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Business changes,before it hits your market.

Nvidia has resumed production of H200 chips for China.

"We have received purchase orders from many customers. Our supply chain is ramping up."

The breakthrough after months of regulatory stalemate: Both the US and China have given the green light.

The numbers

China used to account for 13-20% of Nvidia's datacenter revenue. In April 2025, Trump imposed export licenses → $5.5 billion charge. In February 2026, the US approved "small quantities" of H200 for specific China customers.

• The problem: Beijing blocked imports, wanted to push domestic chips from Huawei.

• Now: Green light for ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, and DeepSeek (January pre-approval being finalized).

Chip matrix for the China market

OpenClaw hype fuels stock markets

A side note from Jensen Huang at the GTC conference in San Jose acted like an accelerant for Asian tech stocks. He called the autonomous agent OpenClaw the "next ChatGPT."

• Stock rally: Chinese AI upstarts like MiniMax and Zhipu AI subsequently recorded price jumps of almost 20%. Experts see this enthusiasm as proof of a turning point in Asian AI application.

All details & data: Axios, CNBC

Mitsubishi Electric is selling half of its automotive subsidiary Mitsubishi Electric Mobility to Foxconn.

Division revenue in FY2025: ¥919.2 billion ($5.8 billion).
Focus: alternators and starters.

The details

Mitsubishi Electric had originally considered withdrawing completely from the auto parts business. Instead, the choice fell on a joint venture with Foxconn, whose cost advantages in manufacturing are intended to strengthen the competitive position.

Foxconn's Japan strategy

The deal joins a series of partnerships. In January, Foxconn and Mitsubishi Fuso founded a joint venture for electric buses to be built at Fuso's plant in Japan.

• In 2024, Foxconn had already acquired 50% of a ZF chassis subsidiary in Germany. Chair Young Liu has openly stated that he sees all major Japanese automakers as potential customers.

Foxconn's calculation

The attempt to directly buy into Japanese OEMs failed in 2025 due to institutional resistance (Nissan).

The new strategy: work your way into the system through suppliers and components instead of going through the front door. Component business and commercial vehicle JVs are financially harder to reject than a hostile takeover.

Whether Foxconn actually becomes a contract manufacturer for the automotive industry depends on whether Japanese OEMs are willing long-term to source core components from Taiwan. So far, they prefer to buy from themselves.

Sources: Automotive World, MSN

In the midst of a radical internal restructuring, Alibaba unveiled its latest secret weapon in the AI race on Tuesday: Wukong.

Named after the legendary Monkey King, the platform marks the transition from simple chatbots to proactive "agentic AI" systems for businesses. Alibaba is thereby responding to the massive "OpenClaw" hype currently sweeping China's tech sector.

Wukong: the proactive digital employee

Unlike conventional AI tools that merely answer questions, Wukong can independently execute tasks in enterprise systems.

• Core functions: Document processing, approval processes, meeting transcriptions, and complex market analyses via a central interface.

• Integration: The platform is available as a desktop app or via DingTalk (over 20 million corporate customers). Integration with Western tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, as well as Alibaba's ecosystems Taobao and Alipay is planned.

• Security: To dispel data privacy concerns, Alibaba offers an "enterprise-grade" infrastructure that controls agent access to sensitive company data.

Restructuring & unrest: the dark sides of the AI boom

The unveiling of Wukong comes at a critical time for Alibaba. One day earlier, the group announced the founding of Alibaba Token Hub (ATH), which consolidates all AI activities under the leadership of CEO Eddie Wu.

1. Personnel exodus: The team behind the successful AI model Qwen has seen prominent departures. Chief developer Lin Junyang left the company in March, followed by the heads of post-training and coding.

2. Financial pressure: Alibaba faces the release of its quarterly numbers on Thursday. After investments of over $53 billion in AI, investors expect clear evidence of monetization.

