36Kr Evening News | Alibaba Cloud's Bailian Launches the First Full Lifecycle MCP Service; European Central Bank Governing Council Member Knot: Interest Rates Are at Least at the Upper End of the Neutral Range; Volkswagen Group's Global Deliveries in Q1 Increased 1.4% Year-on-Year to 2.13 Million Units
Large Companies:
The EU Bets on "Super Factories" to Catch Up with China and the US in the AI Race
The EU said it will focus on building artificial intelligence data and computing infrastructure and make it easier for companies to comply with regulatory requirements to catch up with the United States and China in the artificial intelligence race. The European Commission said it hopes to develop a so - called network of artificial intelligence super factories to help companies train the most complex models. These factories will be equipped with about 100,000 latest artificial intelligence chips, about four times the number installed in the currently established artificial intelligence factories. (Caixin)
Alibaba Cloud's BAILIAN Launches the First Full - Lifecycle MCP Service
36Kr learned that today, Alibaba Cloud's BAILIAN launched the industry's first full - lifecycle MCP service. Without the need for users to manage resources, develop and deploy, or conduct engineering operations and maintenance, an Agent (intelligent agent) connected to the MCP service can be quickly built in 5 minutes. The BAILIAN platform has initially launched more than 50 MCP services from Alibaba Group and third - parties, such as AutoNavi, WuYing, Fetch, and Notion, covering fields such as life information, browsers, information processing, and content generation to meet the development needs of Agent applications in different scenarios.
Baidu Launches the "Baikan Plan" and the "Zhiyue Plan" at the 2025 Alliance Conference
36Kr learned that on April 9th, Baidu announced the launch of the "Baikan Plan" and the "Zhiyue Plan" at the 2025 Alliance Conference. The "Baikan Plan" focuses on AI - powered reconstruction of search products and will cooperate with mainstream domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Honor, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Samsung, and Lenovo to jointly build an AI search ecosystem. Baidu's business system, "Baidu Companion Flight", will also achieve a deeper integration of business use through more native advertising forms and precise recommendations to promote conversions. The "Zhiyue Plan" will open up four major capabilities in live - streaming, e - commerce, short dramas, and intelligent agents and provide 2.5 billion yuan in special incentives to help developers increase their revenue by another 20%.
36Kr exclusively learned that JD.com began exploring the UK market in the second half of 2024. Recently, it launched a test operation under the brand "Joybuy", providing services in a self - operated model. Currently, it has started a small - scale internal test for seed users in London, and large - scale investment promotion has also begun. In addition, JD.com recently completed a new round of organizational adjustments, including its international business. The vice - president of JD.com Group and the former head of JD Retail's Home Appliance and Furniture Business Group will take the lead, while the Home Appliance and Furniture Business Group will be led by another vice - president.
On April 9th, Volkswagen Group released its delivery data. In the first quarter of 2025, its global deliveries reached 2.13 million vehicles, a year - on - year increase of 1.4%. Among them, the deliveries in the Chinese market were 644,100 vehicles, a year - on - year decrease of 7.1%. In addition, Volkswagen Group's deliveries of pure - electric vehicles in the first quarter were 216,800 vehicles, a year - on - year increase of 58.9%. (Jiemian)
Yili and Others Establish a New Venture Capital Fund Company in Anhui
36Kr learned that according to the AiQiCha App, recently, Anhui Jianling Venture Capital Fund Co., Ltd. was established. The legal representative is BAO SHENG, and the registered capital is 200 million yuan. Its business scope includes venture capital, equity investment, investment management, and asset management through private equity funds. It is jointly held by Jianling (Zhuhai) Mother Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) under Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Jianling Innovation Seed Private Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), Zhuhai Jianling Equity Investment Fund Management Partnership (Limited Partnership), and Anhui Seed Fund Phase II Partnership (Limited Partnership).
Amazon Launches a New Nova Sonic Voice - to - Voice Model
36Kr learned that Amazon announced the launch of a new foundation model, Amazon Nova Sonic, which unifies speech understanding and speech generation in a single model, making voice conversations in AI applications closer to real - human communication. The model is provided through a new API on Amazon Bedrock, which can simplify the development process of voice applications, such as automating customer service calls and cross - industry AI agents covering fields such as tourism, education, healthcare, and entertainment.
Investment and Financing:
36Kr learned that according to the Tianyancha App, recently, Shanghai Xingze Chuanhe Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership) was established. The executing general partner is Shanghai Xingze Investment Management Co., Ltd., and the capital contribution is about 300 million yuan. Its business scope includes venture capital and investment management. The partner information shows that the enterprise is jointly funded by Shenzhen Tencent Industry Investment Fund Co., Ltd., Xiamen C&D Emerging Industry Integration and Development Venture Capital Phase I Partnership (Limited Partnership), Shanghai C&D Bio - tech Investment Management Partnership (Limited Partnership), etc.
