36Kr Evening News | Alibaba.com: Since June, the platform's orders have soared by 42% year-on-year; Bilibili launches an incentive policy for animated short dramas.
Large Companies:
Alibaba.com: Orders on the platform have soared by 42% year-on-year since June
36Kr learned that since June, orders on the Alibaba.com platform have soared by 42% year-on-year, and GMV has also maintained a strong growth of nearly 30%. Among them, the growth rate of the US market has recovered by 25%, and there has even been a boom in stocking up for Christmas three months in advance, while Europe has continued to maintain ultra-high-speed growth. In fact, June is generally a slack season for foreign trade in previous years, but this year, Alibaba.com seized the window period to hold the 618 Foreign Trade Event, setting off a small climax in foreign trade in the middle of the year. Next, to help merchants catch the wave of US orders, Alibaba.com will extend the "618 Foreign Trade Event" in the US market until August, covering the entire window period after the tariff reduction, and there is no registration threshold. Newly settled merchants can also quickly participate and take on orders.
Sunfar Precision Machine: Italian MCM company applies for bankruptcy
36Kr learned that Sunfar Precision Machine issued an announcement. In view of the continuous losses of its wholly-owned subsidiary Machining Centers Manufacturing S.p.A (hereinafter referred to as "Italian MCM company"), its inability to repay due debts and the situation of insufficient liquidity, to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the company and its shareholders, the company's board of directors agreed to the Italian MCM company's application for bankruptcy. The assets and business of the Italian MCM company are all overseas, and are relatively independent from the company's domestic business and finance. The application for bankruptcy will not have a significant impact on the company's domestic main business and will not have a significant impact on the company's continuous operation.
36Kr learned that Disney China announced a special cooperation with Shanghai Animation Film Studio, inviting four Chinese animation directors. Taking the story of "Zootopia" as the origin, they skillfully used four traditional Chinese art animation techniques such as puppet (stop-motion), ink wash, 2D, and paper-cut to launch the animated promotional short series "Zootopia: Day and Night in Zootopia". The four complete short films are expected to be released on major social and video platforms across the country in November 2025, and audiences can watch them for free.
Bilibili launches an incentive policy for animated short dramas
36Kr learned that Bilibili released the support policy "Awakening Plan" for animated short dramas. This plan is targeted at UP owners, MCNs, and companies related to animated short dramas, providing a cost coverage of 30% to 100% and a maximum share of 80%. According to a relevant person in charge of Bilibili, in Q1 2025, through the recharge video function, the animated short dramas naturally grew to a monthly turnover of tens of millions. In the whole of 2024, the content consumption volume of Bilibili's animated short dramas has exceeded 100 billion, and it is still rising year-on-year at a double-digit percentage growth rate. Currently, Bilibili is promoting copyright cooperation with major online literature platforms.
36Kr learned that Gilead Sciences announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved its injectable HIV-1 capsid inhibitor Yeztugo® (lenacapavir) as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drug to reduce the risk of HIV infection through sexual contact in adults and adolescents weighing 35 kg and above. This marks Yeztugo® as the first and only PrEP option in the US that only needs to be administered twice a year. Research data shows that in the Phase 3 clinical studies PURPOSE 1 and PURPOSE 2, more than 99.9% of the subjects who received Yeztugo® remained HIV-negative in the test.
CareFUSION Medical Technology reaches a strategic cooperation with Smart Eye and Laolai Health
36Kr learned that on June 19, CareFUSION Medical Technology Co., Ltd., Smart Eye Technology Co., Ltd., and Laolai Health Technology Group Co., Ltd. officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The three parties will jointly develop AI-driven portable/home medical terminals, focusing on three core functions: real-time monitoring and early warning of abnormal indicators of chronic diseases (such as hypertension and diabetes); dynamically pushing personalized intervention plans based on user data; immediately identifying and alerting critical situations such as abnormal electrocardiograms and sudden drops in blood oxygen. Through the efficient data flow from the device to the cloud to the algorithm end, the adaptability of the medical model in the home environment and the accuracy and timeliness of monitoring and intervention will be improved.
