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Newly Hong Kong-listed biotech firm Insilico Medicine is expected to receive up to US$888 million from a French drug maker under a partnership using Insilico's proprietary artificial intelligence platform to discover and develop novel cancer drugs. The deal comes just days after the US company's shares debuted following its initial public offering (IPO), which raised HK$2.28 billion (US$293 million) after the public portion was oversubscribed 1,427 times. The multi-year partnership with Servier,......

Safe-haven assets, including gold and the US dollar, gained further traction after the United States' capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, while the Chinese yuan remained relatively resilient despite the stronger dollar. The spot gold price rose to more than US$4,420 per ounce early on Monday morning, before edging down to US$4,402 per ounce by midday, according to financial data provider Wind. Meanwhile, the US dollar index rose to 98.76 from 98.41 at the start of trading on Monday. The......

China's humanoid robot and artificial intelligence hardware makers are expected to be out in force next week at CES, the annual consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas, to show their latest innovations to a global audience amid an escalating US-China tech rivalry. Nearly a dozen well-known humanoid robot manufacturers – including Unitree Robotics, AgiBot, Galbot, Engine AI, Noetix Robotics and state-backed X-Humanoid, also known as the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre – are expected......

Hong Kong's biotech fundraising momentum is expect to extend into 2026, as licensing deals and strong post-initial public offering (IPO) trading last year persuaded investors that China's drug developers are worth backing again – even before they generate revenue. “Chinese innovation drugs expanding into overseas markets have become the industry mainstream, indicating the domestic innovation sector has entered its harvest phase,” said Felix Huang, head of equity at Oakwise Capital. “New trends......

Hong Kong stocks started the first full week of 2026 trading on a strong footing on Monday, as the benchmark gauge rose to a seven-week high, taking cues from the strength of record-high Asian equities. The Hang Seng Index rose 0.3 per cent to 26,411.24 as of 10.13am local time, heading for the highest close since November 14. The Hang Seng Tech Index gained 0.7 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index climbed 1.1 per cent and the Shanghai Composite Index added 0.7 per cent on their first......

Hong Kong's battered office sector showed cautious signs of life in 2025, supported by improved take-up in core districts and a slower pace of rental declines and –. while analysts said that trend was set to continue into 2026 – rents were unlikely to rise over the next six months. The coming year was expected to build on the market's momentum, with stabilisation emerging as the dominant theme, analysts said. Vacancy rates in prime assets in core districts were likely to steady further, but......

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) expects to work with other financial regulators to promote artificial intelligence adoption in various sectors over the next five years and further advance fintech development, according to the head of the city's de facto central bank. Under the five-year plan called Fintech 2030 that starts this year, the HKMA would expand the scope of the city's generative AI sandbox to include more industries as a step towards enhancing risk management, fraud detection......

Digital finance has moved into the mainstream as regulated stablecoins and tokenised assets scale up, but industry experts say 2026 will be defined by success in developing interoperable, regulated, use-case-driven rails rather than more digital silos. As more than 130 jurisdictions explore central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), alongside dozens of stablecoin initiatives and a growing array of tokenisation platforms, day-to-day payments and finance are undergoing a rapid structural......

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly shaping educational practices across Hong Kong, mainland China and beyond, yet the rapid integration of AI into learning environments reveals significant risks that cannot be overlooked. Protecting young users requires coordinated action: parents, policymakers and AI developers must work together to strengthen safety standards and ensure responsible deployment. AI is no longer merely a virtual tutor that supports students' learning. It is increasingly......

A new user on the prediction market Polymarket has attracted attention after winning hundreds of thousands of dollars on bets that appeared to predict the United States' seizure of Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro. The anonymous user set up an account on the platform eight days ago and then placed a series of wagers worth nearly US$34,000 before the assault, which had raked in profits of more than US$409,000 by Sunday afternoon, Polymarket data showed. The wagers included predictions that......

