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.

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Rani Molla3h

Jon Keegan4h

Report: China’s “Manhattan Project” built an advanced EUV chip fab prototype

The most advanced chipmaking process in the world is currently owned by one company: Dutch chipmaker ASML.

The process, known as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), allows for the smallest, most complex semiconductors to be etched onto silicon chips.

These advanced chips are used in a huge number of crucial industries such as AI, mobile phones, and weapons manufacturing.

A new report from Reuters says that China has completed a factory-sized prototype of an EUV chip fab, a first that could have huge ramifications for the balance of power in the global technology race.

The prototype was built in a high-security facility in Shenzhen by former ASML employees and made use of secondary markets to acquire older, used ASML parts, according to the report. Despite a goal of delivering working chips by 2028, sources say China is likely a couple years behind that schedule.

ASML’s $250 million EUV machines are used to manufacture advanced chips for Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and for chips made by TSMC.

ASML shares were down about 4.8% as of 12 p.m. ET.

Exclusive: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

These advanced chips are used in a huge number of crucial industries such as AI, mobile phones, and weapons manufacturing.

ASML’s $250 million EUV machines are used to manufacture advanced chips for Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and for chips made by TSMC.

ASML shares were down about 4.8% as of 12 p.m. ET.

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Google is reportedly working with Meta to expand software support for its AI chips

Nvidia dominates the market for AI chips. But its advantage is not limited to hardware.

The company has a growing suite of software tools that are usually paired with its chips, optimized to get the most out of the GPUs crunching the data.

Any challengers to Nvidia’s dominance will need to make it easy for developers to walk away from the Nvidia software-hardware lock-in. That’s what Google and Meta are teaming up to do.

A new report from Reuters says Google is working on an initiative code-named “TorchTPU,” which aims to make it easier for AI developers who use the ubiquitous, open-source PyTorch software framework to switch the hardware layer to Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs).

Meta is a huge backer of the PyTorch project, so the company is teaming up with Google to help develop its TorchTPU software, per the report.

Last month, it was reported that Google is planning on selling TPUs worth “billions of dollars” to Meta, which follows other Big Tech players who are hedging their bets against Nvidia’s dominance.

Exclusive: Google works to erode Nvidia's software advantage with Meta's help

Any challengers to Nvidia’s dominance will need to make it easy for developers to walk away from the Nvidia software-hardware lock-in. That’s what Google and Meta are teaming up to do.

Meta is a huge backer of the PyTorch project, so the company is teaming up with Google to help develop its TorchTPU software, per the report.

$100B

Rani Molla6h

Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous driving subsidiary, is in talks to raise more than $15 billion in a funding round that would value the company near $100 billion, Bloomberg reports. That’s more than double the valuation from its last round in October 2024, reflecting its lead in driverless ride-hailing.