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Investor frustration is growing with Hong Kong's technology index, as the benchmark's prolonged slide contrasts sharply with the soaring share prices of several Chinese AI firms that recently went public in the city. The Hang Seng Tech Index – a gauge of Hong Kong-listed tech companies that was once seen as China's answer to the Nasdaq – has come under pressure in recent months, and the index's poor performance has drawn even more scrutiny amid the wider surge in Chinese artificial intelligence......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] The enterprise software landscape is undergoing a structural reckoning. According to recent market data, AI-native spending has surged by 94% year-on-year (YoY), nearly double the growth rate of hybrid tools and dramatically outpacing traditional SaaS, which has cooled to just 8%. Amidst this shift, omnichannel leader Omnichat today announces its definitive evolution into an AI-Native Agentic Customer Experience (CX)......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] The AI systems delivering the strongest results today are the ones built in-house and trained on proprietary data Every enterprise has a body of knowledge that exists nowhere else: the decisions, patterns and lessons accumulated over years of operations. Customised AI turns that institutional knowledge into working intelligence that can reason with the specificity of an insider, deployed at the scale of an enterprise......

In China, computing facilities have emerged as a new form of infrastructure over the past two years, sparking an arms race among cities and technology companies to build 10,000-card computing clusters. These clusters – which link 10,000 or more artificial intelligence accelerator chips – enable faster iteration of AI capabilities and significantly reduce model training times. Domestic champions, from tech giants such as Huawei Technologies and Alibaba Group Holding to graphics processing unit......

Hong Kong property transactions surged to a four-month high in April, while the value and volume of home sales hit their highest level in 24 months, according to the latest official data, underscoring the resilience of the city's real estate sector amid uncertainties over interest rates and the US-Israel war on Iran. A total of 8,692 transactions across homes, offices, shops, car parking spots and industrial spaces were concluded last month, up 12.3 per cent from March's 7,737 deals, according......

Samsung Electronics' surprise leadership reshuffle in its TV division points to a strategic pivot away from a hardware-led model, analysts have said, as intensifying competition from Chinese rivals pushes the company to rethink how it generates revenue beyond television sales. The South Korean tech giant on Monday appointed Lee Won-jin, former head of its global marketing office, to lead the visual display business. Samsung said Lee was “expected to spearhead business turnarounds and identify......

WeRide boss Tony Han Xu believes the first fully autonomous cars may arrive on streets by 2035, as global carmakers and tech firms accelerate the application of self-driving technologies despite roadblocks. The latest setback came when Chinese regulators stepped in after an incident in Wuhan on March 31. Authorities scaled back the issuance of new autonomous driving licences after a system failure on March 31 involving Baidu's Apollo Go fleet, which left passengers stranded and disrupted traffic......

In March, Melco unveiled its Dream Entrance art installation by contemporary artist Daniel Arsham at its flagship integrated resort, City of Dreams. This twin-headed, labyrinthine structure explores the boundaries between dreams and reality, encouraging visitors to use their imaginations as a creative tool for innovation. Coinciding with the announcement of Chinese actor Jing Boran as new “Global Brand Ambassador” and ballet artist Tan Yuan Yuan as “Friend of the Brand”, the unveiling marks the......

HSBC, Hong Kong's largest lender, reported broadly flat first-quarter profit as lower interest rates and provisions linked to the Middle East conflict offset solid growth in its wealth management business. Net profit for the first three months of 2026 rose 0.14 per cent year on year to US$6.94 billion, or 41 US cents per share, the London-based bank said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Tuesday. The result missed the US$7.07 billion consensus estimate of 17 analysts polled by the......

CK Hutchison Holdings said on Tuesday it had agreed to exit its 49 per cent stake in UK mobile operator VodafoneThree, in a £4.3 billion (US$5.82 billion) deal that will see it fully divest from the country's largest mobile network by subscribers. The transaction underscores a major shift for the Hong Kong-listed conglomerate, whose telecoms unit CK Hutchison Group Telecom Holdings (CKHGT) holds the stake, as it monetises its investment in a business with more than 28 million customers in the......

