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☆ Reaction to Alibaba's scrapping of cloud unit spin-off
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

3D printed clouds and figurines are seen in front of the Alibaba Cloud service logo in this illustration taken February 8, 2022. Alibaba said its decision to shelve the spin-off was due to uncertainties fuelled by U.S. curbs on exports to China of chips used in artificial intelligence applications. Following are what people are saying about the decision:LI CHENGDONG, BEIJING-BASED TECH AND E-COMMERCE ANALYST:"I believe scrapping the cloud unit's IPO reflects a new development strategy implemented by the new leadership. In short, I think prior decisions to restructure and IPO certain business units will have to be reassessed based on prevailing market conditions. The international business is one of the few Alibaba units that’s growing fast, which puts it in a better position to explore external funding."

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Alibaba, LI, Daniel Zhang, Zhang, BRIAN WONG, CHARLIE CHAI, Eddie Wu, SERN LING, Casey, Josh Ye, Yelin, Anne Marie Roantree, Muralikumar Anantharaman Organizations: REUTERS, China's, HK, Cloud Intelligence, Casey Hall, Thomson Locations: HONG KONG, Hong Kong, China, BEIJING, AliCloud, Alibaba, Shanghai, Yelin Mo, Beijing

☆ Analysis: US chip curbs give Huawei a chance to fill the Nvidia void in China
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-20 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Huawei's Ascend AI chips are comparable to Nvidia's in terms of raw computing power, analysts and some AI firms such as China's iFlyTek (002230.SZ) say, but they still lag behind in performance. "This U.S. move, in my opinion, is actually giving Huawei's Ascend chips a huge gift," Jiang said in a post on his social media Weibo account. Huawei and Nvidia did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Huawei's partners in China so far include iFlyTek, a leading Chinese AI software company which is using the Ascend 910 to train its AI models. Other partners include state-owned software firms Tsinghua Tongfang and Digital China.

Persons: Benoit Tessier, Jiang Yifan, Jiang, CANN, Woz Ahmed, Ahmed, Meng Wanzhou, IFlyTek, Jiang Tao, Charlie Chai, 86Research, Xi Jinping, Chai, Josh Ye, Brenda Goh Organizations: Huawei Technologies, Viva Technology, Porte de, REUTERS, Nvidia, Huawei, Securities, Tsinghua, Digital, Thomson Locations: Porte, Paris, France, HONG KONG, China, United States, U.S, Digital China

Washington on Tuesday said it plans to halt shipments to China of more advanced artificial intelligence chips designed by Nvidia and others. It also restricted a broader swathe of advanced chips and chipmaking tools to a greater number of countries including Iran and Russia, and blacklisted Chinese chip designers Moore Threads and Biren. China's CSI Semiconductor Index (.CSI931865) dropped 1.4% on Wednesday following the announcement, while the STAR Chip Index (.STARCHIP) lost 1.2%. AI stocks were further hit after the U.S. announced further controls on Nvidia chip exports to China, UBS wrote in a note to clients. Moore Threads said it was communicating with all parties involved and evaluating the impact.

Persons: Janet Yellen, Mark Schiefelbein, Biden, Moore, Yang Wang, Charlie Chai, Xi Jinping, Biren, Shen Yiming, Bernadette Baum, Kirsten Donovan Organizations: Treasury, Rights, Washington, Nvidia, CSI Semiconductor, U.S, UBS, Biren, Thomson Locations: United States, Diaoyutai, Beijing, China, Rights SHANGHAI, BEIJING, U.S, Iran, Russia

☆ China online platforms scrap lucky draw features amid gambling crackdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Analysts say online content platforms pulled the plug on features such as virtual lucky draws after the government in June started cracking down on live streaming, as part of a wider clampdown on online gambling. While the platforms say they ban gambling, analysts say the extremely popular lucky draws are often manipulated by live streamers colluding with viewers to share the prize. None of these companies mentioned the gambling crackdown when they reported their earnings, and they did not respond to request for further comment. However, the co-founder of a popular live streaming platform in Guangzhou, who declined to be named citing the sensitivity of the topic, told Reuters that several popular live streaming and live chat apps had to suspend services after police probes. Online gambling remains a concern, with the authorities saying in 2020 that the cross-border flow of funds for gambling posed a national security risk.

Persons: Florence Lo, HONG KONG, Analysys, Ivan Su, Huya, Charlie Chai, Tencent, Chai, Josh Ye, Farah, Brenda Goh Organizations: Entertainment, QQ, REUTERS, Tencent, HK, Morningstar, Cloud, NetEase, Reuters, Thomson Locations: HONG, Guangzhou, Beijing

