Nvidia’s CPU move and China’s EV makers go solid

Hello everyone. This is Cissy from Hong Kong, your #techAsia host this week.

The AI story moved fast this week and on multiple fronts simultaneously. In the U.S., Anthropic quietly filed for an initial public offering after recently raising capital at a massive $965 billion valuation. In China, two of the country’s leading artificial intelligence startups, MiniMax and Zhipu, filed for Shanghai dual listings, just six months after the duo’s blockbuster IPOs in Hong Kong, a sign that Chinese AI is entering a new phase of institutional capital formation.

The week’s most dramatic market moment came from Tencent, with its shares posting their biggest intraday gain since late 2022 after the Financial Times reported the company is testing a prototype AI agent to help its ubiquitous app WeChat’s 1.4 billion users autonomously navigate its millions of mini-programs. In Tencent’s Q4 earnings call, the company already said that a new agentic AI for WeChat was under development. Reports that the product could be launched as early as this month suggested a faster-than-expected rollout and the company appears to be accelerating its AI push, which might have fueled the share rally, though its stock price dipped around 3% the next day.

For context: Tencent’s shares have fallen more than 20% since the start of the year amid growing investor concerns that it was losing ground to Alibaba and ByteDance in the AI race, with its Hunyuan foundation model widely perceived as trailing rival offerings. But can a successful WeChat agent fundamentally change how investors perceive the company? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, with the AI infrastructure race being constrained by memory supply as much as anything else, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, speaking at Taipei’s Computex, announced plans for SK Hynix to double wafer production capacity over five years to meet surging AI demand. As a key supplier of Nvidia, the announcement was met with Jensen Huang’s witty message: Please Make More, which Huang signed on an HBM4E wafer in front of cameras when he visited the South Korean chipmaker’s booth.

Nvidia’s new direction

Nvidia is pushing into personal computing with RTX Spark, its chip that brings data-center-grade AI processing to laptops. The latest chip will enable AI agents to run locally on your device, redefining how you use PCs in the future.

Nvidia is known for its graphics processing units, or GPUs, the chips that power artificial intelligence. But GPUs need to work alongside central processing units, or CPUs, which have traditionally been dominated by Intel and AMD. Nvidia’s foray into the CPU market shows its broader ambition to own more of the computing stack, write Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li.

Its latest AI system, called Vera Rubin, is the first to include a dedicated rack of 256 of Nvidia’s own Vera CPUs. Nvidia has already sold millions of its previous-generation Grace Blackwell systems, making it “one of the largest CPU makers in the world,” CEO Jensen Huang claimed at Nvidia’s GTC event in Taipei.

Meanwhile, its largest-ever supercomputing systems for AI, called Vera Rubin NVL 72, are now in full production to power AI agents.

An agent for change

Tencent is testing an embedded AI agent for WeChat, the ubiquitous “superapp” used across China, writes the Financial Times’ Zijing Wu.

The company is testing a prototype of the agent, which can help users complete tasks within the app, aiming to start the compliance process required before a public launch as soon as this month, according to two people with knowledge of the plan.

After that, Tencent plans to test the agent on a small group of outside users before initiating a phased rollout.

However, a public launch date has not been set because the amount of time required for the compliance process is uncertain, while executives are being careful to properly test the agent before a wider release.

Tencent shares rose 10.5% in Hong Kong on Tuesday after the FT report was published.

The successful launch of an AI agent on China’s most-used app could help Tencent leapfrog its domestic rivals, which have built stronger models and already implemented agents across their platforms.

Alibaba has integrated its e-commerce, travel and mapping services into its Qwen AI app, while ByteDance has added agentic functions such as online shopping to its Doubao app.

Tencent declined to comment.

SoftBank dethrones Toyota

As the AI rally accelerates across global stock markets, shares of SoftBank Group, one of the most aggressive AI investors in the world, continue to surge, pushing its market capitalization past Toyota Motor’s for the first time in more than two decades, writes Nikkei Asia’s Jada Nagumo.

The surge was driven by the tech conglomerate’s stellar earnings and huge bet on ChatGPT developer OpenAI. SoftBank completed an investment of $10 billion in OpenAI in April and committed to inject a further $20 billion this year, which would bring its total investment to roughly $65 billion.

The change signals a broader reordering in the Japanese equity market, where automakers, along with banks, steelmakers, utilities and other traditional heavy industries, are losing ground to chipmakers and artificial intelligence-related companies.

A solid strategy

Chinese automakers SAIC Motor and BYD are set to launch electric vehicles equipped with all-solid-state batteries in 2027, the next generation of EV batteries deemed a game changer as they are safer and boast a higher energy density than current lithium-ion batteries, write Nikkei’s Shizuka Tanabe and Tomoko Wakasugi.

MG, a British brand under SAIC’s umbrella, has already launched models equipped with semi-solid batteries that reduce liquid electrolyte content to 5%.

In Japan, Toyota Motor aims to commercialize EVs with all-solid-state batteries between 2027 and 2028. Nissan Motor is targeting commercialization by fiscal 2028, which ends in March of 2029, while Honda Motor is aiming for the latter half of the 2020s.

Suggested reads

1. Alibaba opens Qwen to external apps as China’s AI agent race intensifies (Nikkei Asia)

2. SoftBank pledges 75bn euros to build Europe’s biggest AI facility in France (FT)

3. Applied Materials looks to hire 25% more chip talent in Southeast Asia (Nikkei Asia)

4. How Iran’s military harnesses western AI (FT)

5. Pudu Robotics eyes Hong Kong listing amid geopolitical risks (Nikkei Asia)

6. The chip and memory stock frenzy (FT)

7. SK Hynix ascends as new memory king with high-bandwidth AI chips (Nikkei Asia)

8. EU fines China’s Temu 200mn euros for failing to prevent sale of illegal goods (FT)

9. Kioxia briefly overtakes Toyota, rises to No. 2 in Japan by market cap (Nikkei Asia)

10. Payments group accused of being ‘Chinese backdoor’ moves staff out of China (FT)

Podcast: Tech Latest

AI stock trading gains ground across Asia

Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Shotaro Tani, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector.

In this episode, Shotaro speaks with Hong Kong correspondent Lorretta Chen about how artificial intelligence is shaking up stock trading for Asian retail investors.

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