Experts see Wukong and OpenClaw as the beginning of the "AGI inflection point." AI no longer just "chats," it "acts" (VLA - Vision-Language-Action).

While the US leads in basic technologies, China is developing into the world's largest testing ground for the practical application of these AI agents in everyday work.

All details & data: Scientific American, SCMP, Bloomberg

Vietnam’s largest carmaker, VinFast, sold nearly 197,000 EVs in 2025, twice as many as the year before. Sounds like a breakthrough. But it comes with a catch:

• Net loss: $3.87 billion (+26%)

• Gross margin: -42.5% (previous year: -57.4%)

The catch

VinFast sells every car below its own cost.
2025 production costs: $5.13 billion against revenue of $3.6 billion.

• Vietnam: 89% of all sales, market share up from 22% to 36%

• US/Europe: Failed. 1,413 US sales in 2025 (-57%), all Europe showrooms closed. At least $14 billion was invested in the Western expansion.

• Southeast Asia: This is where VinFast is growing. No. 4 BEV brand in India, No. 3 in Indonesia, No. 2 in the Philippines. New factories in India and Indonesia.

Vuong has personally committed $2 billion in financing to VinFast, of which $1.1 billion has already been drawn, and Vingroup is providing another $1.4 billion.

The subsidized doubling

In 2023, VinFast wanted to conquer the world: a Nasdaq listing, showrooms from California to Germany.

Reality looked different: poor reviews, software recalls, and just $6.4 million in US revenue for the entire year. Since then, the company has retreated back to Vietnam and Southeast Asia. 72% of its cars went to its own taxi fleet, GSM.

Structurally, little has changed. Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam’s richest man and VinFast founder, owns 95% of GSM, buys his own cars below market price, and operates more than 30,000 electric taxis. On top of that, there are state tax exemptions until 2027 and a planned internal combustion engine ban in Hanoi.

The GSM share has fallen from 72% to 33%, but VinFast remains dependent on its own fleet as a guaranteed sales channel.

Robot rescue

But gross margin is improving quarter by quarter, and to lower unit costs VinFast is betting on automation: sister company VinMotion presented a humanoid robot together with Qualcomm at CES for use on its own production line.

Founder Vuong says he will support VinFast “until he runs out of money.”

• Target for 2026: 300,000 EVs and break-even.

• Capacity: 600,000. So far, only one-third is being utilized.

Sources: Nikkei, Autonews, Vinfast IR

While Elon Musk's Neuralink is still stuck in the clinical testing phase, China has created facts:

The national regulatory authority (NMPA) has approved the world's first invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) system for commercial sale.

The product from Shanghai startup Neuracle Technology marks the starting signal for a new global billion-dollar market.

The "thought glove" for paralyzed patients

The approved system is specifically designed for patients with spinal cord injuries who can no longer move their hands.

• Technology: A coin-sized, wireless implant is placed on the brain surface (without penetrating the tissue). It reads neural signals and translates them into commands.

• Hardware: The signals control a robotic glove that works with air pressure and enables patients to grasp objects solely through the power of their thoughts.

• Limitation: The current approval only applies to patients who still have residual function in their upper arm.

Alibaba & Tencent jump in

Parallel to the approval, there was another financial earthquake on Friday: BCI startup StairMed raised over 500 million yuan (approx. $72.6 million) in a funding round led by Alibaba.

1. First double pact: StairMed is the first company in the industry to be financed by both Alibaba and Tencent.

2. Scaling: The goal is 40 implantations by the end of 2026 – which would allow StairMed to overtake Neuralink's case numbers (currently 21).

3. Stock rally: Following the news, shares of BCI-related companies in Hong Kong and Shenzhen (e.g., Sanbo Hospital, Inkon Life) rose by over 10%.

Beijing has defined BCI as one of six strategic future industries.

Target: "Two to three" global players by 2030. The government has pledged to accelerate approvals and create reimbursement guidelines – before products even hit the market.

