All posts tagged: alibaba

China’s Open AI Models Are Challenging Silicon Valley’s Playbook

China’s Open AI Models Are Challenging Silicon Valley’s Playbook

The AI industry is not quite experiencing a DeepSeek 2.0 moment, but it feels very close. The leading Chinese AI labs have been on a roll lately, releasing a series of almost cutting-edge open-source models. Z.ai released GLM 5.2 in June, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 last week, and Alibaba released Qwen 3.8 this Monday. Silicon Valley and Washington started talking about the models immediately, especially K3, which is widely seen as the best of the bunch. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and AI adviser to President Donald Trump, called the performance of Moonshot’s model “concerning.” Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US might impose sanctions on Chinese AI companies. On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, alleged that the Trump administration has “information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” which he said amounted to “stealing proprietary US technology and undermining American research” and was “unacceptable.” (Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) …

Apple Intelligence approved for launch in China with Alibaba and Baidu

Apple Intelligence approved for launch in China with Alibaba and Baidu

Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker’s generative AI offering, is coming to China. On Wednesday, Reuters reported that China’s internet content regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, approved Apple’s AI services in the country on the back of a deal to integrate Alibaba’s Qwen AI model into Apple’s operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS. On Wednesday evening, a Baidu spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that it is also working with Apple on developing Apple Intelligence features for Chinese users. The Alibaba deal, which was rumored to be in the works last year, marks an important step for Apple’s AI ambitions in a key market. In the second quarter, Apple generated $20.5 billion in sales in Greater China, up 28% from a year earlier. Apple also recently regained its No. 2 position in China’s smartphone market after a recent shopping festival offered discounts on the iPhone lineup. The Baidu partnership was also rumored, but reports at the time claimed Apple was facing issues adapting its models for Chinese customers. Apple is also said to be exploring …

Video-generation startup PixVerse raises 9M, valuation soars past B

Video-generation startup PixVerse raises $439M, valuation soars past $2B

Singapore-based video-generation startup PixVerse said today that it has closed its Series C extension, with a total of $439 million raised in the round. The company told TechCrunch that, with the new tranche of funding, its valuation has crossed over $2 billion. With the cash, the company aims to expand its world model offering and reach customers across geographies. The company closed its initial Series C round in March, led by CDH Investments. While it didn’t disclose the funding amount, Bloomberg reported it to be in the range of $300 million. PixVerse said that investors in the extension round include Alibaba, Lollapalooza Capital, Ivy Capital, Grand Mount Capital, Eastern Bell Capital, Mirae Asset, BlueFocus, and CloudAlpha, joining returning investors iGlobe Partners and OCBC’s Lion X Ventures. The company was founded by Wang Changhu and Jaden Xie in 2023. Changhu previously worked at ByteDance on computer vision, and Xie was an executive director at investment firm Lighthouse Capital. PixVerse offers multiple models, including a V-Series video model for consumer and API use, a C-Series video model for …

Alibaba reportedly bans employees from using Claude Code

Alibaba reportedly bans employees from using Claude Code

China’s Alibaba will ban employees from using Anthropic’s programming tool Claude Code, starting on July 10, according to multiple reports.  Anthropic already prohibits Chinese companies, as well as foreign entities owned by those companies, from using its models. The company has reportedly been working to close loopholes that allow Chinese users to access Claude. According to a recent Reddit post, some of that loophole-closing involved a version of Claude Code that could secretly identify Chinese users. Anthropic’s Thariq Shihipar said in a post on X that this was “an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation.” (Distillation is a practice where AI models are trained on the outputs of other models.) “The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while,” Shihipar said. Nonetheless, Alibaba has reportedly classified Claude Code as high-risk software and is instructing employees to use the company’s own Qoder tool instead. Source link

Alibaba Bans Employees From Using Anthropic’s Coding Tool Over Distillation Scandal

Alibaba Bans Employees From Using Anthropic’s Coding Tool Over Distillation Scandal

While in the US, the government’s periodic bans of the latest model from Anthropic (which has made AI doomerism – in hopes of getting the government to regulate everyone else expect Anthropic, yet repeatedly achieving just the opposite – into an art form) has been all the rage in recent months, in China it is the other way around, with China’s tech giant Alibaba banning employees from using Anthropic’s Claude ‌Code at work after the tool drew scrutiny for features that can help identify China-linked users, Reuters reported. The ban is part of a deepening spat between the two companies after Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting ​its Claude AI model capabilities – a dispute that highlights the frantic race between the U.S. and ​China to take the lead in artificial intelligence. Claude Code is Anthropic’s AI coding assistant for software developers, and has become popular among programmers in China despite Anthropic’s restrictions on access by users and entities in China. To avoid further escalation of the distillation scandal, Reuters says that Alibaba employees were being told …

