CHINA-BEIJING-APPLE CEO-SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BACKYARDS-VISIT (CN)

Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams talk with a university student in China (Cai Yang/Getty Images)

Apples of my Eye

Apple is playing the AI field in China, too, working with both Baidu and Alibaba

The iPhone maker is in a situationship with both Baidu and Alibaba.

2/13/25 11:30AM

Apple doesn’t want to get tied down when it comes to AI. The Information reports that the iPhone maker is continuing to work with search engine and AI chatbot company Baidu to develop the AI functionality on its phones in China. That’s after news it’s also working with Chinese e-commerce and AI company Alibaba to do the same thing.

The Baidu partnership involves “developing an AI-powered search feature that can handle images and text and upgrades to the Chinese version of Siri voice assistant,” The Information said, citing two people with direct knowledge.

Meanwhile, Alibaba is still talking up its relationship with Apple.

“Apple has been very selective. They talked to a number of companies in China, and in the end they choose to do business with us,” Alibaba Chairman Joseph Tsai told an interviewer at a conference in Dubai today. “They want to use our AI to power their phones.”

Apple has had to pair with local companies in order to sate Chinese regulation and offer its full suite of AI features in the country.

For Apple’s part, it’s also been playing the field in the US, offloading some of its Apple Intelligence capabilities to OpenAI’s ChatGPT rather than keeping its AI exclusively in-house. Apple has also discussed partnering with other AI companies like Google. The strategy has helped Apple avoid a lot of the capital expenditure outlays of its biggest tech competitors. It also helped Apple avoid the AI tech company rout last month by ultimately not making it much of an AI tech company.

For what it’s worth, shares of Apple, Alibaba, and Baidu are up today — but Baidu is up the most.

Nate Becker

Reading between the lines on the latest SpaceX merger report and Musk’s cryptic tweet

There are a few things to note in and around Bloomberg’s report that SpaceX and xAI are in advanced deal talks.

Jon Keegan4h

Analyst: Investors should brace for Europe’s breakup with US Big Tech

The signs are there: the French government has restricted the use of Zoom for its employees. In Germany, the state of Schleswig-Holstein is ending the use of Microsoft Teams among its workers.

As US-EU tensions rise, Europe is looking to secure its own “digital sovereignty,” reduce its dependence on US-owned technology platforms, and grow its domestic tech industry. It now seems the European breakup with Big Tech is underway.

Tuttle Capital Management CEO Matthew Tuttle thinks that most investors aren’t paying enough attention to this growing problem for the American tech sector’s stocks.

In a note to investors, Tuttle wrote:

“The world is building optionality away from U.S. policy and platform dependence. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it — because it’s showing up in procurement decisions, supply chains, defense budgets, and capital flows.”

Europe wants to break up with US tech. Here’s how it plans on doing that.

Tuttle Capital Management CEO Matthew Tuttle thinks that most investors aren’t paying enough attention to this growing problem for the American tech sector’s stocks.

In a note to investors, Tuttle wrote:

“The world is building optionality away from U.S. policy and platform dependence. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it — because it’s showing up in procurement decisions, supply chains, defense budgets, and capital flows.”

$110B

Rani Molla5h

Waymo is seeking to raise $16 billion in a funding round that would value the autonomous car company at nearly $110 billion, Bloomberg reports. That’s higher than earlier Bloomberg estimates for the round and more than double Waymo’s 2024 valuation.

Parent company Google is leading the financing, expected to close in February, by making a $13 billion commitment that would account for a huge chunk of the round.

Rani Molla6h

China outlaws door handles Tesla is famous for

A new Chinese safety rule will require every vehicle sold in the country to have mechanically operable external and internal door handles that work even without power by 2027. The move would effectively ban the flush, motor-activated door handles Tesla is famous for, and that other EV makers like Xiaomi, Lucid, and Rivian have also adopted. Tesla is already facing scrutiny over its door designs in the US, where regulators have investigated crashes in which passengers struggled to exit vehicles after power failures.

China Bans Hidden Car Door Handles in World-First Safety Policy

Rani Molla6h

Tesla’s Europe sales get big headlines — but they’re a small part of the business

Another month, another round of headlines about Tesla’s sales in Europe — a market small enough that the company doesn’t even break out its revenue separately in filings.

The monthly headline bonanza around Tesla’s European sales has to do with the fact that, unlike in the US, there is readily available data on vehicle registrations there. But the availability of those headlines tends to overstate Europe’s importance to Tesla’s overall vehicle business.

In 2025, Tesla sold 238,656 vehicles across the Europe, down 27% from 2024. That represents less than 15% of Tesla’s total global vehicle sales. Early data from several European countries paints a mixed picture at the start of 2026 — declines in France and Norway, increases in Spain and Sweden — but in absolute terms, those markets remain relatively small for Tesla.

By comparison, the US is a much larger and more important market for Tesla, accounting for about 35% of unit sales last year, according to estimates from analyst Troy Teslike, and roughly half of the company’s revenue in 2025. Crucially, vehicle sales are declining there, too.

Apple is playing the AI field in China, too, working with both Baidu and Alibaba

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