All details & data: Scientific American, SCMP, Bloomberg

Chinese AI company Moonshot AI is in talks for a new funding round of up to $1 billion that would value the startup at around $18 billion. As recently as late 2025, its valuation stood at $4.3 billion.

• Valuation jump: $4.3 billion → $10 billion → $18 billion in less than three months.

The details

Moonshot was founded by Yang Zhilin, who previously worked on AI projects at Meta and Google.

Its core product: Chatbot Kimi, one of the most widely used AI assistants in China, with paid subscription tiers for consumers and technology licensing for enterprises.

The trigger behind the valuation surge: Kimi Claw. The new AI agent is based on the company’s in-house K2.5 model and has completely changed the business. After launch, Moonshot’s monthly revenue exceeded the company’s entire revenue for the previous year.

Investors: Alibaba, Tencent, and 5Y Capital increased their stakes in the $10 billion round. Who will join the $18 billion round has not yet been disclosed publicly.

Kimi Claw: the 24/7 money-printing machine

Kimi Claw is Moonshot’s cloud version of the open-source framework OpenClaw. Instead of just generating text, the AI agent autonomously carries out tasks.

• How it works: It runs entirely in the browser, with no setup required. The agent works 24/7 in the cloud, even when the computer is turned off.

• Foundation: Kimi’s K2.5 model, a 1-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model that Moonshot released in January.

• Use cases: Automated market reports, data analysis, writing and debugging code, sorting emails. There are more than 5,000 community-built skills on the company’s own “ClawHub.”

The China comparison

Moonshot is one of China’s “AI Six Tigers,” the startups competing with OpenAI and Anthropic. Rivals Zhipu and MiniMax are valued at $30–40 billion, and Moonshot is now catching up at $18 billion.

Rival comparison: Zhipu and MiniMax are already listed in Hong Kong, but both are still burning significantly more cash than they generate in revenue.

• Zhipu posted a 2024 loss of RMB 2.47 billion on revenue of just RMB 312 million.

• Moonshot is taking a different path: instead of pursuing an IPO, the startup is sitting on more than RMB 10 billion ($1.4 billion) in reserves, and Kimi Claw is delivering real revenue for the first time.

Sources: Bloomberg, SCMP, Tech Funding News

For a long time, it looked like Volkswagen had permanently lost its footing in its most important market. But the first months of 2026 bring the turnaround: Volkswagen is back at the top of China's car market.

Details

In January and February, VW's joint ventures reached 13.9% market share – just ahead of Geely (13.8%) and well ahead of BYD, which crashed to 7.1%. 4th place instead of 1st.

The reason: Beijing ended purchase tax exemptions for e-cars and cut subsidies for trade-ins.

VW's counterpunch

The German group is betting on radical localization: First co-development with Xpeng rolling off the production line, 20+ new EV models coming in 2026 for China alone.

BYD counters with first major battery upgrade in six years – but the numbers show: Without state help, it's tight.

Despite reclaiming the top spot, the situation remains tense for Volkswagen. After-tax group profit collapsed by 44% to €6.9 billion last year – the weakest result since Dieselgate.

• VW plans to cut around 50,000 jobs nationwide by 2030 to reduce transformation costs.

Li Auto, once China's poster child for profitable EV making, posted an operating loss of 520 million yuan ($75 million) in 2025. Just a year earlier, the company had booked 7 billion yuan in operating profit.

• Revenue: -22.3% to 112.3 billion yuan ($16.3 billion).

• Deliveries: -18.8% year-on-year.

The details

The slide happened fast. In 2023 and 2024, Li Auto was one of the few profitable EV makers in China, with operating profits of 7.4 and 7 billion yuan respectively.

The MEGA disaster: In March 2024, Li Auto launched its first all-electric model. The minivan flopped. In July 2025, a crash-test video of the i8 turned into a PR nightmare. The pure-electric push ate into margins and credibility.

