At 8 a.m., here are the latest news: Midea is reported to have forced employees to leave work at 18:20; A member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference suggests establishing a cooling - off period for live - streaming rewards; Apple is developing AirPods with a built - in camera.
Top 3 Big News
Midea Exposed for Mandating 6:20 PM Departure, Official Response: Enforcing Mandatory Departure
On March 10th, according to a tip - off, Midea has started implementing a mandatory departure policy. "Starting this week, Midea has been advocating that department leaders strictly control overtime. It is stipulated that no one is allowed to work overtime in the company after 6:20 PM. At the same time, the phenomenon of employees returning to their workstations to continue working overtime after meals is also prohibited." The tip - off also mentioned that "so far, as soon as it's time to leave work, the HR department starts going from department to department, urging everyone to leave work quickly."
Midea told Guancha.cn that as early as the beginning of this year, Midea had clearly defined the "Six Bans" regarding the requirement to simplify work methods, which included "strictly prohibit meetings and formalistic overtime during off - work hours." Midea has always been actively practicing the concept of "anti - involution," advocating a healthy corporate culture, and providing employees with a more colorful amateur life. (Guancha.cn)
Member Pi Jianlong: Suggest Establishing a Cooling-off Period for Live-streaming Rewards
Pi Jianlong, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the director of Beijing Jintai Law Firm, suggested that "behaviors such as 'inducing rewards' and 'data falsification' need to be clearly prohibited by relevant laws and regulations." He proposed to promote the special legislation of the "Regulations on the Management of the Online Live-streaming Industry", refine the code of conduct for anchors, the list of platform responsibilities, and the terms for protecting user rights, and clarify the boundaries of anchors' behaviors. The main responsibilities of platforms should also be strengthened to build a full-chain supervision system. A "circuit-breaker" mechanism should be implemented for non-compliant accounts, such as banning the live-streaming permission for 72 hours.
A cooling-off period for user consumption should be established, and a daily limit for rewards should be set. For a single reward exceeding 500 yuan or the cumulative daily rewards exceeding 2000 yuan, a 24-hour delay in payment should be triggered, allowing users to withdraw unconditionally. In the face of the phenomenon of traffic falsification, Pi Jianlong suggested implementing the "traffic transparency" project, forcing platforms to disclose the real number of online viewers in live-streaming rooms, the sources of rewards, and the sales data of goods, and connecting to third-party auditing institutions for verification. In addition, a firewall to prevent addiction should also be set up for minors. (Beijing Daily)
Apple Developing AirPods with Built-in Cameras
According to IT Home, citing technology media AppleInsider, Apple is developing AirPods with built-in cameras to expand its Apple Intelligence technology. This innovative move aims to obtain environmental data through the earbud cameras, providing users with a more intelligent interactive experience.
Apple has already introduced visual intelligence features in the iPhone 16, allowing users to obtain detailed information about real-world objects through the phone's camera. The AirPods with built-in cameras will be able to achieve similar functions directly through the earbud cameras without relying on a phone. The earbud cameras can scan the surrounding environment to help users determine their location or get directions. It is reported that Apple is actively developing this product, which is expected to be launched within two to three years. Compared with smart glasses, the AirPods have a wider camera view and do not add much weight, making them more suitable for long-term wear. (IT Home)
Big Companies/Big Events
ByteDance tried to acquire the Manus team last year but was politely declined due to a low offer
It is reported that Monica, a Chinese startup that developed Manus, had a round of acquisition negotiations with ByteDance in early 2024. At that time, ByteDance offered $30 million, but since it was far below the psychological price of the founder, Xiao Hong, the negotiation ended in an unpleasant way. An industry insider close to Monica said that ByteDance's acquisition logic was to buy the team for $30 million and integrate the team and products into the Doubao system. However, if Monica joined ByteDance, it would be bound to ByteDance's large - model strategy and lose the unique advantages of the Monica product. This is also the main reason why Xiao Hong and his team were not optimistic about this acquisition. Monica's latest round of financing closed at the end of 2024, and the current valuation of the company is close to $100 million. (STAR Market Daily)
