Know Asia's
Business changes,before it hits your market.

China's largest household appliance manufacturer Midea is investing 60 billion yuan ($8.7 billion) in AI and robotics over the next three years.

The sum equals the entire R&D spending of the past five years. In one fell swoop, Midea is thus doubling its research pace.

The Kuka factor

The company is not new to the robotics business. In 2017, Midea bought German robotics giant KUKA for 29.2 billion CNY (around €4 billion) and built China's largest industrial robot production base in Foshan, Guangdong.

• A new robot rolls off the line there every 30 minutes, over 80,000 units so far.

In December came the next step: Miro U, a six-armed humanoid on wheels. In a washing machine factory in Wuxi, it increased efficiency in line conversions by 30%.

Entire industry follows suit

Midea is not alone. China's home appliance manufacturers are mutating into robotics companies:

• Gree Electric: 2,000 self-developed industrial robots in Zhuhai factory

• TCL: AI-controlled human-machine collaboration, one operator controls 384 ovens

• Skyworth: AI equipment for all products from January 2026

Timing is no coincidence

Next week, Nvidia GTC 2026 starts, where new physical AI models are expected.

At the same time, Tesla is preparing the launch of Optimus Gen 3 for the second quarter.

• China doesn't just want to keep up here, but dominate the market: The domestic humanoid market is expected to grow to 300 billion CNY ($43.8 billion) by 2035.

The Chinese EV maker Nio posted a profit in the fourth quarter of 2025 for the first time since its founding. After ten years of losses and billions in burned capital, this marks a turning point.

Q4 net profit: 282.7 million yuan ($40.4 million) vs. a net loss of 7.1 billion yuan a year earlier.

The details

Revenue rose 76% to 34.7 billion yuan ($5 billion), while vehicle sales jumped 81%. In the fourth quarter, Nio delivered 124,807 cars, up 72% year over year.

The key driver was the ES8, Nio’s premium SUV with a starting price above 400,000 yuan (about $56,000) and a gross margin of around 20%. That model alone accounted for 46% of all deliveries in December.

At the same time, Nio cut costs aggressively:

• F&D expenses: -44% to 2 billion yuan ($286 million)

• Sales and administrative expenses: -28% to 3.5 billion yuan ($500 million)

• Overall margin: from 11.7% to 17.5%

For 2026, Nio is targeting more than 450,000 deliveries, up from 326,000 for full-year 2025. In the first quarter, the company expects 80,000 to 83,000 vehicles, up around 90% year over year, but a noticeable decline compared with Q4.

The stock reacted accordingly: +15% in New York to $5.70, bringing market capitalization to around $14.4 billion.

Margin vs. volume

For years, Nio was seen as a textbook example of how brutal the price war in China’s EV market has become. The fact that a premium carmaker is now the first startup to turn profitable shows that margin beats volume.

• For comparison: BYD achieved a gross margin of 17.6% in 2025 with 4.6 million cars sold. Nio reached 17.5% with 326,000 units.

The question is whether Nio can sustain that profit. Its 2025 full-year operating loss still stood at 11.5 billion yuan ($1.6 billion), and Q1 2026 is expected to be weaker.

👉 Sources: NEVPost, Caixin, Yicai

China’s export machine is running at full speed. In January and February, exports rose by 21.8%, three times stronger than economists had expected.

• The trade surplus of $213.6 billion is the highest two-month figure ever recorded.

The numbers in context

China traditionally combines the data for January and February to smooth out holiday effects from the Lunar New Year.

Analysts had forecast growth of 7.1%, and both Reuters and Bloomberg missed the mark. Instead of slowing after the record year of 2025, with a surplus of $1.2 trillion, the pace is accelerating.

• Import growth: With an increase of 19.8%, China’s domestic market is also showing surprising resilience despite the property crisis.

The great detour

The trend toward the “de-Americanization” of Chinese trade flows is accelerating. Beijing is finding new buyers at record speed.

The pattern is even more drastic on the import side: China is buying 43% more from India and 36% more from South Korea, but 27% less from the US.

Tech as the turbocharger

One driver stands out: semiconductors and technology exports. The global AI boom is pulling demand for Chinese chips and components higher.

“The strength in integrated circuits fits with the AI investment boom,” says Xu Tianchen, Senior Economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Hyundai Motor Group is preparing to list its US robotics subsidiary Boston Dynamics on the Nasdaq.

What looks like a tech IPO on the surface is actually a strategic maneuver: Group Chairman Chung Euisun needs the money to untangle Hyundai's complex cross-shareholding structure.

Chung's personal 20% stake in Boston Dynamics: estimated $13.6 billion (20 trillion won).

