Europeans feared so much is happening, but it is not being carried out by the big American technology companies, they are building it themselves: European generalists have become what they feared most, without anyone from outside having to impose it on them. What makes the Chinese movement so different is what is noticeable inside the car. Denza, YangWang, Luxeed, Exeed either Xpeng They are brands that three years ago almost no one in Europe even knew about, but that Today they are manufacturing cars with interiors with an attention to detail that is very reminiscent of what happened with the iPhone in 2007.. It wasn’t that the iPhone did more things than the competition (at the time, in fact, it did considerably less than a Nokia). It was that every interaction was thought out, every transition animated, every small gesture had coherence. Rivals had cool features, but Apple had experience that no one matched. Today, sitting in a mid-range or high-end Chinese car and sitting in a German car of the same price is not so much about comparing specifications as it is about comparing philosophies. And the Germans, who are seeing it, are reacting: the new iX3he CLAeither the newly announced i3 They are serious efforts to recover that coherence of experience. But reacting is not the same as taking the initiative. The problem facing the European industry is not that it does not know how to make cars, there is more to it. The thing is that for many years the margin has been captured by those who mastered mechanical engineering, and they learned to optimize exactly that. What they did not learn is that in the 21st century the margin is captured by whoever controls the entire experience: the software, the data, the services, the ecosystem. When they wanted to learn it, they looked at Silicon Valley because there was the model they knew. Until four days ago, no one looked towards Shenzhen, where someone had spent years building something more like Apple than Google: vertical, closed, cohesive, with a speed of iteration that Westerners simply do not have and they already admit it. Nokia also had very good engineers. In Xataka | At 110 km/h and driving every other day: Europe already has its recommendations for the latest oil crisis Featured image | BYD

is ceasing to be the ‘Chinese Samsung’ to be something more similar to ‘the Chinese Apple with a car’

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Xiaomi’s 2025 has been a record in several aspects, but also the certification of something that we had been seeing coming for a long time: the end of the Xiaomi that we knew. And it gives way to a new, much more interesting Xiaomi. Why is it important. For years, Xiaomi was the company that made the margins of Apple and Samsung a war to fight. His promise was, above all, the price. Now, for the first time in its history, the smartphone segment has decreased by 2.8% in revenue while the electric car and AI segment has grown by 224%. The company that built its identity on bargain He has started talking about something else. The panoramic. Total revenue in 2025 exceeded 450 billion yuan (about 57.7 billion euros), 25% more than the previous year and the first time that the company has surpassed the 400 billion barrier. Adjusted net profit reached 39.2 billion yuan (about 4.95 billion euros), an all-time high. But the real headline is in the composition of that revenue: a year ago, the smartphone and IoT device business represented 91% of the total. It has now fallen to 76.8%. Fourteen percentage points in a single year is too abrupt a drop not to assume that we are facing a different scenario. Between the lines. The segment that Xiaomi calls “smart electric vehicle, AI and other new initiatives” has achieved its first year with positive operating profit: 900 million yuan (about 114 million euros). The figure seems modest, but in reality it hides an intentionally opaque financial architecture. That same segment has increased its operating expenses by 87.7% year-on-year, to 24.8 billion yuan. Included are the costs of the car, but also the billion-parameter MiMo language modela robotics program, the development of own chips and the AI ​​agent platform Xiaomi miclaw. That is to say: the profits from the car are financing the company’s AI bet. And in 2026 that balance could be broken: Xiaomi has committed 16,000 million yuan (about 2,020 million euros) only in AI and “embodied intelligence” this year, part of a three-year plan of 60,000 million. The contrast. While the car moves forward, the phone moves backwards. The gross margin of the smartphone segment has fallen from 12.6% in 2024 to 10.9% in 2025, and in the fourth quarter it plummeted to 8.3%. The reason is the memory crisis: the demand for AI data centers has generated a bullish supercycle in DRAM and NAND prices which is swallowing the profitability of any mobile manufacturer. In the end, the same AI boom that Xiaomi is trying to capitalize on is what is eroding its core business. The company that financed its expansion based on tight margins in mobile phones now discovers that those margins are unsustainable precisely because of the trend it wants to lead. For years, the label that best defined Xiaomi was “the Chinese Samsung”: a company with a very wide range of products, presence in all price segments and a business model built on volume. Now the accounts point in another direction. The growing weight of the ecosystem of services on a base of premium hardware, the car as an aspirational extension of the brand and the own AI models integrated into all devices draw something more similar to Apple: a closed ecosystem where the hardware is the gateway and the services are the margin. The CEO of Ford already drew this parallel. With the difference that Xiaomi also makes the car. Apple doesn’t do that. The context. This shift has not come overnight. We have been seeing for years how Xiaomi patiently built its premium jump, first with Leica cameras, then with a SU7 that aimed directly at Tesla and Porsche. What the 2025 results confirm is that this repositioning is no longer a declaration of future intentions: it is the present financial reality of the company. One detail: 60% of buyers of the SU7 They are iPhone users, a sign that Xiaomi is capturing the consumer who pays for ecosystems, not specifications. The big question. Can a single company simultaneously maintain an under-pressure smartphone business, scale an electric car operation with some fiscal uncertainty, and fund an AI program with indefinite to delayed returns? The 754 million monthly active users and the 1,080 million connected IoT devices that Xiaomi has are an argument for optimism, but maintaining three demanding fronts at the same time, with the business that finances them under siege, is the great challenge that Xiaomi has ahead of it for this new stage. In Xataka | Leica is teaching Xiaomi everything it knows: when the student no longer needs the teacher, the agreement will have fulfilled its function Featured image | Xiaomi