Anti-Musk demonstrations erupt in multiple U.S. locations, and plans for Tesla boycotts are set to take place in multiple countries
Recently, numerous demonstrators gathered outside Tesla stores in multiple locations across the United States to protest against Tesla CEO Elon Musk's leading of the "Department of Government Efficiency" to promote cuts in federal spending. According to the plan, more demonstrations will be held across the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Portugal at the end of March. Recently, "anti-Musk" demonstrations have erupted in multiple locations in the United States, with protesters hoping to express their dissatisfaction by boycotting Tesla. (CCTV.com)
Hunan Requires Not to Inquire about the Marital and Childbearing Status of Female Job Applicants
Recently, the Hunan Provincial Federation of Trade Unions issued a labor law supervision reminder letter, reminding employers to safeguard the legitimate and special rights and interests of female employees. The reminder letter states that in the recruitment process, employers across the province should not further inquire or investigate the marital and childbearing status of female job applicants, except for personal information; they should not use restrictions on marriage, childbearing, or marital and childbearing status as conditions for recruitment. During the performance of the contract, equal pay for equal work should be implemented for both men and women. Female employees should not be required to work overtime or be arranged for night shifts during pregnancy and lactation. (Jimu News)
All three major U.S. stock indexes closed lower, and all large technology stocks declined
36Kr learned that at the close on March 10, all three major U.S. stock indexes declined. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.08%, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 4%, and the S&P 500 Index declined 2.7%. All large technology stocks declined. Tesla fell more than 15%, Arm dropped more than 7%, NVIDIA declined more than 5%, Apple, Google, and Meta fell more than 4%, Microsoft dropped more than 3%, and Amazon declined more than 2%. Most popular Chinese concept stocks declined. Bilibili fell more than 9%, Alibaba and Li Auto dropped more than 5%, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and iQiyi declined more than 3%, and Baidu and XPeng Motors fell more than 2%.
Xiaomi Debunks Rumors of Imminent Mass Production of Humanoid Robots
It is reported that recently there were rumors claiming that Xiaomi's robot CyberOne is being phased into the production line in Yizhuang. It was also said that the progress of mass production would be announced from March to April, visits would be open from April to May, and PR promotion would be carried out in the second half of the year. In response, relevant personnel from Xiaomi stated that the aforementioned rumors are untrue.
CyberOne is Xiaomi's first full - sized humanoid bionic robot. It was officially unveiled in August 2022, standing at 177 cm tall and weighing 52 kg. Its stage name is "Tie Da". (Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily)
Apple and Meta May Face Moderate Fines for DMA Violations
People familiar with the matter said on March 10 that Apple and Meta Platforms are facing moderate fines for allegedly violating landmark rules aimed at curbing their power. Since last year, the two companies have been under the scrutiny of the European Commission for possible violations of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which could result in fines of up to 10% of their global annual sales. The act became law in May 2023, aiming to make it easier for people to switch between competing online services such as social media platforms, internet browsers, and app stores, thus enabling smaller companies to compete with big tech firms. (Sina Finance)
XPeng Motors: Spring Press Conference to Be Held on March 13
36Kr learned that according to XPeng Motors' official Weibo, the 2025 XPeng Motors Spring Press Conference will be held at 19:00 on March 13. At that time, the 2025 models of the XPeng G6 and XPeng G9 will be officially launched.
Food delivery platform Deliveroo to exit the Hong Kong market
36Kr has learned that Deliveroo announced on March 10 that it will cease operations in Hong Kong on April 7, 2025. As part of the transition phase, Deliveroo will cooperate with foodpanda to continue serving local customers, restaurant partners, and delivery riders. Deliveroo stated that Deliveroo Hong Kong has nominated Cosimo Borrelli and Jocelyn Chi of Kroll as liquidators to manage the termination of its business and assets in Hong Kong.
