CNCERT pins phishing to AI | Manus founders plan $1B Meta buyback | Tencent Music ends exclusives

Your morning brief on Chinese technology.

Bottom Line Up Front

CNCERT attributed a Silver Fox phishing campaign to AI tooling in a May 22 advisory, linking 439 high-fidelity domains registered between Feb. 6 and May 4, 2026 to the operation, with WPS and Chrome impersonation pages making up 340 and samples injecting shellcode into system processes to maintain overseas C2 connections. Manus co-founders opened talks to raise roughly $1 billion from outside investors to repurchase the AI agent firm from Meta, which had acquired it for $2 billion, with plans for a joint venture and Hong Kong listing after parent Butterfly Effect's 2025 restructuring into a Cayman and Singapore architecture. Tencent Music filed binding commitments with the Hong Kong exchange on May 22 to drop exclusive online audio licensing and unwind existing exclusive contracts, part of a five-part SAMR remedy tied to Tencent Holdings' Ximalaya acquisition that was conditionally approved May 11 and closed May 18.

China's National Internet Emergency Center issued a May 22 advisory attributing the production of 439 high-fidelity phishing domains to AI tooling that sharply raised attacker throughput. The agency analyzed sites registered between Feb. 6 and May 4, 2026, with WPS and Chrome impersonation pages accounting for 340 domains, or 77.4% of the sample. Domain registration peaked at 15 letsvpn-themed domains in a single minute, and the .hl.cn and .com.cn suffixes together cover 73.4% of the cohort. Once landed, samples inject shellcode into system processes and establish persistent C2 connections with overseas servers.

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Manus co-founders discuss $1 billion fundraise to buy company back from Meta

Manus co-founders Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao and Zhang Tao are in early talks to raise roughly $1 billion from outside investors to repurchase the AI agent firm Meta acquired for $2 billion, Leiphone reported, citing foreign press. The buyback valuation must clear the original $2 billion mark, and the three founders may contribute personal capital to close any shortfall. The plan calls for a joint venture with the investor group followed by a Hong Kong listing. Manus parent Butterfly Effect was originally registered in Beijing and restructured into a Cayman and Singapore offshore architecture in 2025 before the Meta acquisition, with the China-domiciled entity still active.

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Tencent Music files binding commitments to drop online audio exclusives under SAMR remedy

Tencent Music Entertainment Group filed a Hong Kong exchange notice May 22 committing to forgo exclusive licensing on online audio content and to unwind existing exclusive contracts within the prescribed window. The State Administration for Market Regulation issued its conditional approval of Tencent Holdings' Ximalaya acquisition May 11, and the deal closed May 18. The five-part remedy bars price hikes, requires maintaining the share of free content, prohibits exclusive licensing, blocks auto-bundling with vehicle OEMs and bans restricting anchor multi-homing.

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Alibaba Cloud releases 100-plus product Skills and rewrites console entry point for agent workloads

At the May 20 Alibaba Cloud Summit in Hangzhou, the company laid out a chip-to-entry-point rebuild for autonomous agent workloads beyond the Zhenwu M890 chip and Qwen3.7-Max flagship model. Alibaba Cloud released over 100 cloud product Skills, upgraded the Bailian inference platform, built agent-native infrastructure and rewrote the cloud's console entry point for agent operators. On the company's prior earnings call, CEO Wu Yongming described the agent era as a new computing model, and post-summit materials said Alibaba Cloud holds the leading share of China's large language model MaaS market. Alibaba has reported triple-digit year over year AI revenue growth for 11 consecutive quarters, with the Bailian platform's annualized recurring revenue above 8 billion yuan.

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ROBOTICS & AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS

Zhiyuan opens Chengdu embodied AI manufacturing base with first 200 units off the line

Zhiyuan launched its Southwest Embodied Intelligence Industrial Base alongside a 1+N distributed data collection and training facility in the Pidu High-Tech Zone, Chengdu, on May 22. The first batch of 200 Chengdu-made robots rolled off the production line at the launch event. The site extends Zhiyuan's manufacturing footprint into the western interior beyond its prior coastal capacity. The opening follows the May 16 inauguration of the National Artificial Intelligence Application Pilot Base for Embodied Intelligence in Hangzhou.

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BYD sets May 28 intelligent driving strategy event for technical disclosure

BYD will hold an intelligent driving strategy announcement event May 28. The Shenzhen automaker has assembled an assisted driving team of more than 5,000 staff and committed more than 100 billion yuan to intelligence-related investment. Vehicles equipped with BYD's "God's Eye" assisted driving system exceeded 2.5 million units as of December 2025. BYD says the assisted driving system generates more than 150 million validated kilometers of driving data per day across multiple road conditions.

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