AI/ML News & Innovations Hub

Hello everyone, this is Cissy from Hong Kong, your #techAsia host this week. I was at LEAP East yesterday, as the Riyadh-based technology conference made its Asia debut in the city. More than 450 exhibitors, mostly from mainland China, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, as well as some from Europe, took part in the event. The exhibition featured a relatively large number of companies in areas such as biotech, robotics and software.

In several panel discussions I attended, there was a noticeable delay between the speakers' live audio and the video feed displayed on the big screen. In other words, the audience could hear the speakers' voices before seeing their lips move, which was quite distracting. I couldn't help thinking that for a tech event showcasing cutting-edge companies, it was surprising that no one had solved such a basic live-streaming problem.

Like many tech expos I've attended, Chinese humanoid robots were everywhere, dancing and performing to draw crowds. One company even dressed its dancing robot in a shemagh -- the traditional Saudi headscarf -- to appeal to visitors from the Persian Gulf region.

The spectacle was a neat metaphor for Hong Kong's broader Middle East pivot. Squeezed by Western scrutiny amid mounting geopolitical tensions, the city has spent the past few years courting Gulf capital with growing urgency. One of the most concrete results so far: a memorandum of understanding signed with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund in late 2024, targeting a joint $1 billion fund for Hong Kong enterprises expanding into the kingdom.

Yet despite the growing engagement, the actual flow of Middle Eastern investment into Hong Kong remains difficult to quantify.

Chinese companies, meanwhile, are not waiting. Many are using Hong Kong as a staging ground before pushing into the Gulf and beyond. One good example is Keeta, Meituan's overseas brand. It is now Hong Kong's largest food delivery platform after squeezing out Deliveroo and has already expanded into countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Brazil, with some support from the Hong Kong government.

But cracking a new market is never just a copy-and-paste job. At a LEAP East session, Keeta CEO Tony Qiu acknowledged the need to adapt -- citing, for example, the expectation that delivery riders may need to stop and pray mid-route. That is a cultural accommodation that would have been unthinkable under Meituan's old domestic playbook, where riders were fined for missing delivery windows, though that policy has since softened under regulatory pressure in China.

Meanwhile, Chinese AI companies are not slowing down in other parts of the world, either, even in the U.S.

Persona non grata

Bad news for China's aunties and uncles. As Beijing tightens oversight of the fast-growing artificial intelligence sector, the country's biggest tech companies are rolling back AI persona features, disappointing users who have increasingly turned to virtual characters for companionship and emotional support over the past year -- particularly on ByteDance's chatbot Doubao, writes Nikkei Asia's Cissy Zhou.

The move comes ahead of new rules taking effect on July 15 that restrict AI services from offering virtual intimate relationships, such as AI family members or romantic partners, to minors. The regulations also require parental consent for other anthropomorphic AI services offered to children under 14, as authorities grow increasingly concerned about privacy risks, harmful content and potential psychological impacts.

The crackdown highlights the tension between the popularity of AI companionship and Beijing's push for tighter controls. The Cyberspace Administration of China has already removed thousands of noncompliant AI products in a nationwide campaign targeting issues including data security, misinformation and obscene content.

Closing the loopholes

Anthropic is moving to shut loopholes that have allowed Chinese companies to circumvent the AI group's stringent restrictions on unauthorized use in the country, write the Financial Times' Eleanor Olcott and Cristina Criddle.

People familiar with the matter said Chinese companies including Ant Financial had accessed Anthropic's AI tools such as Claude Code through workarounds that included cloud providers and overseas subsidiaries.

The people said Ant had provided employees with corporate Claude accounts that were accessed through the company's intranet, which is connected to its Singapore-based entity.

ByteDance does not facilitate access to Claude but this year introduced a reimbursement scheme allowing engineers to put personal subscriptions for the platform on their expenses, according to five employees of the TikTok owner.

The engineers access those subscriptions using VPNs. Such workarounds do not violate U.S. or Chinese law, but they breach Anthropic's terms of service, which specify that Chinese companies and foreign entities owned by them are banned from using its models.

Anthropic has one of the strictest bans among U.S. AI companies on usage in China, requiring user verification and banning payment from Chinese banks. By contrast, Chinese users find it easier to access OpenAI's tools through VPNs, which are widely used in the country. The company does not require the same user verification as Claude.

The efforts to access Claude from China illustrate the continuing value of leading U.S. AI products to Chinese engineers despite growing access restrictions and the increased competitiveness of domestic models.

Shopping around

After Anthropic suspended access to some of its models due to government restrictions, U.S. corporate use of Chinese artificial intelligence models surged in June. This trend was accelerated by soaring API fees, as Chinese models are priced at roughly one-twentieth of Anthropic's rates, cutting some company's AI spending nearly in half, write Nikkei's Masaharu Ban and Manami Ogawa.

Coinbase, Airbnb and Uber have all acknowledged internal use of Chinese AI, and OpenRouter data shows Chinese models consumed 25 trillion tokens in the final week of June, 78% more than U.S. models and more than double their own usage a month earlier.

The competitive picture is shifting faster than Washington anticipated. China's DeepSeek commanded a 19% market share among AI providers in June, with Z.ai and Xiaomi also gaining ground as Google and OpenAI lost share. Z.ai's GLM-5.2, released in mid-June, ranked fifth out of roughly 500 models on a benchmark of 9,000 real-world tasks, surpassing Google. The dynamic mirrors DeepSeek's shock debut in January 2025: Chinese companies are building open-source models that are cheap, replicable and increasingly hard to ignore.

Samsung profit soars, shares slump

Samsung Electronics posted a blockbuster second quarter, with operating profit surging more than 19 times on the year to 89.4 trillion won ($58.4 billion) as insatiable artificial intelligence demand keeps memory chips in short supply, writes Nikkei Asia's Kim Jaewon.

Samsung's revenue nearly doubled to 171 trillion won over the same period. However, markets were not impressed. Samsung's shares fell nearly 7% on the day, with rival SK Hynix dropping 6% and the broader KOSPI sliding almost 5%, as investors fretted over looming oversupply in the memory chip industry and whether the AI-driven boom has more room to run.

The results land against a charged backdrop: Just last week, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung unveiled an ambitious 800 trillion won public-private investment plan with Samsung and SK Hynix to expand domestic chipmaking capacity. Whether that bet pays off may hinge on Big Tech earnings due later this month, which analysts say will be the next real test of whether AI infrastructure spending is holding up or beginning to cool.

Podcast: Tech Latest

Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Shotaro Tani, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector.

In this episode, Shotaro speaks with Hong Kong correspondent Cissy Zhou about Lenovo's efforts to use the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a global showcase for its AI capabilities.

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