Drones, robots and China's next ski darling

Hello everyone! This is Cheng Ting-Fang, your #Techasia host for the week that sends a warm hello from Taipei!

I just returned from Barcelona to Asia – a city with Gaudi's artistic architecture and fresh tapas, from garlic shrimps to grilled ink fishing and pattas bravas. Every spring, the worldwide wireless industry gathers on this Spanish city for the newest market views. This 12 months the keyword was again “artificial intelligence”.

At the mobile world congress, I used to be capable of check out various Chinese AI applications first-hand. At the stand of the telecommunications operator China Unicom, there have been long queues that showed a photograph station that was capable of turn snapshots into historical characters to centuries-long-length-for example my face with Empress Wu Zetian's Tang-Dynastie clothing within the blinking eye. The company said that the engine behind this transformation was its own Yuanjing large language model.

In the meantime, Iflytek-China's top provider of Speech-Recognition showed tech-a powerful tool (see illustration above), with which content manufacturer can generate short movies from only a couple of words of the input and choose the genre and magnificence on the way in which. In lower than 20 seconds I checked out an animation within the Disney Pixar style about Barcelona, ​​which was completely produced by AI. China Mobile Affiliate Asiainfo der Leading Telecommunications Software providers of the state-used man used a straightforward camera, which was supported by its deepseek-improiced AI language model and NVIDIA chips to supply visitors 30-second health tests by measuring their heartbeat and respiratory rate.

However, not the whole lot was so futuristic. My colleague Lauly Li and I shared a set with two bedrooms with a big work table through the trip, but we had three nights without hot water, and compelled ourselves to take a shower in lower than a minute and take two nights with disturbed underground traffic. Despite these challenges, we were capable of meet quite a few industry executives and shortly went back to Asia home to Asia.

One of probably the most remarkable experiences previously week was the meeting with a US chip developer. Instead of sharing updates for his company, all the manager China desired to speak. As a reader of Nikkei Asia, he began to interview unexpectedly China's chip skills And whether device manufacturers take these domestic solutions. “Do you’re thinking that you’re sustainable? Do firms really use their products? Why are you able to sell at such a low price? “It felt strange to be interviewed by my very own interviewee, however it was underlined, as everyone within the industry wants to guage China's local chip boost In the center of the assembly ki competition.

The next big things

In addition to AI, drones and humanoid robots are two of the highest keywords within the Tech industry, as EVS and mobile phones decelerate.

Nikkei as Asia Kim Jaewon Reports that the Ukrainian and Israeli drone manufacturers now with the experience within the battlefield the markets in overseas within the eye-in particular South Korea, because the country is imagined to double its drone power against North Korean threats. Local players corresponding to Korean Air and Pablo Air also goal rapidly growing market. The drone market will grow quickly worldwide, with the Korea Institute of Aviation Safety Technology forecast a rise of 62.6 percent from 2023 to almost $ 55 billion. Asia is the world's largest drone market.

Humanoid robots have developed right into a glowing area because the starting of this 12 months, with the TSMC CEO describing it as a crucial focus for future technical development. In March, Beijing called Humanoid robots The next big thing According to electric vehicles, Tesla is one in every of the massive technical names that develop its own humanoid project, Optimus, while the Top -US -EV manufacturer Tesla is one in every of the massive technical names.

However, the technology is just not fully mature. In Exclusive interview CEO Peggy Johnson With the robot robot robot robot-athorn agility robotic, the ensuring that humanoid robots work with people is one in every of the largest challenges that the industry has to beat, Nikkei's Asia's Cheng Ting-Fang And Lauly Li write. The CEO, a veteran of the chip and tech industry, also found that there are currently not enough real-time data to effectively train these systems.

Calm money

Wealthy Chinese investors refer tens of million dollars to non-public firms which might be controlled by Elon Musk – including SpaceX and XAI – using an agreement that protects their identity from a public perspective, in accordance with plant managers and investors who’re involved within the transactions.

Since Musk endeavor to a key figure in US President Donald Trump to revamp the US government Promotion of the couple's relationship The Financial Times writes as tempting to receive the capital of wealthy Chinese Sun Yu.

The investments are utilized by opaque structures which might be generally known as special vehicles which have the advantage of hiding the identity of the investors with a view to avoid the anger of the US authorities and corporations which might be careful during a Nadir in the connection between the 2 countries before Chinese capital.

The Financial Times informed three asset managers supported by China that that they had sold Chinese investors greater than $ 30 million to Space, XAI and Neuralink previously two years, three private company firms controlled with musk, whose rankings have risen.

The use of special vehicles in financing is the order of the day and the agreements don’t have anything illegal. However, it raises concerns concerning the potential for inappropriate influence and conflicts of interest at a time when Musk is unexpectedly involved in US politics, politics and business.

Representatives of Musk, Spaceex, Xai and Neuralink didn’t answer inquiries about comments.

Light bulb moment

The Japanese telecommunications company NTT relies on full optical communication with great importance, which might reduce the electricity consumption of AI data centers to 100 of the present levels. But such a radical transformation stands in front of many hurdles, Nikkei Asia's Mitsuru Obe writes in This deep dive on the topic.

NTT describes an modern optical and wireless network and hopes that this technology will help the corporate – once the most useful on the earth – to regain its earlier fame after it has not commercialized the marketing of other tech breakthroughs for many years.

The optical transmission offers quite a few benefits over traditional electrical copper cabling, which is common on data center servers. This includes fast transmission speeds, lower latency and significantly reduced power consumption. However, the combination of optical components in any context of the information center and the mixture or integration of CPUs and GPUs have a protracted approach to do, especially with regard to miniaturization. In addition, it stays uncertain whether global data center builders, airlines and chip makers grow to be a totally optical network.

A well-liked young manus

China's Ki madness has found a brand new darling. Little well -known manus ai triggered Significant excitement Last week with the claim to have developed the world's first “General Ai Agent”, the General AI, Cissy Zhou by Nikkei Asia writes. According to the demo video published by Manus AI, your KI -Agent can perform complicated tasks corresponding to screening life, research into real estate and analyze stocks.

The developer says that the agent's performance exceeds the models of Chatgpt Developer Openai over all three difficulty levels within the Gaia benchmark, although some skeptics indicate that enthusiasm is more of a marketing grass than an actual technological breakthrough.

But because the government puts its weight specific and normally behind Deepseek, investors are stacked within the sector despite some concerns concerning the inflated expectations.

Proposed reading processes

1. Take a brace with Chinese US firms with self-driving vehicles (Nikkei -Shings)

2. Elon Musks Starlink in reference to the domestic Tycoon to enter India (Ft)

3. The space station's start-up goals to take off these worldwide drug factories. (Nikkei -Shings)

4. China's delivery platforms compete for higher services from employees. (Ft)

5. Coinbase to have a good time comeback in India with regard to crypto blockers (Ft)

6. Apple's battles in China extend to earphones and tablets (Nikkei -Shings)

7. Pokémon Go developer Niantic to sell game business with payment for Nintendo (Nikkei -Shings)

8. TSMC is “not afraid” to lose US chip -subsidies (Ft)

9. Trump Tariff 'Bomb' rattles South Korea's chip and carpenters (Nikkei -Shings)

10. TSMC plays his hand in Donald Trump's tariff war (Ft)