A desk with a laptop and a stack of books. A shirt waiting to be folded. A kitchen counter, a milk-tea stand and pile of building blocks – all in a single room. Robots of different shapes face their tasks with focus, controlled by a human operator. Pick up. Place. Fold. Repeat. This is not a film set, it is a data collection factory for embodied intelligence – a de facto “data foundry”. The facility, in Shanghai's Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, is run by Agibot, a fast-rising robotics company. The......

OCBC, the second-largest banking group in Southeast Asia, has agreed to acquire HSBC's retail and wealth management operation in Indonesia through its subsidiary, PT Bank OCBC NISP Tbk, according to the Singapore lender. The acquisition would add 336,000 customers and S$6.6 billion (US$5.17 billion) in assets under management to OCBC Indonesia, comprising S$4.3 billion of customers' investments in mutual funds and bonds, as well as insurances and customer deposits of S$2.3 billion, Monday......

Robots are beginning to reshape everyday life in China as the country accelerates its embrace of embodied artificial intelligence, handling tasks from cleaning homes and directing traffic to repairing equipment in hazardous factory settings. Embodied AI refers to AI embedded in physical machines, such as robots, that can sense their environment, make decisions and act in the real world. A cleaning service that launched in March on 58.com, a Chinese classifieds platform, pairs a human cleaner......

The war in the Middle East could create an opening for Hong Kong to develop into a regional commodities trading hub, as manufacturers in mainland China and across Asia look to the city to secure more stable metal supplies, according to industry participants. Manufacturers importing copper, aluminium and other industrial metals were increasingly considering Hong Kong as a storage base, while also seeking to tap its financial markets to hedge against price volatility driven by geopolitical......

Chinese self-driving technology firm ZYT is edging closer to mass production of semi-autonomous trucks that can improve fuel efficiency and save logistics costs, likely to benefit the country's manufacturing businesses amid a global energy crisis. The Shenzhen-based start-up, a spin-off from drone maker DJI, has formed partnerships with mainland China's top six heavy-truck makers to produce models fitted with its navigation on autopilot (NOA) systems, with the first deliveries expected as early......

In global discourse, a script has been handed to us: the United States and China are locked in a “tech race”. But this is really a misnomer. True competition requires a level playing field. When one runner trips the other to ensure victory, it's not a competition; it's cheating. So, when Washington deploys an arsenal of sanctions, export controls and diplomatic strong-arming to hamstring China's technological ascent, it is not competing. It is an act of suppression. This reflects a deliberate......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] More than four million users now access OpenAI's coding assistant Codex weekly, a recent uptake of one million users in two weeks proving just how quickly the competitive gap in developer tools is widening. Recognising this urgency, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has brought Codex and the latest artificial intelligence (AI) models to Amazon Bedrock. For CIOs and CTOs, this means capturing the fruits of agentic AI within......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] In an era defined by scientific acceleration, geopolitical complexity and rising expectations for healthcare delivery, one truth has become unmistakable: no country, company or institution can solve tomorrow's health challenges alone. That is why the Asia Summit on Global Health (ASGH) 2026, taking place on 11–12 May, matters more than ever. Recognised as Asia's premier event on health innovation, ASGH convenes global......

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] In a bold bid to reshape the future of retail, Siam Piwat Group has unveiled NEXTOPIA at its flagship Siam Paragon, the world's first prototype for a global sustainability platform that turns eco-conscious living into an immersive, everyday experience. Chief Executive Officer Chadatip Chutrakul introduced the project during The Economist's 5th annual Sustainability Week Asia, recently held in Bangkok, positioning......

A Hong Kong government-backed artificial intelligence lab is preparing to launch a new model built on DeepSeek that can run entirely on Chinese-made chips. The Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre (HKGAI) plans to unveil its HKGAI-V3 model in the first half of this year as it looks to export its “sovereign AI” capabilities to overseas markets. The system was based on DeepSeek V4 architecture with “full-parameter fine tuning for localisation”, and had been optimised to operate......