Alibaba to Ban Employees From Using Anthropic’s Coding Tool, Source Says

Alibaba to Ban Employees From Using Anthropic’s Coding Tool, Source Says

BEIJING, July 3 (Reuters) – Chinese tech giant Alibaba ⁠has ⁠banned employees from using Anthropic’s Claude ⁠Code at work after the tool drew scrutiny for features that can help ​identify China-linked users, according to a person familiar with the order. The ban is part of a deepening spat between ‌the two companies after Anthropic accused ‌Alibaba of illicitly extracting its Claude AI model capabilities — a dispute that highlights the frantic race between ⁠the U.S. and ⁠China to take the lead in artificial intelligence. Claude Code is Anthropic’s AI ​coding assistant for software developers. It has become popular among programmers in China despite Anthropic’s restrictions on access by users and entities in China. The person, who was not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified, said ​that Alibaba employees were being told to use the company’s own coding platform Qoder. Alibaba and Anthropic did ⁠not ⁠immediately respond to Reuters requests ⁠for comment. Alibaba ​has not publicly commented to date on Anthropic’s accusations. ANTHROPIC ACCUSES ALIBABA OF DISTILLATION STRIKE Anthropic said last ​month …

New Alibaba AI framework skips loading every tool, cutting agent token use 99%

New Alibaba AI framework skips loading every tool, cutting agent token use 99%

As enterprise AI systems scale to handle complex workflows, practitioners face the challenge of routing subtasks to the right tools and skills. Agents can have hundreds of tools and skills and get confused on which one to use for each step of a workflow. To address this challenge, researchers at Alibaba developed SkillWeaver, a framework that creates an execution graph for a given task and chooses the right skills for each of the nodes. They also introduce Skill-Aware Decomposition (SAD), a novel technique that uses a feedback loop to enable the agent to fetch and vet relevant tool candidates iteratively. This compositional approach and feedback loop mechanism distinguishes SkillWeaver from other tool-routing frameworks that choose tools in a one-shot fashion.  SkillWeaver relates to real-world AI applications where agents autonomously orchestrate multi-tool ecosystems, such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), to execute multi-step business operations like downloading datasets, transforming information, and creating visual reports.  In practice, the researchers’ experiments with SkillWeaver show that implementing this retrieve-and-route approach significantly increases accuracy while reducing token consumption by over …

Alibaba, Baidu, BYD named on Pentagon’s China military list

Alibaba, Baidu, BYD named on Pentagon’s China military list

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 diplomatic relationship between Washington and Beijing. The Defense Department published an updated “1260H list” Monday evening stateside — a roster of companies the Pentagon considers affiliated with China’s military or defense industrial base. The designations do not impose sanctions explicitly, but mean the Defense Department will be prohibited from contracting directly with listed companies starting later this month, and from procuring their products or services through third parties beginning in June 2027. “These indirect restrictions could force some U.S. firms that work with the U.S. military to drop designated Chinese firms as suppliers,” said Michael Hirson, head of China Research at 22V Research. Baidu’s American depositary receipts dropped 2.1%, Alibaba slumped 0.8% and BYD slid 0.8%. The additions come after President …

Alibaba Selling High-Powered Laser Guns Advertised as “Obstacle Removers”

Alibaba Selling High-Powered Laser Guns Advertised as “Obstacle Removers”

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech As the world’s de facto portal to the Chinese industrial machine, Alibaba probably doesn’t get as much credit as it should. With hundreds of thousands of sellers looking to supply their dirt-cheap wares directly to businesses, your typical entrepreneur is spoiled for choice. In the market for a military-grade diesel supply truck? They’ve got your back. Interested in an industrial gold trommel? Say no more! But where the commoditized absurdity of Alibaba really shines, in our opinion, is in its cornucopia of bizarre laser products, a massive number of which are configured to look like handguns or even flashy, space-age rifles. Although there are legitimate industrial-grade laser systems available on the conventional market, a motivated chaos enthusiast could easily get their hands on a pallet of handheld alternatives, like the pastel-colored “400W-500W handheld laser obstacle removal machine” sold on Alibaba by Shenzhen Liyang Welding Equipment Co Ltd for $885 to $1,150, depending on the model number and order …

Thailand Emerges As Possible Hub In Nvidia Chip-Smuggling Channel To Alibaba

Thailand Emerges As Possible Hub In Nvidia Chip-Smuggling Channel To Alibaba

New details have emerged in the alleged AI chip diversion scheme involving the co-founder of Super Micro Computer. Bloomberg reports that some of the $2.5 billion worth of servers containing advanced AI chips were allegedly routed through a Bangkok-based company before reaching Chinese AI leader Alibaba. The Bloomberg report noted: US prosecutors this year outlined a scheme in which Super Micro’s co-founder allegedly worked with an unnamed Southeast Asian company and a “rotating cast” of third-party brokers to divert the AI semiconductors in violation of US trade rules. The Southeast Asian firm the prosecutors didn’t name, identified only as Company-1, is Bangkok-based OBON Corp., the people said. Some of the $2.5 billion worth of servers sold to OBON allegedly went to Chinese AI leader Alibaba, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive legal and geopolitical matter. It is important to note that OBON is linked to Thailand’s AI infrastructure buildout and the creation of Siam AI, Thailand’s sovereign cloud champion. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang even appeared at a Siam AI event …