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Friedrich Merz traveled to Beijing with 30 corporate chiefs and secured a major Airbus order – but also made clear statements about overcapacity and unfair competition.

The Airbus coup: 120 planes for China

The most important economic news of the trip: Chinese leadership will order up to 120 additional aircraft from European aircraft manufacturer Airbus.

• Signal effect: The major order secures European jobs and serves as a political token at a time when Beijing often uses its aviation orders as a diplomatic instrument.

• Delegation: Merz is accompanied by a 30-person economic delegation, including the CEOs of VW, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Siemens Energy.

The demands

Merz spoke plainly at the Advisory Committee of German-Chinese Business:

• Currency appreciation: "Stronger domestic demand would facilitate trade without barriers"

• Reduce subsidies: "Reduce market-distorting subsidies"

• Reduce overcapacity: "Market consolidation where necessary"

• Market opening: German companies report "incomplete market opening"

The context: Germany's trade deficit with China reached a record €89 billion in 2025 – for the first time more than double the imports than exports.

The summit results at a glance

The Japanese chemical manufacturer Taiyo Holdings is close to a going-private deal with KKR. The board has deemed KKR’s offer acceptable.

Share price: around ¥6,000 – the takeover offer is expected to come in slightly below that level.

This deal underscores the latest chapter in a historic transformation.

Japan’s Stock Market Is Shrinking – For the First Time in Over a Decade

In 2025, 124 companies were delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It marks the second consecutive record year, 30 more than in 2024. The total number of listed firms declined by 58 to 3,778.

• For comparison: Japan has almost as many publicly listed companies as the United States, with only one-seventh of the economic output.

The driver: Since 2023, the Tokyo Stock Exchange has aggressively pushed for better capital efficiency. Companies trading below book value and failing to improve have come under pressure.

The result: Tender offers reached a record $68 billion in 2025. Total M&A volume involving Japanese companies hit around $350 billion.

The Take-Private Pipeline

KKR’s move on Taiyo is far from an isolated case. Just in recent weeks:

• Hisamitsu Pharmaceutical: $2.55 billion MBO (January 2026) – The Japanese pharma manufacturer wants to leave public markets to restructure long-term without analyst pressure.

• MCJ (PC manufacturer): $1.3 billion MBO with Bain Capital (February 2026).

• Raksul: $770 million buyout with Goldman Sachs (December 2025) – Goldman is returning half of the voting rights to management.

Japanese companies are chronically undervalued compared to international peers, sit on large cash reserves, but remain weak in shareholder orientation. PE firms buy cheaply, optimize governance and capital structure, and aim for value creation.

The Concern

Japan’s crown jewels, especially in pharmaceuticals and critical technologies, could fall into the wrong hands through foreign buyouts.

Goldman Sachs, however, sees no slowdown ahead: innovative financing structures using private credit are expected to enable even larger deals in 2026.

👉 Sources: BT SG, Bloomberg

The US company Anthropic accuses three Chinese AI firms of massively stealing data from its Claude model.

The irony: The company itself paid $1.5 billion in September 2024 for copyright violations.

The accusation

According to Anthropic, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax created over 24,000 fake accounts and interacted with Claude 16 million times – to train their own models.

• The technique: "Distillation" – a large "teacher" model trains a smaller "student" model. Legal when done with your own system. Illegal when tapping into foreign systems.

China's "AI tigers" in the crosshairs

The accused companies belong to China's absolute elite and challenge US market leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic:

"How the turn tables"

The reactions on the internet were consistently critical.

Why? Because of Anthropic's own history:

• September 2024: $1.5 billion settlement – largest copyright settlement in US history

• Accusation: 500,000 books illegally downloaded and scanned from shadow libraries

• Payment: ~$3,000 per book to authors

OpenAI also made similar accusations against DeepSeek – and is meanwhile itself embroiled in 16 consolidated copyright lawsuits.

Private equity is sweeping through North Asia’s beauty sector — from Japan’s legacy brands to K-Beauty and Chinese high-end studios. Financial investors are systematically buying into high-margin consumer brands.

The logic: established brands + operational efficiency + international rollout = predictable value creation.

Japan: Governance Meets Capital

In Japan, corporate governance reforms have paved the way for take-privates and carve-outs. CVC and KKR are currently locked in a bidding war for Mandom. At the same time, Bain is acquiring FineToday for around 200 billion yen (~$1.3 billion).

• FineToday was estimated by the market at roughly ~15x EBITDA.

Japan offers less of a demographic growth story — but strong structural valuation levers.