The demand for AI memories is suffocating mobile manufacturers. The largest Chinese chip producer is going to take advantage of it

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SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) is the largest Chinese semiconductor manufacturer with a global market share of about 5%. This company is the best asset that Xi Jinping’s Government currently has to sustain China’s technological development. Hua Hong Semiconductor and SMES (Semiconductor Manufacturing Electronics Shaoxing) are also two very important chip manufacturers, but the true spearhead of this gigantic Asian country in this industry is SMIC. This company is partially public and has, as expected, the support of the Chinese Government. In fact, The Administration is investing a lot of money in their chip manufacturers. SMIC and the other Chinese chip producers do not have extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE), which are the most sophisticated that exist, but they do have the Twinscan NXT:2000i deep ultraviolet (UVP) equipment manufactured by the Dutch company ASML. These machines have not been designed to develop integrated circuits comparable to the most advanced ones currently manufactured by TSMC, Intel or Samsung, which is why the competitiveness of Chinese semiconductor manufacturers has suffered. Even so, SMIC has a plan to continue growing despite the impact that US sanctions are having on its business. And, according to SCMPis going to launch it now to take advantage of the bad times that manufacturers of smartphones and other consumer electronics devices are having. In March 2026. The memory supercycle for AI has put mobile phones on the ropes The DRAM memory industry is facing a profound structural transformation. The three largest chip manufacturers of memory on the planet, the South Korean companies SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, and the American Micron Technology, They have reallocated about 70% of its production lines to high-bandwidth memories (HBM) to satisfy the currently insatiable demand of data centers specialized in artificial intelligence (AI). The current situation has triggered the birth of a supercycle in the memory market This situation has triggered the birth of a supercycle in the memory market, which is, simply, a presumably prolonged period of time during which the demand for a certain product far exceeds the offer. This scenario causes prices to skyrocket. In fact, that is what is currently happening with memory chips. And the big losers at the moment are the manufacturers of smartphones and other consumer electronics devices. This circumstance is precisely what SMIC wants to take advantage of to grow. And it plans to do so by trying to capture the entire low- and mid-range chip market that is being neglected. SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Samsung are focusing on the production of HBM integrated circuits because they leave them with a much higher profit margin than other memory technologies. SMIC cannot manufacture chips using cutting-edge photolithography beyond 7nmbut you don’t need them. Its current integration technologies are sufficient to manufacture the microcontrollers and memory chips demanded by mobile phone manufacturers. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | SCMP In Xataka | We can forget about AI without hallucinations for now. NVIDIA CEO explains why