The details

Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in June 2021. Group affiliates paid $660 million for 60%, Chung personally added another 20%. Combined, the group holds 80%.

The pressure to list is mounting: At the time of acquisition, Hyundai committed to taking Boston Dynamics public within four years. That deadline lapsed in June 2025, giving SoftBank the right to exercise a put option until June 2026.

Hyundai is serious about this step: The company has already set up a dedicated robotics and AI task force under Vice Chair Chang Jae-hoon. In February 2026, Boston Dynamics' CEO also stepped down to refocus on profitability.

Why this isn’t really about robots

Hyundai is the last major Korean chaebol still operating with a circular ownership structure. At the top sits parts-maker Hyundai Mobis, which controls Hyundai Motor with a roughly 22.4% stake. Chung himself holds just 0.3% of Hyundai Mobis.

To secure long-term control, Chung needs to increase his Mobis stake by buying out shares from Kia and Hyundai Steel. On top of that, inheritance and gift taxes on his father's shares will eventually come due.

All of this costs billions, and the Boston Dynamics IPO is supposed to provide exactly that.

👉 Sources: Korea Herald, The Investor

South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung ordered something on Monday that hasn't happened since the 1990s: a state price cap on gasoline and diesel.

The reason: The Iran crisis has driven the oil price to over $118 per barrel, and South Korea sources around 70% of its crude oil from the Middle East.

The price shock

The government will implement a system of maximum prices for petroleum products to protect the domestic economy from the energy shock.

"The crisis is a significant burden on our economy, which is heavily dependent on global trade and energy imports from the Middle East."

All of Asia suffers

China as relative winner?

While South Korea and Japan are extremely vulnerable, China (although the largest importer) is better buffered.

Beijing has massively hoarded crude oil over the past year and has greater capacity to substitute oil with coal or natural gas. The crisis could thus paradoxically strengthen Beijing in the regional power balance vis-à-vis its rivals.

The world’s largest EV battery maker, CATL, posted record 2025 revenue of 423.7 billion yuan ($61 billion), up 17% from the previous year.

Net profit came in at 72.2 billion yuan ($10.4 billion), up 42.3%, marking the fastest profit growth in three years.

Q4 alone: profit jumped 57.1% to $3.35 billion.

The details

It is the ninth consecutive year at the top for battery giant CATL.

• Battery sales: 661 GWh (+39%). Of that, 541 GWh were EV batteries, up 41.85%.

• Global EV battery market share: 39.2%.

• BYD stands at 16.4%, less than half.

The more interesting part lies outside the core business: in energy storage, gross margin reached 26.7%, above the 23.8% in the EV battery business.

The reason: AI data centers and power grids are driving demand, and the segment now accounts for 14.7% of total revenue.

Despite Trump’s tough stance on China: Ford wants to use CATL’s licensed technology to expand its own energy storage production. JPMorgan sees this as a growing foothold in the US market.

CATL vs. BYD:

• BYD last week unveiled its new Blade Battery, which is supposed to deliver 1,000 km of range after nine minutes of charging.

• CATL’s Shenxing cell delivers 520 km after five minutes. At the same time, CATL is developing batteries for trucks, ships, and aircraft.

Where this is heading

Founder Robin Zeng himself warns that geopolitics, industry cycles, and technological disruption are overlapping. The fact that CATL is now generating higher margins in storage than in its core business shows the direction: away from pure volume chasing in EV batteries, and toward high margin infrastructure deals.

👉 Sources: SCMP, DealStreetAsia, Nikkei, BusinessTimes

A bizarre spectacle is currently unfolding in China's metropolises:
Thousands of people – from students to 60-year-old retirees – are standing in line for hours to get software called OpenClaw installed.

Nearly 1,000 people gathered in front of Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters to get the AI agent installed.

The reason: Installing it is technically complex. Tencent engineers handled it for free.

What is OpenClaw? 🦞

Unlike ChatGPT, which primarily chats, OpenClaw is an autonomous agent. It was developed by Austrian Peter Steinberger and recently acquired by OpenAI.

• Capabilities: OpenClaw can independently read and respond to emails, create presentations, conduct stock analyses, or write code – directly in the user's system.

• GitHub record: With 250,000 stars in just four months, it's the fastest-growing open-source project in history (faster than Linux).

Government jumps on board

Premier Li Qiang mentioned AI agents for the first time in the Government Work Report:

"We promote intelligent terminals and AI agents for commercial application in key sectors."

Security concerns

Despite the hype, concerns about security are growing. Since OpenClaw requires full control over the operating system, the risks are enormous.

1. The email disaster: A researcher from the Meta team recently shared how her "lobster" suddenly started deleting emails en masse without her being able to stop it – only physically turning it off helped.