South Korea: K-Beauty Becomes a Financial Asset

In 2025, nearly every major beauty transaction in Korea was PE-driven. Blackstone acquired Juno Hair, CLSA invested in Jung Saem Mool, and KKR bought packaging manufacturer Samhwa for $528 million.

Notably, many deals involve OEM/ODM players, packaging, and devices. Whoever controls production controls global scaling. Financial investors are using this to internationalize Korean brands.

Next phase: Beauty + Tech. Virtual makeup tools, at-home devices, digital skin analysis. Expected market growth through 2030: ~4.8% CAGR.

China: Premium & Platform

China represents premiumization: particularly in high-end beauty and spa services. International investors are positioning early in brands with pricing power and export potential.

Why Capital Is Flowing Now

1. Predictable cash flows

   Beauty is more recession-resistant than many other consumer segments.

2. Globalizable brands

   K-Beauty and J-Beauty resonate in the US and Europe.

3. Fragmented markets

   High consolidation potential — ideal for buy-and-build strategies.

4. Exit windows remain open

   Strategic buyers and IPO markets are still accessible for strong consumer brands.

Many transactions were completed at ambitious multiples. Private equity is betting that North Asian beauty brands will become the next global consumer export category.

• 2025 marked a peak multiple environment.

• In 2026, we are seeing early signs of multiple compression, especially for pure D2C players without clear profitability.

👉 Sources: DealStreetAsia, Caixin Global

The legal foundation of Donald Trump's global trade war has developed cracks. In a historic ruling, the US Supreme Court declared the global tariffs imposed by the Trump administration null and void.

For Beijing, this victory comes at just the right time – only weeks before the crucial summit meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping.

What the court decided

Trump had misused the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose blanket tariffs. The judges completely overturned the legal basis.

Trump's reaction: Within hours, he imposed 15% global tariffs under a different law (Section 122 Trade Act) – which, however, requires congressional approval after 150 days.

The winners and losers of the reordering

Timing couldn't be better – for Beijing

Trump is traveling to Beijing at the end of March. Through the ruling, he has lost one of his most important "threats." China, on the other hand, is appearing more confident than ever before:

• Record surplus: With a trade surplus of $1.2 trillion last year, Beijing has proven that it can successfully redirect exports even without the US market.

• Raw materials leverage: China controls global supply chains for rare earths. Restrictions on magnets and minerals hit the US defense industry (e.g., F-35 jets) hard.

• Counter-demands: It is expected that Xi will demand massive concessions on the Taiwan question and US technology export controls in exchange for agricultural purchases (soybeans).

Shenzhen-based startup AI² Robotics has raised more than 1 billion yuan (~$144 million) in a Series B round, bringing its valuation to just under $1.5 billion.

The investor lineup includes Baidu, CRRC Corporation Ltd., several companies from the Tesla ecosystem, and Guotai Haitong Securities.

• The signal: with a major securities firm on board, this is not just growth capital — it’s IPO preparation.

From demo hype to capital markets readiness

Dancing robots are nice, but China’s embodied AI sector is clearly shifting from prototype showcases to industrialization. What matters now are scalable, repeatable deployments in real production environments.

AI² Robotics was founded in 2023 by Guo Yandong, a former chief scientist at XPeng and a Purdue PhD.

🤖 Robots in action:

• The wheeled dual-arm robot AlphaBot 2 is deployed in automotive and semiconductor manufacturing for sorting and labeling tasks.

• Systems are trained using a combination of simulation and real-world data.

• The company has also open-sourced its own visual-language-action (VLA) models.

The broader backdrop: in 2025, more than 20 Chinese robotics startups each raised around 1 billion yuan. Companies such as Galaxea AI, Galbot, Leju Robotics, and Unitree are preparing A-share listings or eyeing Hong Kong IPOs.

Listing or liquidation?

A year ago, a $42 million round was the largest financing in the sector. Today, five companies have each raised over $140 million within eight weeks.

The size of the round isn’t the key factor. The timing is. Capital is concentrating. The competition is shifting from “who has the best model?” to “who can generate recurring industrial revenue?”

The playbook is clear: reach the public markets quickly before consolidation tightens access to growth capital.

• Public listings are becoming a financial safety net. Investors point to UBTech in Hong Kong as an example, despite ongoing losses, its listing status provides strategic stability and continued access to capital.

But: industrialization requires a different level of capital than building prototypes. 2026 will be the inflection point. The companies that can convert embodied AI demos into durable industrial revenue will stay in the game.

