36Kr Evening News | The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology establishes an artificial intelligence research institute; Suning.com holds the launch event for the 618 e-commerce promotion; The three major Detroit automakers criticize Trump's trade deal with the UK.
Large Companies:
Suning.com Holds 618 E-commerce Launch Conference
36Kr learned that on May 9th, Suning.com held its 618 e-commerce launch conference. Thousands of offline stores across the country in various cities have fully joined, and the two-channel promotion of "618 Empty Streets to Grab Home Appliances" mid-year sales event has kicked off. In terms of the event schedule, Suning.com's offline stores will start the early-bird promotion on May 13th, and the entire 618 period will cover multiple promotion nodes such as Super Brand Day, Kick-off Day, Tasting Day, Employee Purchase Event, and Peak Carnival. Online, the pre-sale of 10 billion subsidy will start at 8 p.m. on May 13th, and there will be three rounds of peak sales at 8 p.m. on May 16th, May 30th, and June 15th.
Italian Company Moltiply Sues Google, Seeks Nearly 3 Billion Euros in Compensation
Italian group Moltiply said on Friday that it has filed a lawsuit against Google's parent company Alphabet, seeking 2.97 billion euros ($3.34 billion) in damages, citing Google's abuse of its dominant market position, which the EU court has previously recognized. Moltiply operates the popular Italian price-comparison website Trovaprezzi.it. Moltiply said in a statement that its claim is based on the fact that between 2010 and 2017, Google's actions hindered the development of its subsidiary 7Pixel, while Google Shopping benefited from it.
Tencent News and Tencent Yuanbao Are Integrated, Supporting Summarizing News and Videos with Yuanbao
36Kr learned that Tencent Yuanbao continues to integrate into the Tencent ecosystem to provide users with a more convenient AI experience. Recently, Tencent News has been integrated with Tencent Yuanbao. In the future, when users browse news and watch videos on the Tencent News App, they can share the content with a single click to Yuanbao, which can summarize and extract key points, and also support further inquiries. Currently, this feature has been officially launched on the Tencent News App and is available to all users.
Dewu Merchant Conference: Annual Sales of 6,120 Brands Doubled
36Kr learned that on May 9th, the "Young Product New Home" merchant conference of Dewu was held in Hangzhou. According to the data released at the conference, Dewu has developed into a full-category high-quality lifestyle shopping community and has maintained double-digit growth every year. The annual sales of 6,120 brands on Dewu have doubled. This year, Dewu has also launched a series of favorable policies, investing over 1 billion yuan to reduce the fees for brand merchants in more than 30 categories such as footwear, clothing, bags, beauty and personal care, sports and outdoor, mother and baby, pets, 3C digital, food and beverages, and trendy home products, with a maximum reduction of up to 16%. It has also invested 500 million yuan in marketing rebates and subsidies, and provided 10 billion free traffic to reduce the comprehensive operating costs of merchants and help them achieve high-growth with low costs.
Detroit's Big Three Automakers Criticize Trump's Trade Deal with the UK
An organization representing General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis criticized the trade deal announced by President Donald Trump with the UK, saying that the deal would harm the US auto industry. UK automakers will receive a quota of 100,000 vehicles per year, which can be shipped to the US at a 10% tariff rate. This quota is almost equivalent to the total UK auto exports last year. The tariff rate for cars exported to the US from Mexico, Canada, and almost all other countries is 25%. US automakers are worried that this could become a template for other agreements, putting their cars assembled in Canada or Mexico at a disadvantage. The White House has not immediately responded to a request for comment. (Sina Finance)
Taobao Flash Sale Launches "Free Flowers" Event
36Kr learned that Taobao Flash Sale launched a free-flowers event ahead of Mother's Day. Previously, Taobao Flash Sale jointly launched a free-milk-tea event with Ele.me, and the order volumes of multiple tea-drink brands such as Nayuki, Mo Li Nai Bai, and Bao Zhu Gong doubled. Data shows that within a week of Taobao Flash Sale's launch, the orders and transaction volumes of more than 1,500 brands on Ele.me have reached record highs.
Nvidia Opens Source Multiple Large Code Models Based on Alibaba Tongyi Qianwen
Nvidia recently open-sourced its Open Code Reasoning model, including three parameters of 32B, 14B, and 7B. This model is based on Alibaba Tongyi Qianwen Qwen2.5-32B, Qwen2.5-14B, and Qwen2.5-7B. (Caixin)
36Kr learned that the annual "618" shopping festival is approaching. This year, Bilibili has launched its commercial AI data insight capability, which will help brands and merchants improve efficiency throughout the marketing process, including pre-investment insight, influencer matching, creative generation, and post-investment strategy review. This year, Bilibili continues to strengthen its close cooperation with e-commerce platforms such as Taotian and JD.com, upgrades the data co-construction plan, and strengthens the grass-rooting cooperation. During the "Double 11" shopping festival last year, Bilibili's GMV from live-streaming e-commerce increased by 154% year-on-year, and the number of orders for consumer goods worth over 1,000 yuan was twice that of the same period last year. Data from the "Spark Plan" shows that the new-customer acquisition rate brought by Bilibili to all vertical industries exceeds 50%.