Canada now allows Chinese cars to be sold and the US believes they have opened the door to the wolf

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Canada is about to become the gateway of chinese manufacturers of electric cars to North America. BYD, Geely and Chery They have been preparing their landing for months in the country, and from Washington they are watching with great suspicion. What has happened? In January, Mark Carney’s Government closed a trade agreement with China that reduced tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1%, in exchange for Beijing lowering tariffs on Canadian agricultural products such as rapeseed or lobsters. The agreement allows the entry of up to 49,000 Chinese electric cars per year, with the possibility of scaling up to 70,000 in five years. March 1, Ottawa opened the application process of import permits. Tensions. This decision comes amid trade tensions with the United States under the Trump administration, which has imposed tariffs on both Canada and China. “We take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be,” counted at that time Carney, with the intention of diversifying its alliances. Who arrives and how. According to the DSMA advisory firm, which is mediating between Chinese manufacturers and Canadian dealers, three brands lead the race: BYD, Geely and Chery. The three are working in parallel on the approval of vehicles, the construction of distribution networks and agreements with local financial partners. Jason Zhao, director of Asian market development at DSMA, estimates that the first cars could arrive at the end of 2026. It would look like this: BYD wants to open 20 dealerships in a year, starting in the Toronto area and then expanding to Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary, according to explained to The Globe and Mail Farid Ahmad, CEO of Dealer Solutions Mergers & Acquisitions. The brand is also studying the possibility of building its own production plant in the country, although, according to declared to Bloomberg a few weeks ago its executive vice president Stella Li, “no decision has been made yet.” Geely expects to soon receive certification from Canadian authorities for its vehicles, according to confirmed to Bloomberg Andy An, CEO of Zhejiang Geely Holding. The company already has some presence in North America through Volvo and Polestar, but Zeekr would be its first Chinese brand to reach the Canadian market. Cherry is hiring in Canada and has already registered several of its brands, including Omoda, Jaecoo and Exeed. In statements collected According to Automotive News Canada, the company stated that it is “evaluating avenues for future development, including alliances with local players,” although without confirming dates. The problem of times. Just because there is a trade agreement does not mean that the cars will arrive tomorrow. Stephen Beatty, industry consultant and former executive at Toyota Canada, counted to Automotive News Canada that, if starting from scratch, the homologation process can take “a year or more.” And the brands best positioned to be the first through the door are Tesla (which had already prepared its Shanghai factory to export to Canada in 2023) and Volvo and Polestar, which already operate in the Canadian market under a Chinese umbrella. Washington’s reaction. Jamieson Greer, United States Trade Representative, qualified the agreement “problematic” and warned that Canada might regret it. The issue raises concern in Washington, since if Chinese manufacturers manage to establish themselves in Canada, the US market (the great long-term objective) will be much closer. “The obvious end goal is all of North America,” counted Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, in the middle. Between the lines. The United States maintains very high tariffs on Chinese cars and a ban on connectivity technology for Chinese-made vehicles, which has blocked any mass entry into its market. Canada, by opening its door, not only irritates Washington because of the direct commercial impact (about 49,000 cars are barely 3% of the Canadian market), but for what it represents: a precedent and a bridgehead. BYD, in fact, has already publicly ruled out trying to enter the US in the short term. Stella Li, speaking to Bloomberg, described the American market as a “complicated environment” and said that the brand is focused on other markets where it can replicate its successful model in Brazil. And now what. According to DSMA, large dealer groups in Canada they are divided: Half are actively looking to close an agreement with a Chinese brand, the other half are waiting to see how the situation evolves. The medium and small ones, on the other hand, are “all” interested, according to Zhao. Longer term, both DSMA and Sino Auto Insights estimate that between 15 and 20 Chinese manufacturers will end up operating in Canada. Cover image | Tom Carnegie and BYD In Xataka | What happens if you are in a self-driving taxi and someone wants to get into the car and attack you? Waymo’s response is not encouraging