The EU has excluded Chinese organizations from critical areas of its flagship research program Horizon Europe starting in 2026.

The measure's goal: protecting intellectual property and securing Europe's technological sovereignty.

What gets excluded

The €93 billion program remains blocked for China in the following areas:

Reactions from China

"The policy will not harm China much and could make Europe appear more isolated."

Other experts warn: China is now the world's leading producer of AI research. The restrictions could long-term reduce EU access to Chinese talent and contribute to a more fragmented global research landscape.

Hyundai Motor Group will invest 10 trillion won (around $6.9 billion) over five years in Saemangeum, North Jeolla Province.

The goal: a future-focused cluster for AI, hydrogen and robotics on a 409-square-kilometer reclaimed land project, roughly two-thirds the size of Seoul.

The strategic context

The 10 trillion won commitment is part of Hyundai’s broader 125 trillion won domestic investment plan through 2030. Saemangeum is the first major concrete project under that roadmap.

• Nvidia backbone: Hyundai is doubling down on AI infrastructure. Chairman Chung Eui-sun has already agreed with Jensen Huang to deploy 50,000 Blackwell GPUs.

That computing power is intended to accelerate autonomous vehicles, robotics and digital twins in manufacturing.

Hydrogen strategy: Hydrogen has been a core pillar of Hyundai’s long-term strategy for years. Solar-powered electrolysis would enable the production of “green” hydrogen.

Robotics is also central to the plan: from the humanoid Atlas to industrial wearables and mobile platforms. Saemangeum is set to become a testing ground for smart mobility and autonomous systems.

Why Saemangeum?

Ample land, strong solar conditions and political backing: Hyundai plans to build an AI data center, large-scale green hydrogen electrolysis facilities and robot manufacturing operations there. Local solar installations are also under consideration to generate and consume energy on site.

Beyond land and sunlight, aggressive investment incentives are a draw:

• Long-term land leases at symbolic rates

• Employment subsidies

• Government support and coordination

Seoul is pushing to industrialize regions outside traditional hubs such as Ulsan — and Saemangeum is emerging as a flagship project.

An Indian university was kicked out of the prestigious AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on Wednesday. A professor had passed off a commercially available robot dog from China as her own groundbreaking innovation.

India actually wanted to use the summit to present itself as a new AI superpower alongside the US and China. But then this happened:

• The fraud: A professor from Galgotias University proudly explained on state television that the robot dog "Orion" had been developed at their own center of excellence.

• The exposure: Internet users identified the machine as a Unitree Go2 within minutes.

• The consequence: The university had to clear its booth, power was cut, and India's IT minister hastily deleted his celebratory posts on X.

High-stakes summit becomes chaos stage

The "robo-lie" is particularly explosive because the summit was attended by the absolute world elite: Prime Minister Modi, Emmanuel Macron, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were on the guest list.

India is investing massively in "IndiaAI" to develop sovereign AI models and not be dependent on US tech giants.

The country wants to establish a "third way" between the US and China – with open-source models, 7,000 public datasets, and planned investments of $200 billion in data centers.

But the path is still rocky so far.

Fei-Fei Li, known in the industry as the “Godmother of AI,” has raised $1 billion with her startup World Labs.

🤝 Rocket start: Li only founded World Labs in 2024. In September 2024, World Labs had already raised $230 million. Since then, the valuation has more than doubled. The new round values the company at around $5 billion.

The details

World Labs is developing “Spatial Intelligence”: AI that can understand and model the physical world in 3D. The first product is called Marble and generates interactive 3D worlds from images or text.

The round is led by Autodesk with $200 million alone, joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, AMD, Fidelity, and Singapore’s Sea Limited.

Who is Fei-Fei Li?

Born in Beijing and later moving to the United States, she is now a central voice in the U.S. AI scene.

She is one of the most influential researchers in modern AI, especially due to ImageNet, the dataset that massively accelerated computer vision in the 2010s.

Li previously served as Chief Scientist for AI/ML at Google Cloud before returning to Stanford and later launching World Labs.

Why everyone is betting on Spatial Intelligence

The thesis: AI must understand the physical world in 3D, not just process text and images. This opens up applications in robotics, AR/VR, and scientific simulation.

Meta’s chief scientist Yann LeCun is pursuing a similar approach with AMI Labs, and Google DeepMind is developing its own system called Genie. The participation of Singapore’s Sea Limited highlights the interest of Asian tech giants.

The investor logic: After the LLM boom, spatial intelligence will be the next growth market.