It is reported that Millennium has lost $900 million this year due to failed strategies caused by market turmoil
People familiar with the matter revealed that so far this year, two teams at Millennium Management focused on index rebalancing have lost approximately $900 million. This strategy has recently failed due to global stock market fluctuations. Index rebalancing - usually highly leveraged - involves betting on which companies will enter or exit various stock indices. For large multi - manager hedge funds like Millennium, this strategy can be profitable. (Sina Finance)
The new proposal from the U.S. Department of Justice still requires Google to divest its Chrome browser but allows it to make artificial intelligence investments
According to a court document filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on March 7, the department still requires Google to sell its web browser, Chrome. The U.S. Department of Justice first proposed that Google sell Chrome last year, during Joe Biden's presidency. However, during the second term of Donald Trump's administration, the department still seems to adhere to this plan. Nevertheless, the department no longer requires Google to divest all its investments in the field of artificial intelligence, including the billions of dollars Google has invested in the artificial intelligence company Anthropic. (Sina Finance)
Apple Delays Launch of Smart Home Hub Due to Siri Challenges
Apple announced this week that the "more personalized" version of Siri it promised to launch last year has been postponed. According to Mark Gurman, this has also led to a delay in the release of the company's planned smart home hub. In a statement, Apple said that the upgraded Siri features are part of its broader Apple Intelligence suite, and "it's taking longer than we expected to bring these features to life." The features are now expected to launch "in the next year." (Sina Finance)
Japan's base wages grow at fastest pace in 32 years, providing further support for the central bank's rate - hike prospects
Japan's base wages have recorded their fastest increase in 32 years, sending a positive signal as the Bank of Japan weighs the economic growth prospects. A report released by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on March 10 showed that base wages in January rose 3.1% year - on - year, the biggest increase since October 1992. A wage trend indicator that avoids sampling issues and excludes bonuses and overtime pay showed that the wages of full - time employees increased by 3%, exceeding this threshold for the first time since July. (Sina Finance)
South Korea's Automobile Production Drops to 7th Place Globally in 2024
The Korea Automobile & Mobility Association (KAMA) released a report titled "Global Automobile Production Status in 2024" on March 10, stating that global automobile production decreased by 0.5% to 93.95 million units in 2024. The main reason was an 8.5% decline in production in Japan due to quality certification issues faced by automakers. The report showed that affected by weak domestic demand, South Korea's automobile production last year decreased by 2.7% to 4.13 million units, dropping to 7th place globally. China, the United States, Japan, and India ranked in the top four for the fourth consecutive year, and the cumulative production of these four countries accounted for 59.7% of the world's total automobile production. (Jiemian News)
PingPong Becomes the First Cross - border Payment Service Provider for Best Buy Canada
36Kr learned that recently, the global payment platform PingPong has reached an in - depth cooperation with Best Buy Canada Ltd., one of the largest omnichannel retailers in Canada (hereinafter referred to as Best Buy Canada). It has become the first officially - partnered cross - border payment service provider for this platform, helping Best Buy Canada quickly expand into the international market. As of now, sellers on the Best Buy Canada site can use PingPong for cross - border collection.
McDonald's to Raise Prices of Some Items in Japanese Stores
McDonald's Japan announced on March 10 that it will raise in - store prices (including tax) by 10 to 30 yen starting Wednesday, March 12, 2025, mainly for single - item products. McDonald's Japan stated that this price adjustment is to cope with the recent increase in energy, logistics, and labor costs. (Cailian Press)
"Dragon" Spacecraft to Launch This Week to Retrieve Astronauts Stranded in Space
On March 9 local time, the "Falcon 9" rocket and the "Dragon" spacecraft of SpaceX were erected on Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. According to the plan, at 7:48 p.m. Eastern Time on March 12, which is 7:48 a.m. Beijing Time on Thursday this week (March 13), the "Falcon 9" rocket will blast off, sending the "Dragon" spacecraft and four astronauts to the International Space Station. When it returns to Earth a week later, it will retrieve two American astronauts, Williams and Willmore, who have been stranded at the space station for more than nine months beyond their scheduled stay. It is understood that if the launch on March 12 local time cannot take place, another launch window is on March 13 local time. (CCTV International News)
Virgin Plans to Raise £700 Million to Launch Cross - Channel Trains between the UK and France
Virgin Group announced on March 9 local time that it plans to raise £700 million (approximately $900 million) to fund its plan to launch cross - channel rail services, competing with Eurostar. Virgin has previously operated inter - city train services in the UK. It plans to launch trains connecting London with Paris and Brussels, and the service may be extended to Amsterdam in the future. (Jiemian News)
The Cutting - Edge of AI
ZhiYuan Robotics Launches China's First General Embodied Foundation Large Model GO-1
On March 10th, Shanghai ZhiYuan New Creation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "ZhiYuan Robotics") launched China's first general embodied foundation model - GenieOperator-1 (hereinafter referred to as "GO-1").
