|
|
|
|
Bottom Line Up Front SiCarrier staff say its chipmaking tools are in mass production at many domestic factories, and it unveiled two defect inspection machines for a segment where local suppliers held about 10% of the market in 2025. Shanghai AI Laboratory says its model aided a proof of the Ghys conjecture in three dimensions by mathematician Xu Disheng's team, and a Peking University team then checked the proof by formal verification. Greater Bay Technology started an all-solid-state battery line in Guangzhou that it calls the industry's first at gigawatt-hour scale, and it built the line by converting part of an existing liquid-cell line. LandSpace's upgraded Zhuque-2 launched 10 satellites into their planned orbits, and eight of them belong to ADA Space and carry payloads testing processors, laser links and radiators for computing in orbit. |
| Chipmaking tool maker SiCarrier's staff say its equipment is in mass production at Chinese fabs A staff member at SiCarrier, a Chinese maker of chipmaking equipment, told media its tools are in mass production at many domestic chip factories, and it unveiled two new defect inspection machines at a Shenzhen expo. Inspection and measurement, the checks run on wafers between process steps, is a weak spot for local suppliers. They held about 10% of that segment of China's equipment market in 2025, compared with 31% for etching tools and 27% for deposition tools, by investment bank Bernstein's count. Subsidiary Wanliyan also showed a 90GHz oscilloscope, an instrument that records high-speed electrical signals. The report says it breaks through Western export controls that bar sales to China of such instruments above 60GHz. |
| Shanghai AI Lab says a Chinese AI model helped prove a 1995 math conjecture Shanghai AI Laboratory says mathematician Xu Disheng's team used its Intern-S2 model to prove the Ghys conjecture in three dimensions, the first world-class math problem Chinese scientists have cracked with a domestic model. A Peking University team then checked the proof by formal verification, in which software confirms every logical step, so others can test the AI assisted result with the published code. The conjecture, posed by French mathematician Etienne Ghys, concerns a class of chaotic systems on complex geometric spaces. The paper is posted on arXiv as a preprint, a paper not yet peer reviewed, and the lab plans to package the workflow as a reusable proof checking module on its Duanyan science platform. |
| Battery maker Greater Bay Technology starts what it calls the first gigawatt-hour solid-state battery line Greater Bay Technology began running what it calls the industry's first gigawatt-hour-scale production line for all-solid-state batteries at its headquarters in Guangzhou. These batteries swap the flammable liquid electrolyte inside today's lithium-ion cells for a solid one, and the company reached this scale by converting part of an existing liquid-cell line. The converted line can still switch between solid and liquid cells, a route Gasgoo says avoids the cost of a new factory. In third-party testing, a steel needle driven through a fully charged cell caused no fire or explosion, passing a national battery safety standard in force since July. At the launch, the company signed agreements aimed at putting its cells into electric vehicles, low-altitude aircraft and robots. |
| LandSpace rocket launches 10 satellites, eight of them testing computing in orbit Commercial rocket company LandSpace's upgraded Zhuque-2 placed 10 satellites into their planned orbits, eight of them belonging to ADA Space, a company building computing infrastructure in orbit. Computing in space depends on processors that work there, laser links fast enough to move their data and radiators to shed their heat, and these satellites carry payloads to test all three. The eight open the second group of ADA Space's Star ComputeComputeThe processing power used to train and run AI models, usually measured in chips, GPU-hours or FLOPs. program. The remaining two, from Lanta Intelligence, will test laser data links and an onboard module that routes data between satellites in large constellations. |
|
| Huawei's chip design software chief names design tools as main hurdle for its chip roadmap Huang Yu, Huawei's chief scientist for chip design software, said at the Bay Area Semiconductor Expo that design tools are the biggest challenge facing the company's "Tau Law" chip roadmap. Engineers cannot lay out or check a new chip architecture without electronic design automation (EDA) software, which makes the tools a precondition for the new architectures the roadmap calls for. Huang said process, engineering and system design challenges also exist. The roadmap works on four layers, up to supernodes, large groups of chips linked to work as one machine. Huang called the link layer between device and chip Huawei's biggest innovation. |
|
| III | ROBOTICS & AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS | |
| China issues first national guidance on training data for robot AI China's market regulator and its national standards body issued what they call the country's first two national guidance documents for embodied intelligence, AI that controls a physical body such as a robot. Robots learn tasks from recorded and simulated examples, so the documents set technical requirements for building the platforms that generate that data and for grading datasets captured on real robots. The documents are advisory, and the platform guidance steers the industry toward a small amount of real-robot data combined with large volumes of simulated data. More than 50 organizations helped draft them, among them Huawei Cloud and a Shanghai humanoid robot center that tested the platform framework at its training ground. |
|
| China and Pakistan open Karakoram-2026 army exercise, including drone training The Chinese and Pakistani armies opened Karakoram-2026 at a base near Korla in Xinjiang, with a focus on high-altitude counterterrorism operations. The two countries have held eight rounds of the Warrior counterterrorism exercise series, most recently in 2024. The two sides will run a joint command post to plan, coordinate and control units together before live-troop drills, which tests whether their ground forces can operate under shared command. The Chinese contingent comes from a regiment of the Xinjiang Military District, the command for ground forces in the region, and includes armor, unmanned systems and intelligence specialists. Through late October, the two sides will train each other in drone operation, moving-target search and shooting, and long-range sniping. |
|
| Battery maker CATL's chairman says AI data center power surges nearly disrupted a Chinese grid Robin Zeng, chairman of battery maker CATL, told the World Energy Storage Conference that "even in China," surging power demand from AI data centers has nearly caused grid fluctuation or even collapse. AI chips running in tightly coordinated cycles make a data center's power draw swing repeatedly, which the U.S. Department of Energy has said can disturb nearby power plant equipment and grid reliability. Zeng said CATL pairs high-power battery cells with control systems that respond to those swings within milliseconds. To test whole storage plants, CATL and the Xiamen city government opened a verification institute in May with planned investment of about 3 billion yuan ($450 million). |
|
| Apple's Tim Cook says Apple Intelligence is approved for China and meets commerce minister Apple executive chairman Tim Cook told Chinese media in Shanghai that Apple Intelligence, the company's suite of AI features, and the related Alibaba Qwen model have been approved. The approval lets the features reach Chinese iPhone users paired with Alibaba's domestic model, with a test version due later this month that starts with translation, writing and photo tools. Commerce Minister Wang Wentao met Cook the same day. He told Cook that China advocates AI development that is "safe and controllable," according to the Ministry of Commerce, the agency that oversees trade. Wang asked Apple to act as a bridge for stable U.S.-China trade ties, and Cook said Apple will further expand its business in China. |
|
|
|