Where can a Chinese buyer purchase top-end Nvidia (NVDA.O) AI chips in the wake of U.S. sanctions? A model similar to OpenAI's GPT would require more than 30,000 Nvidia A100 cards, according to research firm TrendForce. Nvidia's more advanced H100 chips, only on the market since March, appear much harder to come by. He added the premiums currently commanded by Chinese vendors for A100 and H100 chips could collapse in the future as many of the Chinese AI startups that were driving purchases would eventually withdraw from the market. ($1 = 7.8307 Hong Kong dollars)Reporting by Josh Ye in Hong Kong, David Kirton in Shenzhen and Chen Lin in Singapore; Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin in Singapore; Editing by Brenda Goh and Edwina GibbsOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Joe Biden's, OpenAI's, Ivan Lau, Hong, ByteDance, Vinci Chow, Charlie Chai, Josh Ye, David Kirton, Chen Lin, Fanny Potkin, Brenda Goh, Edwina Gibbs Organizations: Nvidia, SEG, Reuters, supercomputing, HK, U.S . Department of Commerce, China's, Information, Tencent Holdings, Taobao, Chinese University of Hong, Thomson Locations: HONG KONG, SHENZHEN, China, U.S, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, Singapore, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shanghai

MiniMax was founded in 2021 by some former employees of SenseTime (0020.HK), including Yan Junjie - a former vice president at the Chinese AI firm, two other people said. Wang Huiwen, co-founder of on-demand service giant Meituan (3690.HK), said he has founded a new AI company called Beijing Lightyear Technology with $50 million from investors. Google China's former chief, Kai-Fu Lee, has unveiled his new startup - Project AI 2.0. Wang Xiaochuan, founder of China's No.2 search engine Sogou, said in April that he had founded Baichuan Intelligence with a startup capital of $50 million. Its other early investors include China's Yunqi Partners and Future Capital, statements from the venture capital funds show.

Persons: MiniMax, Yan Junjie, Wang Huiwen, Kai, Fu Lee, Wang Xiaochuan, China's, MiHoYo, Charlie Chai, ERNIE Bot, Chai, Roxanne Liu, Josh Ye, Himani Sarkar Organizations: Microsoft, HK, Huawei, Baidu, Beijing Lightyear Technology, Google, Baichuan Intelligence, China's Yunqi Partners, Future, 86Research, Thomson Locations: BEIJING, HONG KONG, China, Beijing, miHoYo, Hong Kong

☆ Tencent cuts cloud service prices up to 40% to fend off rivals
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (9988.HK) said last month it would slash prices for some cloud products by up to 50%. Wei Yunfeng, a researcher at data firm IDC, said the price cuts were triggered in part by high sales targets despite slowing growth for the market. Alibaba's cloud revenue accounts for about 9% of its total revenue. James Mitchell, Tencent's chief strategy officer, told analysts on a call: "The impact of price cuts on Tencent as a whole is not notable." Moreover, price cuts only apply to its infrastructure-as-a-service business, which represent only a portion of Tencent's cloud services.

☆ Tencent slashes cloud service prices by up to 40% as price war intensifies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

HONG KONG, May 17 (Reuters) - Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) is cutting prices for cloud services by up to 40% from June amid similar moves from rivals that have plunged the sector into a price war. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (9988.HK) said last month it will slash prices for some cloud products by up to 50%. Charlie Chai, an analyst at 86Research, said Chinese cloud service providers had in the past made efforts to avert a price war but "at the end of the day they still went down this path". Alibaba's cloud revenue accounts for about 9% of its total revenue. Tencent does not break out separate figures for cloud revenue.

But Nvidia has created variants of its chips for the Chinese market that are slowed down to meet U.S. rules. Even the slowed Nvidia chips represent an improvement for Chinese firms. The back-and-forth between government and industry exposes the U.S. challenge of slowing China's progress in high tech without hurting U.S. companies. Chip industry sources said that was an effective action. Some in the AI industry believe that is still plenty of speed.

☆ China's SenseTime shares jump on planned new AI products event
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

HONG KONG, April 4 (Reuters) - China's SenseTime on Tuesday announced plans for a technology discussion day, boosting shares in the artificial intelligence (AI) firm. Shares in the company, which has been sanctioned by the U.S., gained more than 10% in Hong Kong on Tuesday. SenseTime, which is best known for its computer vision technology, did not elaborate on the type of AI products it would demonstrate. The company did not respond when asked about the planned event which is to be held on Monday in Shanghai. SenseTime said at the time that it strongly opposed the U.S. ban and would work with relevant authorities to resolve the situation.

☆ Tencent says it will keep cutting costs as annual revenue drops
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Josh Ye | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

HONG KONG, March 22 (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) on Thursday vowed to keep cutting costs and work on increasing efficiencies as it reported a drop in annual revenue for the first time ever, with its founder saying the company would stay focused on its core business. Tencent posted revenue of 554.55 billion yuan ($81 billion) for 2022, down 1% from a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected 555.15 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv. Profit attributable to equity holders fell 16% to 188.24 billion yuan for the year versus a consensus estimate of 114.19 billion yuan. Reuters reported last month that Tencent was working on a ChatGPT-like chatbot named the "HunyuanAide" which will incorporate Tencent's Hunyuan AI model.

The company's Ernie bot is based off its AI-driven deep learning model, Ernie - short for "Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration". During the presentation at Baidu's Beijing headquarters that was also livestreamed over nine platforms, Li cautioned it was not perfect. "After the release of ChatGPT, only Baidu has made a benchmark product among the major tech companies in the world," it said. "We continue to advise investors to patiently hold BIDU shares as the best 'national champion' play in China’s (semi-segregated) AI space," he said. "Ernie Bot is not a tool of confrontation between China and the United States," he said.

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