Alibaba’s Qwen launches AI ride-hailing feature to rival Didi
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s artificial intelligence chatbot Qwen rolled out a ride-hailing feature on Monday, intensifying competition with market leader Didi to integrate generative AI into daily transport services. Users can now book rides, select vehicle types, schedule trips, and pay directly within the Qwen app. The service is powered by Alibaba’s mapping platform Amap. This upgrades an earlier integration introduced in December, which generated visual decision cards but required users to open the separate Amap application to complete a booking. Didi launched its own AI assistant, Xiaodi, within its main app last week after initiating public testing in September.
Xiaomi posts first quarterly profit drop since 2022
Xiaomi Corp. reported a 23.7% year-on-year decline in adjusted net profit to 6.3 billion yuan ($915 million) in the fourth quarter of 2025, marking its first quarterly profit drop since the end of 2022. Revenue for the quarter rose 7.3% to 116.9 billion yuan. For the full year, the company’s revenue grew 25% to 457.3 billion yuan, with adjusted net profit surging 43.8% to 39.2 billion yuan. President Lu Weibing said during an earnings call that the duration and magnitude of the recent surge in memory prices have far exceeded expectations. He added that price hikes for Xiaomi smartphones are inevitable, though the company will try to absorb the higher costs for as long as possible while making trade-offs to maintain market share.
China’s daily AI token usage exceed 140 trillion
The daily average number of token usage by artificial intelligence models in China surpassed 140 trillion as of March, a more than 1,000-fold increase from early 2024, said Liu Liehong, head of the National Data Administration. The figure also represents a more than 40% jump within three months from 100 trillion at the end of 2025, indicating that China’s AI development has entered a rapid growth phase, Liu said during a press conference on Tuesday.
China Telecom to boost AI spending
China Telecom Co. Ltd. will cut its overall capital expenditure in 2026 while sharply increasing spending on artificial intelligence computing power, marking a major strategic pivot as the state-owned carrier confronts stagnating growth. The company plans to spend 73 billion yuan ($10.6 billion) on capital expenditure in 2026, down 9.2% from 80.4 billion yuan in 2025, Chairman Ke Ruiwen said at an earnings briefing Tuesday. Despite the overall reduction, investment in computing power infrastructure will jump 26% and account for 35% of total capital expenditure. Spending on traditional network infrastructure, by contrast, will fall 26%, representing 41% of the total budget. In 2025, network spending accounted for 51% of capital expenditure, while computing power made up 25%.