Yuanjie is the unknown Chinese photonics technology company whose shares have risen 780%. The surprise is who is behind it: Huawei

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Yuanjie Semiconductor Technology It probably doesn’t sound familiar to you. And it’s completely normal. Until very recently, this Chinese company barely had visibility outside its domestic market, and even within it it played in the background compared to other giants in the sector. However, something has changed radically in the last year. Your actions They have risen nearly 780%a leap that has not only caught the attention of investors, but has placed its founder, Zhang Xingang, in the billionaires’ club. And there is a detail that adds another layer to the story: Huawei would be behind the company. So you may be wondering what exactly this company does. The key is not so much in Yuanjie itself as in the terrain on which he plays. Yuanjie makes laser chips that are used to transmit data in the form of light inside artificial intelligence-oriented data centers, a field that fits within the broader boom in photonics. It may sound technical, but the idea is quite direct: move more information, faster and with less consumption. As explained by PhotonDeltathis type of technology allows the use of photons to transmit and process information, in addition to integrating several photonic and optoelectronic functions in a single chip, with clear advantages over traditional electronics in high-demand environments. A movement that targets Huawei The other key point appears when you look at who is behind. Forbes presents to Yuanjie as a company backed by Huaweia connection that adds another dimension to their recent growth. From there, details are scarce. It has not been publicly explained how this relationship takes shape or what role each party plays, but there are a series of interesting data that are worth analyzing carefully. Now, if we go down one more level in the documents, the relationship becomes somewhat clearer. Huawei’s presence in Yuanjie would have materialized through Hubble Investment, an investment firm controlled by the Chinese group. As collected by Sina Finance Its entry occurred in September 2020 through a double formula: purchase of existing shares and subscription to a capital increase. With this operation, Hubble controlled 4.36% of Yuanjie, a percentage that later remained at 3.27% after the IPO. If we analyze the jump we can say that it is not only explained by the trend of the sector, but also by recent decisions. Yuanjie announced in February an investment of 1,251 million yuan, about 181 million dollarsto build a new production base in Xixian New Area, in the Chinese province of Shaanxi, where it also has its headquarters. Shortly after, in March, communicated his intention to explore an independent listing in Hong Kong. Two years earlier, in addition, the company had announced an investment of 50 million dollars in the United States to strengthen its international presence. Yuanjie’s journey is also best understood by looking at its founder. Zhang Xingang trained in the United States, where he obtained a doctorate in materials science at the University of Southern California and worked in companies linked to fiber optics. His time at Luminent and, later, at Source Photonics, placed him at the heart of this type of technology before returning to China. There he founded Yuanjie in 2013, with an initial focus more linked to the competitive Chinese telecommunications market, and in 2022 he took it to the STAR market in Shanghai, a platform designed for technology companies. To better understand this case, it is also worth looking at the moment that Huawei is going through. After the sanctions imposed by the United States in 2019the company was forced to reconfigure much of its business, especially in key areas such as semiconductors and software. Far from disappearing, it has gone rebuilding his position relying on its own development, from its Kirin chips to HarmonyOSand has regained weight in its domestic market. This context helps to understand why any movement linked to strategic technologies once again attracts attention to the Chinese company. In this framework, Yuanjie’s relationship with Huawei, as reported by Forbes, fits as one more possible piece within this process of technological reinforcement. There are no public details that allow us to talk about a defined strategy in the field of photonics or the specific role played by each party. But there is an underlying idea that is difficult to ignore: in the midst of a race to expand the infrastructure of artificial intelligence, technologies capable of moving data more quickly and efficiently are gaining weight. Images | Huawei | Yuanjie In Xataka | The looming bottleneck in AI is neither RAM nor gas: it’s that TSMC’s N3 node is absolutely saturated

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