RedNote Joins AI Race 🤖 K-pop Giant Lands in Beijing 🎶 China Tests Brain Chips 🧠

2025-06-09 | subscribe | homepage

Welcome back to this week’s edition of the China Insights Weekly Newsletter!

Here are some of the key highlights for this week’s edition:

• $8.4B cancer drug deal with Sichuan Biokin

• 432 robots move historic Shanghai downtown building complex

• Brain chip lets paralyzed man move arms again

• China leads $3.3T clean energy investment

Dive deeper into these stories and more by clicking the headlines below. We value your feedback. Let us know your thoughts or suggestions on LinkedIn, X or Facebook.

🚀 Headlines

RedNote joins China’s AI race with Open-Source LLM and global push

Chinese social platform RedNote (Xiaohongshu) has open-sourced its first large language model, dots.llm1, a 142-billion parameter mixture-of-experts system that activates 14 billion per query to reduce compute costs. Developed by its Humane Intelligence Lab, the model reportedly outperforms open-source Chinese models like Alibaba’s Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct and DeepSeek-V3. RedNote, which has over 300 million monthly users and a recent USD 26 billion valuation, opened its first office outside mainland China in Hong Kong on June 7 and is preparing for an IPO. The move follows a surge in Chinese open-source LLMs and rising global interest in the company after talk of a TikTok ban in the US.

US pharma giant Bristol Myers Squibb strikes USD 8.4 billion deal with Sichuan Biokin for promising cancer treatment (link)

Bristol Myers Squibb has entered into a significant collaboration with Sichuan Biokin Pharmaceutical to develop and commercialize a promising cancer treatment, with an upfront payment of $800 million and a potential total deal value of USD 8.4 billion. The deal involves an initial payment of up to USD 500 million to SystImmune, a unit of Sichuan Biokin, for co-developing an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) targeting solid tumors. The ADC shows promise in early-stage clinical trials against non-small cell lung cancer and breast cancer. SystImmune could receive additional payments of up to USD 7.1 billion contingent on achieving development, regulatory, and sales milestones. SystImmune will lead development and commercialization in mainland China, while Bristol Myers will be responsible for other regions.

K-pop giant Hybe opens office in Beijing to tap Chinese market (link)

K-pop giant Hybe, the company behind BTS, has opened its first office in Beijing, signaling a strategic move to tap into the Chinese market amid expectations that Beijing will lift a near-decade-long ban on Korean pop performances. This initiative follows a period of increased preparation across the industry, with Hybe and rival SM Entertainment both expanding their China business teams. Hybe's shares have surged 40% this year, while SM Entertainment's stock price has jumped around 70%, and YG Entertainment's shares have risen over 75%. Tencent Music Entertainment Group is also planning to acquire a nearly 10% stake in SM Entertainment, a move expected to resume K-pop music distribution in China and potentially fuel a resurgence of K-pop in the country.

China starts mass production of world’s first non-binary AI chip (link)

China has initiated mass production of the world's first non-binary AI chip, developed by a team at Beijing’s Beihang University. This chip integrates hybrid computing technology, combining binary and stochastic logic to enhance fault tolerance and power efficiency. The chip, which uses the Hybrid Stochastic Number (HSN) system, reduces hardware load and improves performance in applications like touch displays and flight systems. It is compatible with existing CMOS-based systems, allowing seamless integration into sectors like aerospace and industrial automation. This development is part of China's broader push for semiconductor independence and aims to reduce reliance on foreign technology.