2. State warning: China's Ministry of Industry (MIIT) issued a security warning on February 5. Many instances are extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks and data leaks due to misconfigurations.

3. Hardware hunger: Xiaomi warns of massive heat generation and shortened battery life when using AI agents on smartphones.

The People's Bank of China bought more gold in February, extending its purchasing streak to 16 consecutive months since November 2024.

Addition: 30,000 troy ounces, bringing total reserves to 74.22 million fine troy ounces.

The details

• China's gold as a share of total reserves: roughly 8.5%.

• For comparison: the US sits at 75%, Germany at 70%, Russia above 20%.

• Global central bank average: 15-20%.

For the world's second-largest economy, 8.5% is remarkably low. Analysts have long suspected China holds far more gold than officially reported - estimates range up to 4,000-6,000 tonnes versus the stated roughly 2,300.

Globally, central bank buying slowed sharply in January: just 5 tonnes, compared to the 12-month average of 27 tonnes.

Counter-trend from Europe: Poland's central bank chief Adam Glapinski proposed liquidating parts of the country's 550-tonne gold reserves to generate $13 billion for defense spending. The proposal briefly knocked $70 off the gold price. Russia and Venezuela have also offloaded gold recently.

Buying while others sell

Gold has traded above the $5,000 mark since late January.
Current price: around $5,100 per ounce, down from an all-time high of $5,595 in January.

The main driver: escalating Middle East tensions. After joint US-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, investors rotated heavily into safe-haven assets.

China's buying follows a different logic: The PBOC is systematically diversifying away from the dollar. As long as geopolitical tensions persist and the dollar's role as sole reserve currency is questioned, this trend is unlikely to change.

👉 Sources: Bloomberg, BusinessTimes, Yahoo Finance

Thanks to a massive stock market surge and the global AI boom, the People's Republic once again counts more billionaires than any other country in the world.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is flying in a league of his own: He is the first person in history to break through the $700 billion mark.

The great leap forward

The current Hurun Global Rich List 2026 shows unprecedented dynamics in global wealth creation. Worldwide, there are now over 4,020 billionaires – a new record. On average, two new faces were added per day last year.

• China leads: With 1,110 billionaires (+287), China overtakes the USA (1,000). Impressive: Half of all new additions worldwide come from the Chinese economic area (Mainland, HK, Taiwan).

75% of Chinese billionaires were not on the list 10 years ago. "Going global" is paying off:

• Industrial Products: 80+ new additions

• Semiconductors: 18 new billionaires (chip self-sufficiency push)

• Healthcare: 28 new additions, led by Au Yat-Gai (Regencell, $13 billion)

• AI: Yan Junjie (MiniMax, $3.6 billion), Liu Debing (Zhipu, $1.2 billion)

Shenzhen (132) overtook Shanghai as the second-largest billionaire city after New York (146).

"By 2030 we expect ten trillionaires – our forecast of one was far too conservative."

JD.com reported Q4 numbers on Thursday that tell a stark story: instead of the 9.9 billion yuan profit from a year ago, there is now a net loss of 2.7 billion yuan ($391 million).

• Revenue: +1.5% to 352.3 billion yuan ($50.4 billion), slightly beating analyst estimates.

The details

The core business of electronics and home appliances shrank by 12% compared with the same quarter last year.

The other side: General Merchandise grew by 12.1%, services revenue by 20.1%.

But the real cost driver sits elsewhere. JD.com’s new business areas, especially food delivery and the Europe expansion Joybuy, led to an operating loss of 14.8 billion yuan in Q4. In the same quarter last year it was 885 million yuan.

Free cash flow for the full year: only 6.5 billion yuan, after 43.7 billion the year before.

• JD.com is nevertheless paying $1.4 billion in dividends and has spent $3 billion on share buybacks (6.3% of outstanding shares).

百亿补贴: The expensive copycat program

百亿补贴 (Bǎi Yì Bǔ Tiē), literally “10-Billion Subsidy”, was invented by Pinduoduo in mid-2019.

The idea: subsidize branded products like iPhones and AirPods directly on the platform to pull customers from Tier-1 cities away from JD and Taobao. Pinduoduo grew revenue by 65% as a result.

Founder Richard Liu copied the program under the same name, provided $1.4 billion, and built in a price comparison tool that shows live prices from Pinduoduo, Taobao, Douyin and Kuaishou, with double reimbursement if JD is more expensive.

The problem: Beijing’s trade-in subsidies, which still amounted to 300 billion yuan in 2025, were cut to 250 billion yuan for 2026, and subsidies for home appliances were also significantly restricted.

👉 Sources: Caixin, JD.com IR, Reuters