China Recap is a weekly roundup tracking Chinese companies expanding abroad, covering market entries, funding rounds, product launches, and global partnerships.
China’s corporate globalization strategy is evolving fast. Industry giants are rewriting the global playbook, while a new generation of companies charts fresh paths overseas.
China Recap tracks both—focusing on strategic expansion, brand building, and localized operations—to help readers make sense of shifting trends and understand how Chinese firms are reshaping their global approach.
Here’s what made headlines last week, featuring key takeaways from this year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), held in Shanghai from July 26–28:
Ant debuts Agentar-Fin-R1, a finance-focused large model
Ant Digital Technologies gave Agentar-Fin-R1, a large model built for financial reasoning, its debut during WAIC 2025. Agentar-Fin-R1 reportedly outperforms general and finance-specific models on key benchmarks and supports agentic artificial intelligence applications across banking, insurance, and funds.
RockAI previews Yan 2.0 model built for offline, low-power AI
RockAI offered WAIC 2025 visitors a preview of its Yan 2.0 model, which reportedly forgoes transformers to enable real-time performance on low-power hardware. The startup anticipates growing demand from privacy-conscious users and manufacturers seeking speed, security, and robust AI capabilities without constant internet connectivity.
SenseTime launches new AI model and initiative
SenseTime launched its SenseNova V6.5 multimodal large model and said it has partnered with more than ten Chinese firms—including Huawei, Cambricon, and Moore Threads—to roll out a “compute mall” initiative aimed at strengthening China’s domestic AI infrastructure. —36Kr
China leads in global AI model count
China has released 1,509 large AI models to date, more than any other country and accounting for over 40% of the global total, according to data shared at WAIC 2025. The country currently hosts more than 5,100 AI firms, with listed companies said to drive 70% of domestic AI revenue across areas including large models, autonomous driving, and AI chips. —Xinhua
Tencent unveils a wave of new AI releases
During WAIC 2025, Tencent unveiled new foundation models, AI agents, and a robotics platform, marking its most expansive AI push yet. It has also open-sourced its HunyuanWorld-1.0 model and introduced tools for education, travel, music, and gaming.
Agibot eyes global rollout for embodied AI
Agibot announced it will begin open-sourcing its embodied intelligence operating systemin the fourth quarter this year to build a shared ecosystem for robotics. The company also launched Genie Envisioner, a predictive world model platform for dual-arm robots, and said its X2 robot will enter mass production in the second half of 2025. —IT Zhijia
SenseTime introduces Wuneng and Kaiwu
SenseTime introduced Wuneng, an embodied AI platform powered by its world model engine and backed by both cloud and edge computing, according to 36Kr. Designed to support perception, visual navigation, and multimodal interaction, Wuneng reportedly generates time- and space-consistent video to help robots and smart devices engage with a 4D real-world environment.
The company also unveiled Kaiwu, a video generation model that is said to produce physics-consistent data for training embodied AI, per 21st Century Business Herald. By addressing challenges like ghosting and spatiotemporal distortion, Kaiwu aims to replace traditional simulation data with high-fidelity outputs rooted in real-world dynamics.
Huawei debuts AI system to rival Nvidia
Huawei unveiled its CloudMatrix 384 AI computing system, built with 384 of its 910C chips and positioned to rival Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72. The company said this system employs architecture-level innovations to offset chip-level limitations, underscoring its push to expand in the AI hardware market despite US export controls. —Reuters
Alibaba enters China’s smart glasses market
Alibaba introduced its Quark AI smart glasses at WAIC 2025. Powered by Qualcomm’s AR1 chip, the eyewear integrates with Alipay, Taobao, and Amap to support real-time navigation, QR payments, and product checks. An official launch is expected later this year. —SCMP
NetEase debuts AI model for mining sites
NetEase introduced Lingjue, an embodied AI model for autonomous excavator control in open-pit mines, now operational in Inner Mongolia. The company claims Lingjue can support remote operations from over 1,000 kilometers away and represents its growing deployment of AI in industrial scenarios. —36Kr
That wraps up this edition of China Recap. If your company is expanding internationally, we’d love to hear about your latest milestones. Get in touch to share your story.