CF Industries, the world's largest ammonia producer, announced on April 8th local time that it has formed a joint venture with Japanese energy giant JERA and Mitsui & Co. to focus on the production and sales of low - carbon ammonia. After the establishment of the joint - venture company, CF Industries, JERA, and Mitsui & Co. will hold 40%, 35%, and 25% of the equity respectively. The joint - venture company is expected to invest nearly $4 billion in building ammonia production facilities, and the investment will be made by each party according to their ownership ratio. (Jiemian)
New Products:
36Kr learned that five R & D achievements of Meitu's Imaging Research Institute, in collaboration with universities such as Tsinghua University, the National University of Singapore, Beijing Institute of Technology, and Beijing Jiaotong University, have been selected for the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2025. Previously, two R & D achievements of Meitu's Imaging Research Institute, in partnership with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Jiaotong University, were selected for the AAAI 2025 conference hosted by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All seven R & D achievements of Meitu this time focus on the field of image editing, including three achievements in generative AI technology, three in segmentation technology, and one in 3D reconstruction technology.
Alibaba Cloud Launches the "Flourishing Flowers" Plan and an AI Application and Service Market
36Kr learned that on April 9th, at the AI Potential Summit, Alibaba Cloud launched an AI ecosystem partner plan, the "Flourishing Flowers" Plan, and an AI application and service market. For customers in the AI field, the "Flourishing Flowers" Plan will provide cloud resources and computing power support from technology to commercialization according to the product maturity of ecosystem partners, helping partners explore and innovate in the AI field, achieving the goals of expanding from the first customers to scale and commercialization, and providing AI technology support and services for customers in various industries, including cloud packaging of products, planning of commercialization paths, and full - lifecycle support for AI partners.
36Kr learned at the AI Potential Summit that Horizon is training an end - to - end intelligent driving large model based on Alibaba Cloud. It is understood that Horizon's R & D data scale has reached thousands of PB. To meet the processing needs of massive data, Horizon has built a lake - warehouse integrated architecture based on Alibaba Cloud's EMR, OSS, and other technologies, constructing a full - link of "data inflow - storage - mining". Relying on Alibaba Cloud's ten - thousand - card intelligent computing cluster, Horizon is training an end - to - end intelligent driving model.
Today's Views:
ECB Governing Council Member Knot: Interest Rates Are at Least at the Upper End of the Neutral Range
Klaas Knot, a member of the European Central Bank's Governing Council, said that interest rates have now approached the level where they no longer restrict economic activity. "Borrowing costs are almost back to the neutral level, or at least at the upper end of the neutral range," Knot said at an event in Amsterdam. "Credit is recovering again, and the transmission mechanism is working and will continue to work as expected." (Sina Finance)
Alibaba Cloud's Liu Weiguang: AI Is Driving Productivity Transformation in All Industries
36Kr learned that on April 9th, Alibaba Cloud held an AI Potential Summit in Beijing. Liu Weiguang, a senior vice - president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group and the president of the Public Cloud Business Unit, said that the social value of large models is being released in the enterprise market. Alibaba Cloud will firmly invest, build leading full - stack technologies, and continue to be open - source and open to speed up AI applications. "The strategy of Alibaba Cloud's large models is to serve the enterprise market and create social value. AI is driving productivity transformation in all industries, and Tongyi large models will deeply penetrate the enterprise market," he said. It is understood that as of the end of January 2025, the number of enterprises and developers using Tongyi APIs on Alibaba Cloud's BAILIAN platform has exceeded 290,000.
The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India said that the Monetary Policy Committee has adjusted the policy stance to "accommodative". Looking ahead, if there are no shocks, the Monetary Policy Committee will only consider keeping interest rates unchanged or cutting them. (Caixin)
Other Noteworthy News:
Ministry of Commerce: The Number of Electric Bicycle Trade - Ins in China Exceeded 3 Million in 2025
The number of electric bicycles sold second - hand and traded in each reached 3.341 million, which is 2.4 times the total replacement volume in 2024 (from September to December, the same below). From January to March this year, the monthly replacement volumes of electric bicycle trade - ins were 156,000, 863,000, and 1.861 million respectively, with an average monthly sequential increase of 285.0%. From April 1st to 8th, only 8 days, 461,000 electric bicycles were traded in, and the work is accelerating. By province, 26 provinces had a replacement volume of more than 10,000, among which 7 provinces, including Jiangsu, Hebei, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Hubei, Shandong, and Shanxi, had a replacement volume of more than 100,000. (CCTV News)