I went to the Maldives. Everyone wanted to talk about Temu

29 June 2026 at 05:00

One evening in the Maldives, I spent a few hours talking with local entrepreneurs. I expected to hear about tourism, politics, or the economy. Instead, they kept talking about Temu....

What happened to China’s overseas EV factory boom?

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

25 June 2026 at 05:00

Despite all the global worry about China building car factories around the world and stifling local competitors, it turns out that Chinese EV companies have actually been homebodies. Between 2020...

China and the West are taking opposite paths on EV battery recycling

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

24 June 2026 at 05:00

The first wave of electric-vehicle batteries is reaching the end of the road, and China and the West are taking very different paths on what to do with them. An...

The AI-powered World Cup runs on thousands of data workers

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran and Michael Beltran

23 June 2026 at 05:00

The current edition of the FIFA World Cup features a sensor-fitted ball, real-time tracking, artificial intelligence-assisted offside calls, and an AI assistant for each of the 48 teams. Behind these...

Chinese universities are cutting language majors to make way for AI

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo

22 June 2026 at 05:00

As artificial intelligence reshapes the global economy, Chinese universities are rapidly redrawing the landscape of what is worth studying. In recent months, Chinese universities have actively cut foreign language and...

GoPro and Roomba were U.S. pioneers. Chinese rivals now dominate

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo

19 June 2026 at 08:00

After moving to Taiwan and taking up scuba diving, I recently started shopping for an underwater camera. What began as a simple search quickly turned into an exploration of the...

A customer experiences the Osmo Pocket 4 camera at a DJI store in Shanghai, China, on April 20, 2026. (Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Chile turned to China for an undersea cable. The U.S. said no

Rest of World

By: Juan Ortiz-Freuler

18 June 2026 at 05:00

On the morning of February 20, 2026, Juan Carlos Muñoz, then Chile’s minister of transportation and telecommunications, woke up to an email from the U.S. State Department. It informed him...

When Americans choose Chinese AI

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

17 June 2026 at 05:00

Stu Clott, an operations manager and part-time developer in San Diego, used to code with Claude. But he recently found a cheaper alternative: DeepSeek. While an hourlong coding session would...

Spotify’s post-English AI future

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran

16 June 2026 at 05:00

At the end of every year, Spotify Wrapped takes over social media feeds, with users showing off the annual recap of their top music choices. Lately, these reviews have taken...

Can open-source beat OpenAI?

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo

15 June 2026 at 05:00

As the U.S. and China battle for artificial intelligence supremacy, a fundamental divide in engineering philosophy could determine the winner. While American pioneers like OpenAI and Anthropic favor a closed-source...

What the SpaceX IPO reveals about Gulf money in AI

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

12 June 2026 at 08:00

Poring over the SpaceX IPO prospectus, a recurring theme surfaces: the massive, quiet influence of Middle Eastern finance in the most ambitious IPO in history. Sovereign wealth funds of Saudi...

China builds a rival satellite constellation as SpaceX goes public

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

11 June 2026 at 05:00

Chinese upstart Spacesail is trying to steal SpaceX’s thunder. State-backed Spacesail launched two satellites on a reusable rocket on June 1, just days before SpaceX’s $1.8 trillion listing on June...

Big Tech, big cons: Scammers are hiding in the apps that make your life easy

Rest of World

By: Soumya Gupta

10 June 2026 at 05:00

Take a moment to think about your day: How many things did you do online? Perhaps you made a call or two via WhatsApp. You sent at least one WhatsApp...

The Great AI Divide: Navigating U.S. and Chinese dominance

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran

9 June 2026 at 05:00

Since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, AI has quickly changed how we work, how we learn, how we love, how we heal. It has also made...

As the world embraces EVs, the U.S. hits the brakes

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

8 June 2026 at 05:00

Electric cars swept the world last year, everywhere except the U.S. Global EV sales grew 20% in 2025 to exceed 20 million, with one in four new cars sold worldwide...

Silicon Valley’s lure is fading for India’s tech talent

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

5 June 2026 at 08:00

Every month, at least two to three Indian-origin AI researchers in Silicon Valley between the ages of 25 and 35 reach out to Aakrit Vaish, founder of AI venture fund...

What to read: A summer book list

Rest of World

By: Rest of World

5 June 2026 at 05:00

Nick Srnicek details the geopolitical economy of artificial intelligence, and how a handful of big tech companies, and the U.S. and China, are jostling to control its development. Their actions...

Scarcity is driving AI innovation outside Silicon Valley

Rest of World

By: Ilman Shazhaev

4 June 2026 at 05:00

For years, the assumption around artificial intelligence infrastructure was that serious compute would be built in places where hyperscale cloud, developer density, and capital were already concentrated: Silicon Valley, Seattle,...

China is training a robot future — one folded shirt at a time

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

3 June 2026 at 05:00

Daniel Wang came home to his apartment in Beijing and saw a humanoid robot waiting for him. He opened the door, and the robot got to work. The robot, developed...

A robot performs house chores at the Hisense booth at the SNEIC expo center in Shanghai, China, on March 12, 2026.

EVs are getting more affordable worldwide — except in the U.S.

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

2 June 2026 at 05:00

Electric cars became more affordable across much of the world in 2025 — except the U.S. One in four cars sold globally is now electric. Penetration in the U.S., however,...

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