Fear not China’s giant robots

Welcome to The Prompt, your Monday dive into the world of AI that puts Asia front and center. From Big Tech’s power players to the region’s scrappy disruptors, we cover it all. Want full access to all our AI reporting? Subscribe to us here.

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Hello reader,

I’m a fan of the Gundam series and built my fair share of plastic models back in the day. So when I saw Unitree’s latest giant robot come to life, the franchise was the first thing that popped into my mind.

But even in my dreams, I probably wouldn’t have US$650,000 to buy the half-ton monster.

This newest robotics debut is just one of the many inventions China wants to wow us with. At the country’s spring gala earlier this year, its robots stunned the world with martial arts skills

Still, once the spectacle was over, the bigger question was: then what?

For all their viral robot videos, China’s tech giants still haven’t fully cracked the business of AI. Despite the hype around Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen and Tencent’s Hunyuan models, turning AI into meaningful revenue remains an uphill battle. Chinese firms are still widely seen as lagging behind US players in both frontier model capabilities and commercialization.

That gap, of course, didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Washington’s export controls have restricted China’s access to Nvidia’s most advanced chips, limiting the computing power needed to train and run cutting-edge AI systems.

The geopolitics around AI have become so intense that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang even joined Donald Trump’s recent trip to China – albeit so last-minute that the internet quickly turned it into a meme.

Still, even if Alibaba and Tencent haven’t fully solved the AI monetization puzzle themselves, their ecosystems are already shaping the next generation of AI startups across Southeast Asia.

As my colleague Glenn and Duc explore in our top AI read this past week, many of the region’s emerging AI founders come directly from the talent pipelines of ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, and their sprawling alumni networks.

Miguel Cordon, journalist

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TOP AI READS FROM OUR DESK

1️⃣ Tracking the alumni networks powering SEA’s AI startups

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