Q4 shows early stabilization:

• Net income: 20.2 million yuan (after Q3 losses).

• Vehicle margin: 16.8% (Q3: 15.5%, but Q4 2024: 20.3%).

• Free cash flow: back to positive at 2.5 billion yuan.

The full-year picture tells a different story: Operating cash flow swung from +15.9 billion yuan (2024) to -8.6 billion yuan. Free cash flow dropped from +8.2 to -12.8 billion yuan.

The cushion holds: Li Auto is sitting on 101.2 billion yuan ($14.7 billion) in cash. Enough to fund a turnaround without going back to capital markets.

The AI pivot

In November 2025, CEO Li Xiang officially declared the company an “Embodied Intelligence” firm. Half of its 11.3 billion yuan R&D budget is now being allocated to AI.

In January 2026, the engineering teams were reorganized, including the creation of a new humanoid robotics division. For 2026, Li Auto is planning 12 billion yuan in R&D spending, with around half going to AI, chips, and autonomous driving.

Li Xiang himself has called 2026 “the most competitive year” in China’s premium segment. Even so, he is still targeting 20% sales growth in the core auto business.

👉 Sources: Caixin, Kr Asia

"It was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn away from reliable energy"

The EU Commission wants to invest €200 million in mini reactors (SMR), first commissioning in early 2030s.

In Asia, development is already much further along:

China's nuclear marathon

59 reactors in operation, 28-36 under construction – more than any other country. Beijing approved ten new reactors in 2025 ($27 billion) – 10+ per year for the fourth consecutive time.

• Construction time: 5 years per reactor (vs. 10-15 years in Europe/USA)

• 2035 target: 200 GW capacity (currently 62 GW)

• Technology: World's first Gen-IV high-temperature reactor (2023), thorium experiments underway

China is already exporting: Target is 30 reactors in Belt & Road countries by 2030, revenue $145 billion.

South Korea: 80% approval

Public polls showed 80%+ support for nuclear power.

26 reactors deliver 31.7% of electricity. Plan until 2038: Two new large reactors (2.8 GW) plus first commercial SMR (700 MW).

Japan after Fukushima

15 years after the disaster, 15 of 33 reactors are running again.

Target by 2040: 20% nuclear power (currently 9%).

Korean conglomerates are reducing their dependence on China.

Korean retail investors are doing the exact opposite: they are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into funds that bet on China’s humanoid robotics supply chain.

The details

Seven humanoid robotics ETFs are listed on the Korea Exchange: two focused on Korea, two on the US, two on China, and one global.

• China ETFs: $444 million in assets under management.

• Korea ETFs: $465 million, almost on par.

• US ETFs: $288 million, significantly less.

The two China products come from Mirae Asset and Samsung Asset Management.

Mirae Asset’s fund, launched in May 2025, tracks China’s entire robotics supply chain and has gained 43% since listing. Samsung’s equivalent is slightly negative. US-focused robotics ETFs are up 15–30%, while one global fund has returned as much as 60%.

Margin vs. volume

In November, Goldman Sachs surveyed nine Chinese suppliers, including Sanhua and Tuopu Group. These companies are planning capacity for 100,000 to 1 million robot units per year, even though no large-scale orders have been confirmed yet.

At Agibot, Unitree, and UBTech, currently the largest humanoid producers by unit volume, the supply chain is almost entirely Chinese.

Lee Jong-min of Mirae Asset compares the robotics supply chain to the EV industry: motors, actuators, rare earths, the critical components for humanoid robots, are in some cases sourced exclusively from China.

• The investors’ bet: if unit volumes rise, margins will scale across the entire supply chain.

• The same bet worked five years ago with EV suppliers, before CATL and BYD came to dominate the global market.

• On top of that, China’s stock market is valued much more cheaply relative to GDP than the US market, leaving room for a rerating.

👉 Sources: Korea Herald, Business Korea, Humanoids Daily