Rita Liao, Author at TechCrunch

Fate of US venture capital in China teeters on uncertainty

Rita Liao — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 09:32:47 +0000

On a weekday afternoon at Red Rock Coffee, the cafe known for spotting venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, one is likely to overhear a few conversations in Mandarin. With China reopening its borders this spring following three years of COVID-19 restrictions, managers of U.S. funds in the country have been flocking the Bay Area. While […]

US chip export ban is hurting China’s AI startups, not so much the giants yet

Rita Liao — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 11:58:23 +0000

Well before Washington banned Nvidia’s exports of high-performance graphic processing units to China, the country’s tech giants had been hoarding them in anticipation of an escalating tech war between the two nations. Baidu, one of the tech firms building China’s counterparts to OpenAI, has secured enough AI chips to keep training its ChatGPT equivalent Ernie […]

China’s EV upstart Li Auto hunts for chip talent in Singapore

Rita Liao — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 18:57:44 +0000

Li Auto, an electric vehicle maker adored by young Chinese families, is stepping up its endeavors to build in-house automotive chips and has gone abroad to seek talent for the course. The eight-year-old company is currently hiring five positions in Singapore to develop silicon carbide (SiC) power modules, an electrical component that uses SiC semiconductors […]

China’s tech giants dip their toes into web3, but prospects are limited so far

Rita Liao — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 15:05:32 +0000

During the Staking Summit in Istanbul, a conference attended by hundreds of individuals involved in the staking practice of the crypto ecosystem, two exhibition booths stood out. They belonged to Tencent and Huawei. Amidst a backdrop dominated by twenty-somethings clad in trendy company hoodies and giving out well-designed merchandise, the two Chinese tech giants appeared […]

How Jane Street-backed ZetaChain aims to expand Bitcoin’s use cases

Rita Liao — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 18:10:44 +0000

Despite its dominant market share in the crypto sphere, Bitcoin has had limited applications compared to other blockchains which have blossomed to facilitate asset transfers in everything from financial products to video games. Ethereum, for example, has close to 6,000 developers actively building on its network every month as of October 1, according to numbers […]

Nepal joins a growing list of countries banning TikTok

Rita Liao — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 08:06:46 +0000

Another country is banning TikTok, the ByteDance-owned short video behemoth with over one billion active users around the world. Nepal, which has a population of close to 30 million people, has banned TikTok. The decision, first reported by The New York Times, came shortly after the Himalayan country introduced a rule requiring social platforms to […]

ByteDance’s Oculus challenger Pico lays off hundreds, halts aggressive expansion

Rita Liao — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 20:31:16 +0000

When Pico launched its Oculus Quest challenger in China last year, it did so with great optimism. Light (295 grams) and affordable ($420), the virtual reality headset released by the ByteDance-owned manufacturer was expected to drive adoption in a market inaccessible to Meta. The odds were against Pico. Its sales have been sluggish, and this […]

LG’s IT arm taps Tiger Global-backed QuickNode for web3 pursuit

Rita Liao — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 15:38:49 +0000

Despite crypto’s badly tarnished reputation following FTX’s collapse, some large corporations are warmly embracing its underlying distributed ledger technology. LG CNS, the IT solutions subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate, has formed a strategic partnership with QuickNode, a blockchain deployment platform aiming to bring Web 2.0 services into web3. Besides announcing the partnership, LG also […]

a16z backs London-based crypto startup Pimlico as it ramps up UK focus

Rita Liao — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 14:00:26 +0000

Upon opening its first overseas office in London last Thursday, a16z made its first U.K. investment announcement today. The venture capital firm has led a $4.2 million seed round in Pimlico. Based in London — as one could surmise from its name borrowed from the city’s charming area — the startup is building the infrastructure […]

Shein reportedly seeks $90 billion valuation in IPO

Rita Liao — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 07:01:51 +0000

Shein has seen big swings in its price tag over the last year. The Singapore-headquartered fast fashion platform is targeting a valuation of up to $90 billion in a potential U.S. initial public offering, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. TechCrunch has reached out to Shein for comment. An investor briefed on the matter told us that […]