The slumbering property sector remains a threat to China's economic growth because of its huge impact on the employment rate and consumer demand, according to industry officials and analysts. Amid sharp declines in property investment, housing sales and home prices last year, a further downturn of the significant sector may put more developers, workers, homebuyers and banks at risk. In the first 11 months of 2025, new properties worth 7.5 trillion yuan (US$1.07 trillion), comprising units for......

Initial public offerings (IPOs) in mainland China nearly doubled in 2025 from a year earlier after the securities regulator rolled back curbs on new listings and resumed approvals for pre-profit technology companies, in line with Beijing's drive to replace imported tech products with home-grown alternatives. A total of 115 companies raised a combined 128 billion yuan (US$18.3 billion) from IPOs on the Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing exchanges this year, according to Bloomberg data. That eclipsed......

Hangzhou-based biotech start-up MindRank has progressed to Phase 3 clinical trials for its weight-loss drug, making it China's first artificial intelligence-assisted Category 1 new drug to reach this stage. MindRank announced last month that it had initiated a Phase 3 clinical trial in China for MDR-001, a small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonists designed with the help of AI. GLP-1 receptor agonists mimic natural hormones to regulate blood sugar and appetite. According to Niu Zhangming, MindRank's......

Lacklustre sales at the end of 2025 will bode ill for the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) market this year, with low-priced carmakers under pressure to offer further price cuts amid an adjusted trade-in subsidy mechanism. A bleak outlook could also prompt authorities to rein in a discount war as few assemblers are able to post profits. “As deliveries failed to live up to expectations, all major players would have to slash prices of their vehicles to reduce their inventories at the beginning of......

The more than US$2 billion acquisition of agentic AI start-up Manus by US social media giant Meta Platforms could face scrutiny from Beijing over technology export controls, experts warn. The sale of Manus, a Singapore-based but Chinese-founded AI agent developer, could raise compliance questions around Beijing's technology export regime, and expectations that the company can fully decouple from China may be “oversimplified”, said Cui Fan, a professor at the University of International Business......

Hong Kong's property market rallied to a four-year high in 2025 following the city government's easing measures and lower interest rates, according to Centaline Property Agency. In the past 12 months, the number of registered sales agreements for residential units, carparking spaces and commercial and industrial properties increased 18.7 per cent year on year to 80,700, while the amount involved rose 15.4 per cent to HK$616.4 billion, data from Centaline showed. The realtor noted that 2025......

On the last day of 2025, DeepSeek published a new technical paper, with founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng among the 19 co-authors, about “manifold-constrained hyper-connections” – a general framework for training artificial intelligence systems at scale, which suggested “promising directions for the evolution of foundational models”. That release was a fitting reminder to the world, especially during the peak of the Christmas holiday season, about Chinese AI companies' sharpened focus on innovation......

More Chinese and local issuers could tap Dubai to list debt and equity securities, signalling confidence in the Chinese economy and the deepening economic corridor between China and the Middle East, according to the CEO of Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA). The momentum would build on Emirates NBD Bank's recent offshore yuan bond of 1 billion yuan (US$143 million), listed on Nasdaq Dubai, marking the lender's return to the dim sum bond market and enabling global investors to access......

Hua Hong Semiconductor, China's No 2 contract chipmaker, on Wednesday announced the acquisition of its sister foundry in Shanghai, days after market leader Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) said it would take full control of a subsidiary. Those big-ticket transactions – 8.27 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) for Hua Hong and 40.6 billion yuan for SMIC – signalled a fresh round of consolidation in the country's semiconductor industry, as Beijing's tech self-sufficiency drive......

China's top party journal has called for a stronger package of policies implemented in one go – rather than through “piecemeal-style steps” – to stabilise the country's struggling property sector, as the market remains vital to the domestic economy and consumer demand. The article published by Qiushi, the Communist Party's leading theoretical journal, said policymakers should take concrete steps to stabilise the property market, urging them to implement measures that are “aligned with market......