Investment and Financing:
The Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics issued a statement saying that EDGNEX, a digital infrastructure company headquartered in Dubai, UAE, will invest $2.3 billion to build a super-large data center in the Cikarang Industrial Area in West Java, Indonesia. It is expected that the company will complete the first-phase development in 2026, and the second-phase construction will continue until 2028. (Caixin)
Unitree completes the C-round financing delivery
On June 19, through multiple reliable sources, it was confirmed that Unitree Technology has completed the delivery of the C-round financing that started at the end of last year. It was jointly led by funds under China Mobile, Tencent, Jinqiu, Alibaba, Ant Group, and Geely Capital, and most of the old shareholders participated in the follow-on investment. (Yicai)
Ningbo Ocean: Plans to invest no more than 2 billion yuan to build 4 4300TEU container ships
36Kr learned that Ningbo Ocean issued an announcement saying that the company or its subsidiaries plan to invest no more than 2 billion yuan to build 4 4300TEU container ships. The sources of funds for this investment in building ships include but are not limited to the company's own funds and self-raised funds.
New Products:
On June 19, the "Private Message Product Release" event of Douyin Life Services in 2025 was held in Wuhan. At the press conference, Douyin Life Services released a new "private message customer acquisition" model and product capabilities to help lead-based merchants expand their customer acquisition scale and improve the quality of customer resources. At the same time, it released the "AI On-Demand" intelligent solution to help merchants improve their reception efficiency. It is understood that in the past year, the "private message" business has grown rapidly, with the number of users increasing by 34% and the number of conversations increasing by 25%. Currently, more than 90% of lead-based merchants use this function, making it the main investment link in industries such as automobiles and home furnishings.
YaoSu Technology joins hands with Pfizer to launch an AI pathological recognition system
36Kr learned that recently, the AI deep learning pathological image automatic recognition system jointly developed by YaoSu Technology and Pfizer has successfully achieved accurate recognition and automatic quantification of pancreatic tissue structures. This marks that non-clinical toxicity assessment is moving from experience dependence to data-driven, and lays an important foundation for the large-scale application of AI in human models. This platform can be widely used in multiple key links such as drug toxicity modeling, pathological mechanism analysis, and early response interpretation of target organs, providing a "visual decision engine" with higher resolution for the non-clinical stage. The AI pathological recognition system created by this joint research has compressed the traditional process that requires several hours of manual annotation to be completed within 30 seconds.
Today's Views:
On June 18, the blind box of the THE MONSTERS High Energy Series - Vinyl Plush Keychains (LABUBU 3.0 Series) of Pop Mart was restocked on channels such as the official mall applet of Pop Mart. Many consumers said on social platforms that they had grabbed one. A person familiar with the matter related to Pop Mart said that the replenishment of Pop Mart's related products will not show a pattern, which is also to avoid the influence of scalpers to a certain extent. Pop Mart's factories are mainly in Dongguan, Guangdong Province. The sharply increasing demand has put pressure on Pop Mart. Since the Spring Festival, it has urgently found workers to resume work and expand production capacity, but it seems that the market demand far exceeds the reaction speed of the supply chain. After the replenishment, the price of Labubu 3.0 in the second-hand market also dropped accordingly. Before June 18, in the second-hand trading group of Pop Mart, the price of one end of Labubu 3.0 (a whole box contains 6 blind boxes) was mostly between 1100 and 1500 yuan, while after this replenishment, many sellers offered prices between 600 and 900 yuan. (Yicai)
The Bank of England said that the expected 12-month CPI inflation rate has risen from 2.6% in March to 3.4% in May, which is in line with the expectations in the May Monetary Policy Report. The price increase is mainly due to a series of regulated prices and the previous increase in energy prices. It is expected that the consumer price inflation rate will remain roughly at the current level for the rest of this year and then fall back to the target level next year. (Caixin)
Other Noteworthy News:
The Swiss National Bank further cut interest rates by 25 basis points to 0% on Thursday, which increased concerns about the possible return of negative interest rates. Before this decision, the market generally expected this interest rate cut. Previously, traders expected the possibility of a 25-basis-point interest rate cut to be about 81% and the possibility of a 50-basis-point interest rate cut to be about 19%. Adrian Prettejohn, a European economist at Capital Economics, said before the interest rate decision on Thursday that he expected the interest rate to drop to -0.25% this year, but he pointed out that the Swiss National Bank may cut it even lower. (Sina Finance)
Eli Remolona, the governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines, said that if the peso continues to weaken, it will intervene more forcefully in the foreign exchange market, saying that the weak exchange rate may have an impact on inflation. Remolona said that a moderate depreciation of the peso will not affect the inflation environment; if the safe-haven demand triggered by global tensions drives the US dollar stronger, then it is futile to support the peso through intervention. "We don't have enough reserves to do so," Remolona said. (Sina Finance)