Why this autonomous vehicle veteran joined a legged robotics startup

Rita Liao — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 01:00:06 +0000

Zhang Li‘s career path has looked like a bellwether for China’s tech trends. When the Cisco veteran joined WeRide in 2018, the Chinese autonomous vehicle company was less than a year old. In the next few years, the country would become a breeding ground for three AV unicorns, including WeRide, of which valuation surged to […]

Valued at $1B, Kai-Fu Lee’s LLM startup unveils open source model

Rita Liao — Sun, 05 Nov 2023 23:30:33 +0000

Kai-Fu Lee, the computer scientist known in the West for his bestseller “AI Superpowers” and in China for his bets on artificial intelligence unicorns, has a new venture — and a great ambition. In late March, Lee launched a company called 01.AI with the vision to develop a homegrown large language model for the Chinese market. […]

Chinese EV darling Nio to cut 10% staff amid ‘fierce competition’

Rita Liao — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 10:55:59 +0000

Nio, the Chinese carmaker known for its sleek, premium electric SUVs, has started a new round of layoffs as intense competition propels it to cut costs and regroup resources. In an internal letter seen by TechCrunch on Friday, Nio’s CEO William Li says the company is expected to reduce “around 10%” of its positions after […]

SEC subpoenas PayPal over its USD-pegged stablecoin

Rita Liao — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 12:37:45 +0000

Just three months after PayPal entered the fray to bring stablecoins to the masses, it’s attracting attention from U.S. regulators that are tightening the screws on the stablecoin sector. The payments giant said Thursday that it had received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission related to its U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, according to Reuters. […]

China’s tech vice minister calls for ‘equal rights’ at global AI summit in UK

Rita Liao — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 15:47:25 +0000

Despite the ongoing technological decoupling between China and the West, both sides are converging to discuss the threat that runaway artificial intelligence may pose to humanity. Wu Zhaohui, China’s vice minister of Science and Technology, has led a delegation to attend the landmark AI safety summit organized by the U.K. government this week. A telling […]

Shein adds struggling UK brand Missguided to its fashion empire

Rita Liao — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 11:16:25 +0000

Shein, the fast fashion giant that has thrived on its nimble supply chain in China, is expanding its product range by scooping up competitors. In a statement released on Monday, the Singapore-headquartered firm announced its acquisition of Missguided, a struggling fashion brand based out of Manchester, U.K., for an undisclosed amount from Fraser Group. This […]

XPeng starts removing HD maps from Tesla FSD-like feature in China

Rita Liao — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 05:50:28 +0000

XPeng is often called the Chinese challenger to Tesla for its efforts to bring advanced driving capabilities to its electric vehicles. It’s now getting a step closer to its American counterpart as it gets rid of high-definition mapping in its XNGP assisted driving feature, its equivalent to Tesla FSD. Tesla FSD famously does not rely […]

Coach’s knitwear supplier bets $1M on Jellibeans’ fashion prediction tech

Rita Liao — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 13:00:53 +0000

In fashion design, success is often determined by talent, hard work and a sprinkle of luck. In the era of big and artificial intelligence, however, fashion design has become somewhat more predictable. Leveraging both realms of technologies, California-based Jellibeans has built a set of software that analyzes fashion trends and tells users where their designs […]

WorkMagic wants to automate all the marketing tasks for Shopify sellers

Rita Liao — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 12:00:23 +0000

There’s no shortage of startups trying to automate marketing tasks by using generative AI. For WorkMagic, the target users are the millions of small-scale Shopify sellers who it believes can benefit immensely from cost savings in their marketing efforts. Founded in June, WorkMagic offers a full-stack platform that handles everything from image and copy generation […]

Two years after pausing service, Roblox China cuts a small number of staff

Rita Liao — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 02:54:47 +0000

Roblox China was once full of promise. Since its localized platform, which is a joint effort with Tencent, abruptly halted operation nearly two years ago, the company has been quiet about its standing in the world’s second-biggest gaming market. Until now. TechCrunch learned that Roblox China, also called LuoBu (罗布乐思), initiated a round of layoffs […]