A relevant person in charge of ZhiYuan Robotics said that GO-1 innovatively proposed the Vision-Language-Latent-Action (ViLLA) architecture, which consists of VLM (Multimodal Large Model) + MoE (Mixture of Experts). Among them, VLM obtains general scene perception and language understanding capabilities through massive Internet image and text data. The LatentPlanner in MoE obtains general action understanding capabilities through a large amount of cross - ontology and human operation video data, and the Action Expert in MoE obtains fine - grained action execution capabilities through millions of real - machine data. The three are closely linked, enabling the ability to learn from human videos, achieving rapid generalization with small samples, lowering the threshold of embodied intelligence, and being successfully deployed on multiple robot bodies of the company. GO-1 can continuously evolve, pushing embodied intelligence to a new level. (Securities Times)
Manus founder reveals that the product is developed based on Alibaba's Qianwen large model
On March 10, Ji Yichao, the founder of Manus, revealed on a social platform that the Manus product uses different fine-tuned models based on Alibaba's Qianwen large model (Qwen). Manus is the first AI Agent product released by the startup Monica and has recently become extremely popular on social media. (Jiemian News)
ByteDance Overcomes Key Bottlenecks in MoE, Saving 40% on Training Costs
On March 10th, the ByteDance Doubao large - model team officially announced the open - sourcing of a key optimization technology for the MoE architecture. This technology can boost the training efficiency of large models by 1.7 times and save 40% on costs. It is understood that this technology has been applied in ByteDance's ten - thousand - GPU cluster training, cumulatively saving millions of GPU hours of training computing power. (Securities Times)
Investment and Financing
"Future Intelligence" Completes Angel Round Financing of Tens of Millions of Yuan
36Kr learned from the official WeChat account of Sinovation Ventures that recently, "Future Intelligence", a global Multi-Autonomous Agents solution provider, announced the completion of an angel round financing of tens of millions of yuan. The financing was led by Linge Capital, followed by Jimen Asset Management, and Sinovation Ventures, an old shareholder, continued to participate. The funds raised will be mainly used for product R & D, market expansion, and organizational operation. Future Intelligence (AutoAgents.ai) was established in June 2023 and is committed to providing autonomous intelligent agents (AI Agents) and intelligent assistant (Copilot) software services for global enterprises to improve people's work efficiency.
"Amio Robotics" Completes Hundreds of Millions Yuan Seed Round Financing
36Kr learned that the embodied intelligence company "Amio Robotics" recently completed a seed round financing worth hundreds of millions of yuan. This round was led by Anker Innovations, with Z Fund (Zhipu Ecosystem Fund) and Xianfeng Changqing participating as follow - on investors. After this round of financing, Amio will integrate the resources of industrial partners such as Anker Innovations and establish strategic partnerships with scenario providers to promote the wide - scale application of robots in the B - end market and assist the global manufacturing industry in upgrading towards intelligence and automation.
Cool Products
Get Hands-on with the New iPhone 17 Series Mockups
On March 9th, the source MajinBuOfficial posted a tweet on the X platform. Based on the previously shared CAD renderings, it showcased the 3D-printed mockups of two phones, the iPhone 17 Air and the iPhone 17 Pro. The iPhone 17 Pro made its debut in white, marking a significant shift in Apple's design in recent years. Although the details have not been fully disclosed, the 3D model shows that it features a brand-new camera layout with a large horizontal matrix, housing three lenses, a flash, a LiDAR sensor, and a rear microphone. It remains to be seen how Apple will utilize this larger camera module.
In contrast, the iPhone 17 Air has become the focus with its minimalist and ultra-thin design concept. Different from the Pro version, the Air features a single-camera design placed in a long horizontal module. The ultra-thin design has also raised concerns about its battery life. However, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that Apple will equip the Air with a high-density battery, possibly using silicon battery technology, enabling it to maintain competitive battery life in a compact size and even potentially exceed expectations. (IT Home)
Report: Foldable iPad Pro to Have 18.8-Inch Screen and Support Under-Display 3D Face Recognition
On March 10th, blogger Digital Chat Station revealed that Apple has a foldable device called the Foldable iPad Pro. The engineering prototype features an 18.8-inch screen, is equipped with a metal metasurface lens, and integrates Face ID Rx and Tx to enable under-display 3D face recognition.
Currently, rumors about the foldable iPad in the industry are on the rise. The Wall Street Journal once reported that Apple is developing a larger foldable device "intended to serve as a laptop," with an unfolded size of approximately 19 inches. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg also highlighted the foldable iPad in December last year and stated that this "giant" tablet will be released in 2028. Gurman revealed that Apple doesn't want the upcoming foldable device to have creases and hopes it looks like a single piece of glass.
Previously reported, Gurman once speculated that this product might run a certain version of iPad OS. He doesn't think it's a true iPad-Mac hybrid but believes it will have elements of both. "By 2028, iPadOS should be advanced enough to run macOS applications..." (IT Home)
DeepSeek Helps You Create a Life Coach
Do you often feel confused because you don't have a good career mentor? Or are you facing problems such as low learning efficiency and poor interpersonal relationship management? At 7 p.m. on March 11th (this Tuesday), 36Kr has invited Shen Yue, an AI lecturer and corporate consulting advisor, to demonstrate through a live stream how to use DeepSeek to achieve accurate self-positioning, improve learning effectiveness, and optimize interpersonal relationships. We'll guide you step by step to create a "life coach". Come and make an appointment now!
Compiled | Wang Xinyi