Is mega chip IPO to blame for China’s tech rout?
A multibillion-dollar IPO by Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT Corp. is taking the blame for a severe sell-off in domestic tech equities, spotlighting the market’s vulnerability to liquidity squeezes. As retail investors were required to cough up 33.3 billion yuan ($4.9 billion) to settle CXMT’s IPO share allocations Monday, tech hardware sectors suffered more than 23 billion yuan in net outflows.
EU fines Alibaba’s AliExpress 550 million euros for failing to curb illegal goods
The European Commission has fined Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s cross-border e-commerce unit AliExpress 550 million euros ($628 million) for failing to curb the sale of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit goods on its platform. In announcing the decision on Monday under the Digital Services Act, the commission said AliExpress failed to adequately assess and mitigate risks tied to illicit products. Regulators ordered the platform to take corrective action, citing too few compliance staff, the absence of meaningful quantitative metrics in risk assessments and a failure to examine whether its recommendation and advertising systems were amplifying the spread of illegal goods. AliExpress must submit an action plan to the commission by Oct. 20, 2026, setting out how it will remedy the violations. The European Board for Digital Services will have one month to review the plan, after which the commission will adopt a final decision and set an implementation timetable. The commission said AliExpress could face additional periodic penalties if it fails to comply.
China’s integrated circuit exports surge 88.7%
Driven by robust global demand for artificial intelligence and green transitions, China’s export value of integrated circuits jumped 88.7% year-on-year in the first half of this year, Wang Weiming, chief engineer at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at a Monday press briefing. Export value of electronic components and wind turbines also grew by 62.6% and 35.6%, respectively, during the same period.
ByteDance launches audio creation model
ByteDance Ltd. launched its audio creation model, Seed Audio 1.0, on Monday, making it available for public testing on its Volcengine platform. The model can generate vocals, sound effects and ambient sounds under a unified framework, achieving end-to-end cinematic audio creation. It features multi-element orchestration, controllable vocal styles and natural generation in multiple languages, with a usability rate of over 90% across nine major creation scenarios, including film, short dramas and animation.
China dominates global quadruped robot sales
China-developed quadruped robots accounted for nearly 70% of global sales in the first half of this year, while China produced more than 400 humanoid robot models, representing more than half of the global total, according to data released Monday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The ministry also said that China’s total intelligent computing scale reached 2,185 exaflops by the end of June. Meanwhile, cumulative global downloads of self-developed open-source large AI models have surpassed 10 billion.
