ByteDance reshuffles workplace tool Feishu in AI push
ByteDance Ltd. is breaking up its workplace-collaboration unit Feishu and folding its product and sales teams into two larger AI businesses, a restructuring that underscores the Chinese tech giant’s AI push. Feishu’s product team will merge with the team behind Doubao, its flagship AI assistant, while Feishu’s go-to-market team handling marketing, sales and customer-service will be combined with ByteDance’s cloud computing arm, Volcano Engine, the Beijing-based company announced Thursday. Feishu’s existing products and services will remain unchanged after the restructuring. The changes come as CEO Liang Rubo has placed AI at the center of ByteDance’s strategy.
Robotics startup Unitree launches $620 million STAR Market IPO
Chinese robotics startup Unitree Robotics formally launched its initial public offering on Shanghai’s STAR Market on Thursday, aiming to raise 4.2 billion yuan ($620 million) at an implied valuation of 42 billion yuan. The Hangzhou-based company will offer a 10% stake to public investors, with the subscription period scheduled for early August. Unitree’s journey from application in March to regulatory clearance in July marks the fastest review process in the STAR Market’s history, bypassing previous records set by domestic semiconductor developers. The startup plans to allocate nearly half of its IPO proceeds to the research and development of foundational AI models for robots. The remaining funds will finance hardware upgrades, new product development and the construction of a smart manufacturing base.
Zhongji Innolight slides in Hong Kong debut following $7 billion IPO
Shares of the world’s largest optical module manufacturer, Zhongji Innolight Co. Ltd., fell on their Hong Kong market debut in the financial hub’s largest initial public offering since 2019. The Chinese technology supplier closed down 2.04% in Hong Kong on Thursday, while its Shenzhen-traded shares plunged 9.15% on record daily trading volume of nearly 60 billion yuan ($8.9 billion). The lackluster debut underscores mounting global investor anxiety that massive AI infrastructure spending by major tech companies may not yield expected financial returns, triggering a broader sell-off across the AI hardware supply chain. The stock drop occurred despite the company’s strong fundamentals and recent efforts to reassure the market. Just days prior, Zhongji Innolight dismissed rumors of price cuts, confirmed robust demand for its next-generation products and proposed a share buyback of up to 8 billion yuan.
Tencent’s WorkBuddy update supports AI collaborative document editing
Tencent Holdings Ltd. released a new version of WorkBuddy on Thursday, allowing users to directly co-create, modify and collaborate in real time with AI within documents such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Markdown. After opening a Tencent document or local Microsoft Office file in WorkBuddy, users can select text, tables or slides and use natural language to assign tasks to AI, effectively turning AI agents from an external tool into an in-document collaborator.