Investment and Financing:
36Kr learned that on May 9th, China Securities Asset Management (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd. officially announced the completion of a 30-million-yuan angel round financing. With this round of financing, the company will accelerate the development of its "intelligent investment advisory platform", strengthen its ability in asset allocation, and explore innovative fields such as ESG investment and pension finance to help integrate the wealth management needs of residents with the national strategic direction. The funds will be mainly used for the R&D of the financial investment advisory platform, the expansion of the professional team, and the expansion of the national market to further consolidate the company's innovative advantages in the wealth management field.
New Products:
Fosun Pharma: Its Controlled Subsidiary Receives FDA Approval for Drug Clinical Trial
36Kr learned that Fosun Pharma announced that its controlled subsidiary, Shanghai Junji Health Technology Co., Ltd., has received approval from the US FDA to conduct a clinical trial of LBP-ShC4. It plans to conduct a Phase I clinical trial after the conditions are met. LBP-ShC4 is a live biotherapeutic product independently developed by Fosun Pharma, intended for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia (AGA). As of April 2025, Fosun Pharma's cumulative R&D investment in LBP-ShC4 was approximately 17 million yuan. As of the announcement date, there is no live biotherapeutic product for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia (AGA) approved for marketing globally. Drug R&D and marketing is a long-term process with many uncertainties.
Alibaba's AI Flagship App Quark to Launch "Deep Search Pro"
36Kr learned that recently, Quark upgraded its AI super search box and newly launched the "Deep Search" product, continuously helping users solve diverse and complex problems with high search intelligence. It is understood that Quark will also launch "Deep Search Pro". "Deep Search Pro" has reached an expert-level in multiple fields such as academia, business, science, humanities, law, computer science, and medicine, and can further help users solve complex tasks in professional fields, comprehensively revolutionizing the way users obtain information and solve tasks.
Today's Views:
British Airways' Parent Company IAG Announces Purchase of 53 Boeing and Airbus Planes
IAG, the parent company of British Airways, said on Friday that it will order 53 new long-haul Airbus and Boeing planes. The company said the order includes 32 Boeing 787-10 planes for British Airways and 21 Airbus A330-900neo planes, which may be allocated to other airline brands under IAG, including Aer Lingus, Iberia, and LEVEL. (Sina Finance)
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology established the von Neumann Institute on the 9th. By integrating technologies such as embodied intelligence, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced super-computing, it promotes interdisciplinary collaboration and the development of new-quality productivity. Chen Maobo, the Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, said in his speech at the opening ceremony that the current SAR government believes that AI has great potential and aims to integrate AI into various industries through the "AI +" strategy. He said that the von Neumann Institute brings together talents and resources from multiple fields, and hopes that it can become a platform for exploring new AI application scenarios and commercialization paths, and help the evolution of Hong Kong's innovation and technology ecosystem and the development of AI technology. (Xinhua News Agency)
Other Noteworthy News:
36Kr learned that the central bank released the China Monetary Policy Execution Report for the first quarter of 2025, which mentioned that in the next stage, the People's Bank of China will further deepen financial reform and high-level opening-up, continuously promote high-quality financial development and the construction of a financial powerhouse, accelerate the improvement of the central bank system, and further improve the monetary policy framework. It will balance the relationships between short-term and long-term, stable growth and risk prevention, internal and external balance, supporting the real economy and maintaining the health of the banking system itself, improve the foresight, pertinence, and effectiveness of macro-regulation, strengthen the coordination and cooperation of macro-policies, expand domestic demand, stabilize expectations, and stimulate vitality, and fully consolidate the fundamentals of economic development and social stability.
36Kr learned that the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued its legislative work plan for 2025. It mentioned strengthening the supervision of capital market-related behaviors and earnestly maintaining an open, fair, and just market order. Among them, there are 5 "key projects to be introduced within the year", including formulating the "Administrative Measures for Securities and Fund Investment Advisory Business" and the "Administrative Measures for Derivatives Trading Supervision"; revising the "Administrative Measures for Securities Issuance and Underwriting" (already announced), the "Administrative Measures for Information Disclosure of Listed Companies" (already announced), and the "Administrative Measures for Major Asset Reorganizations of Listed Companies". There are 3 "projects that need to be studied urgently and introduced at an appropriate time", including formulating the "Administrative Measures for Information Provision of Private Investment Funds" and revising the "Administrative Measures for the Custody Business of Securities Investment Funds" and the "Administrative Measures for the Operation of Publicly Offered Securities Investment Funds".
36Kr learned that the central bank released the China Monetary Policy Execution Report for the first quarter of 2025, which mentioned giving full play to the dual functions of monetary policy tools in aggregate and structure, focusing on key areas, being reasonable and moderate, and advancing and retreating as appropriate, and guiding financial institutions to increase support for science and technology finance, green finance, inclusive small and micro enterprises, expanding consumption, and stabilizing foreign trade. It adheres to a managed floating exchange rate system based on market supply and demand and adjusted with reference to a basket of currencies, adheres to the decisive role of the market in exchange-rate formation, enhances the resilience of the foreign-exchange market, stabilizes market expectations, firmly corrects pro-cyclical market behaviors, firmly deals with behaviors that disrupt market order, firmly prevents exchange-rate overshooting risks, and keeps the RMB exchange rate basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level. It explores and expands the central bank's macro-prudential and financial-stability functions, maintains financial-market stability, and firmly holds the bottom line of preventing systemic financial risks.