This report is from this week’s The Tech Download newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here. In the battle for AI supremacy between the U.S. and China, “distillation” has become a hot topic. The term broadly refers to the training of an AI model using the output or answers from another more advanced model….
Chinese tech company Tencent is a gaming giant and the parent company of WeChat, the ubiquitous social messaging app in China. Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images Tencent posted a beat on second-quarter revenue thanks to an acceleration at its China gaming unit and AI-driven advertising, but its core profit missed analyst…
Google’s display at APEC Digital Weeks in Chengdu on July 23, 2026 did not focus on Gemini. Evelyn Cheng | CNBC BEIJING — The artificial intelligence race between the U.S. and China is heating up in the world’s largest continent: Asia. “The American strategy is to stop China from becoming the leading AI supplier for…
HONG KONG, CHINA: Hong Kong has emerged as a major biotech fundraising hub, attracting dozens of Chinese biotech firms to list in the city. Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images For years, Chinese companies such as Alibaba and Baidu headed to the U.S. to list their shares, citing its deeper capital markets…
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during the 2026 Reagan National Economic Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, May 29, 2026. Caroline Brehman | Bloomberg | Getty Images U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said the Trump administration will look into whether Chinese artificial intelligence models have been distilled from…
Fred Hu, chairman and chief executive officer of Primavera Capital Group, during the Hong Kong Fintech Week in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Nov. 3, 2025. Paul Yeung | Bloomberg | Getty Images China’s biggest weakness in its rivalry with the United States isn’t AI, semiconductors or tariffs. It’s finance, according to one of the…
Chinese tech company Baidu, best known for its search engine, also operates cloud, mapping and other internet-based services. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images Shares of Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Baidu rose Thursday on their partnership with Apple for deploying their AI tools. Hong-Kong listed shares of Alibaba rose 5% after the company confirmed…
U.S.-based cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike has warned of increasing cyberattacks from China-based entities aimed at stealing artificial intelligence to narrow the tech gap with the U.S. Bill Hinton | Moment Mobile | Getty Images Cyberattacks aimed at stealing American artificial intelligence technology are increasingly expanding from tech-based attacks to the exploitation of human-level vulnerabilities, with China-based actors playing…
A general view of the office building of Baidu is in Pudong, Shanghai, on Feb. 9, 2026. Ying Tang | Nurphoto | Getty Images The Pentagon added a slew of Chinese companies, including Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc and carmaker BYD, to a list of entities it believes have aided the Chinese military, complicating the fragile…
Tencent’s Chief AI Scientist Yao Shunyu (R) discusses the tech outlook with Tencent CNBC | Evelyn Cheng BEIJING — A former OpenAI researcher is now chief AI scientist for Tencent in China, and wants to build artificial general intelligence. It’s a sign of a shift in the U.S.-China tech race. AI with human-level or above…