For a while, it all seemed like it might just work out. By one estimate, about 130,000 American jobs were said to be riding on the electric-vehicle boom sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act. Other estimates put that number around 160,000; if you include indirect but related fields, it may be closer to half a million. Regardless, it’s clear that the Biden-era legislation that laid out incentives to manufacture EVs and batteries domestically, along with penalties if automakers don’t, was set to drive a lot of employment. Add in the potential to catch up to China’s decades-long lead on battery technology and the potential for less air pollution, and America’s EV race seems like a win for all involved. So why would President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress be so
Tag Archives: ChinaTech
Feb
Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior government officials met a group of prominent Chinese tech entrepreneurs in Beijing last week. That neither the property nor finance sector was represented sent a clear signal of the government’s priority. Attendees included Jack Ma , co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding (which owns the South China Morning Post), Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun , Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng , BYD chairman and CEO Wang Chuanfu and Huawei Technologies founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei . Other business leaders included CATL chairman Robin Zeng Yuqun and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng , as well as Wang Xingxing , founder of robotics company Unitree, and Liu Yonghao , chairman of animal feed producer New Hope. This meeting came at a significant time in
Jan
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up MiniMax has launched a new series of open-source models, intensifying the competition among mainland technology firms to deliver cost-effective AI systems that can rival top offerings from US competitors. The Shanghai-based company on Tuesday unveiled the MiniMax-01 large language model (LLM) family, which includes a general-purpose foundational model, the MiniMax-Text-01, and the multimodal MiniMax-VL-01 with visual capabilities. LLMs are the tech that powers text-generating AI products such as ChatGPT . In benchmark tests that MiniMax posted to its official WeChat account, the new foundational language model was shown to be on par with the world’s leading AI models in evaluations that included maths problem solving, domain knowledge, the ability to follow instructions, and avoiding hallucinations or factual errors. MiniMax’s release of an industry-leading AI system