Chinese EV makers are cashing in on Western luxury knockoffs

28 August 2025 at 05:00

Chinese automakers are imitating not to flatter but to profit. Companies such as Chery, Xiaomi, and Zeekr appear to be drawing heavily from premium Western car designs, banking on familiar...

AI robot dolls charm their way into nursing the elderly

Rest of World

By: Michelle Kim

27 August 2025 at 05:00

In her tiny sunlit Seoul apartment, Kim Jeong-ran sat on her bed, talking affectionately to a cloth doll perched on her lap. “Hyodol, you’re my lovely granddaughter,” the 81-year-old said,...

Kim Jeong-ran, 81, speaks with her Hyodol, an AI-equipped companion robot, at her home in Gungdong, Guro-gu, Seoul, South Korea, Jul 23, 2025.

The dirty truth behind the e-waste recycling industry

Rest of World

By: Yashraj Sharma

26 August 2025 at 05:00

In the dead of a cold December night in 2023, at a dump near Delhi, hundreds of men huddled around small bonfires, clutching paper cups of tea. They tossed plastic...

Workers dismantle discarded electronic items at e-waste informal market in north-east Delhi.

How Africa’s e-commerce giant is fighting off Shein and Temu

Rest of World

By: Damilare Dosunmu

25 August 2025 at 05:00

Competition has been steep for Jumia, Africa’s largest e-commerce platform, especially from major Chinese companies like Temu and Shein. Jumia is now using the same playbook its Chinese rivals have...

Francis Dufay, chief executive officer of Jumia Technologies AG.

The Mongolian startup defying Big Tech with its own LLM

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

22 August 2025 at 05:00

Silicon Valley firms are rushing to train artificial intelligence models with tens of thousands of graphics processing units, and offering multimillion-dollar salaries to star researchers. Meanwhile, in Mongolia, Badral Sanlig...

AI giants race to scoop up elusive real-world data

Rest of World

By: Itika Sharma Punit

21 August 2025 at 05:00

Amid an intense battle for supremacy, artificial-intelligence companies are forging alliances across industries and regions to help gather real-world data that can’t be scraped from the internet. Over the past...

A hidden network handles chats for OnlyFans stars. AI could soon take over

Rest of World

By: Michael Beltran

20 August 2025 at 05:00

Artificial intelligence chatbots are starting to take over from low-wage workers, known as “chatters,” who impersonate OnlyFans stars in direct messaging with fans. The adult website’s creators rely on these...

China’s biggest delivery app brings its disruptive playbook to Brazil

Rest of World

By: Gabriel Daros

19 August 2025 at 05:00

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva traveled to China in May, where he signed several deals including a five-year $1 billion commercial agreement with Wang Xing, the co-founder and...

Food delivery couriers rally during a national strike in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Big Tech’s “AI for good” spending increases in Africa. So does skepticism

Rest of World

By: Damilare Dosunmu

18 August 2025 at 05:00

American tech giants have increased spending on artificial intelligence tools designed to resolve some of the world’s most pressing problems. Since 2020, Google has spent $200 million on AI-driven social...

Silicon Valley is sucking up Singapore’s tech talent

Rest of World

By: Mehran Gul

15 August 2025 at 05:00

Singapore is known for channelling its best talent into the public sector and with GovTech it’s no different. The government aims to staff the agency with the same calibre of...

A staff member of GovTech demonstrating the use of facial verification technology in Singapore.

China falls back on gasoline to drive its global EV conquest

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo

14 August 2025 at 05:00

China’s electric-vehicle revolution just engaged reverse gear. The world’s largest EV producer is flooding international markets with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that run both on batteries and gasoline. Chinese hybrid...

Dubai’s robotaxi dreams are coming for human drivers

Rest of World

By: Amar Diwakar

13 August 2025 at 05:00

On the manicured roads of the United Arab Emirates, a driverless future is slowly taking shape. Robotaxis zip past palm tree-lined streets, luxury hotels, and glass towers glinting under the...

China’s vision for a driverless future is miles ahead of everyone else’s

Rest of World

By: Yi-Ling Liu

12 August 2025 at 05:00

At the glitzy Auto Shanghai show in April this year, the message was clear: China is making the cars of the future, and that future will be increasingly electrified, connected,...

These countries want to be the next big semiconductor hubs

Rest of World

By: Daniela Dib · Lam Le and Yashraj Sharma

11 August 2025 at 05:00

In February, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled Kutsari Center, a national chip design hub — the first step in an ambitious plan to develop a homegrown semiconductor industry. Dozens of scientists...

The UAE is giving away its advanced AI

Rest of World

By: Divsha Bhat

8 August 2025 at 05:00

Abu Dhabi is giving away what Silicon Valley sells. The United Arab Emirates is offering its advanced Falcon artificial intelligence programs completely free at a time when OpenAI, Google, and...

Google vs. Perplexity fight plays out in India as AI battle intensifies

Rest of World

By: Javaid Iqbal Sofi

7 August 2025 at 05:00

The push notification arrived quietly one morning in July on Airtel’s bright-red mobile app. The Indian telecom company had a tantalizing offer for its 360 million subscribers: Perplexity Pro, the...

China’s AI drug discovery companies land huge deals with Big Pharma

Rest of World

By: Leslie Liang

6 August 2025 at 05:00

Western pharmaceutical giants are striking multibillion-dollar deals with Chinese biotech firms that use artificial intelligence, signaling growing confidence in China’s ability to deliver faster and cheaper innovative drugs. In June,...

They left Syria as refugees. They’re returning to build its tech industry

Rest of World

By: Kaya Genç

5 August 2025 at 05:00

Over 2.6 million Syrians live in Turkey as refugees, but for tech workers, it’s still a small world. In 2019, a group of refugees formed a nonprofit, Digital Istanbul, to...

Big Tech is building AI in the desert. The water may not last

Rest of World

By: Divsha Bhat

4 August 2025 at 05:00

The Gulf’s trillion-dollar race to become an artificial-intelligence superpower faces the region’s biggest challenge: water. Data centers powering AI across the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are consuming water...

VinFast speeds into India after U.S. U-turn

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

4 August 2025 at 02:40

VinFast is building factories faster than it can sell cars. The Vietnamese electric-vehicle maker opened its first Indian factory on August 4, betting on expansion even as its existing plant...

Reading view