Krstar Evening News | Song Xuan, the vice president of public relations at Xibei, has left the company; Damai Entertainment announced its entry into the museum industry; Dingdong Maicai opened a warehouse in Yancheng, Jiangsu.
Large Companies:
Ford May Discuss Battery Procurement from BYD for Overseas Factories
According to people familiar with the matter, Ford Motor is in talks with Chinese company BYD about supplying batteries for hybrid vehicles manufactured at the US company's overseas factories. The people said that Ford is in discussions with multiple battery suppliers, and BYD is one of them. As the discussions involve internal matters, the people asked to remain anonymous. They said that no agreement has been reached yet. BYD leads the world in electric vehicle sales.
Song Xuan, Vice President of Public Relations at Xiabei, Has Left the Company
It is reported that Song Xuan, vice president of public relations at Xiabei, has left the company. Jia Guolong, the founder of Xiabei Catering, posted on his personal WeChat Moments that Song Xuan left for personal career development reasons. "He endured great pressure and did a lot of work during last year's incident." Song Xuan also posted on his personal WeChat Moments, saying, "Even now on the front line, I'll always be a Xiabei person."
Damai Entertainment Announces Entry into the Museum Sector
36Kr learned that on January 15th, at the 2025 annual meeting of the Exhibition Exchange Professional Committee of the China Museum Association held in Hangzhou, the China Cultural Relics Exchange Center, together with "Art Exhibition Grand Vision" under Damai Entertainment and the cultural and museum service provider "Zhongchuang Yunqi", jointly launched the "Cultural Heritage Integration · Digital Collaboration - Sailing Plan" and the 2026 museum "Special Exhibition Cooperation Plan". The plan aims to cooperate with museums at all levels across the country to create innovative special cultural and museum exhibition projects. This is the first time Damai Entertainment has been invited to participate in the event, marking its official entry into the museum field. In the future, Damai Entertainment will deepen its cooperation with museums in three aspects: exhibition marketing, content production, and ticketing systems.
On January 16th, affected by the price increase of upstream supply - chain storage, several mobile phone manufacturers recently lowered their annual orders for complete devices. Xiaomi and OPPO cut their orders by over 20%, vivo by nearly 15%, and Transsion to less than 70 million units. The models with order cuts from each company mainly focus on mid - to low - end and overseas products. In response to this news, manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and Transsion have not made any comments. With the cost advantage of domestic supply chains, Huawei still has a certain profit margin for its products. Huawei is currently discussing price cuts for products in series such as Pura, nova, and Enjoy to further capture the market. Although Honor is also under pressure from the storage price increase, its target of a 15% market share in the Chinese market remains unchanged.
Dingdong Maicai Opens a Warehouse in Yancheng, Jiangsu
36Kr learned that on January 17th, fresh - food e - commerce platform Dingdong Maicai will officially enter Yancheng, Jiangsu, and start operations, further deepening its strategic layout in the Jiangsu market. In recent years, Dingdong Maicai has continuously strengthened regional penetration, especially by increasing the scale of its front - end warehouse network in the Yangtze River Delta region. In the past two years, it has opened more than 200 new front - end warehouses, with over 60% located in third - and fourth - tier cities and county - level regions, including Chongming District in Shanghai, Xuancheng and Chuzhou in Anhui, and Shengzhou in Shaoxing and Ninghai in Ningbo, Zhejiang.
New Products:
MediaTek Launches Dimensity 9500s and Dimensity 8500
36Kr learned that on January 15th, MediaTek launched the Dimensity 9500s and Dimensity 8500 mobile chips. It is reported that the Dimensity 9500s uses the flagship 3nm process and an all - large - core architecture. The octa - core CPU includes one Cortex - X925 super - large core with a clock speed of up to 3.73GHz, three Cortex - X4 super - large cores, and four Cortex - A720 cores. The Dimensity 8500 is equipped with a more powerful octa - core Mali - G720 GPU, with peak performance increased by 25% compared to the previous generation and power consumption reduced by 20% compared to the peak performance of the previous generation.
Meituan Launches Its First Open - Source "Re - thinking" Model
36Kr learned from the official Weibo account of Meituan LongCat that as an upgraded version of the LongCat - Flash - Thinking model, LongCat - Flash - Thinking - 2601 is now open - source. The new model has reached the state - of - the - art (SOTA) level among open - source models in core evaluation benchmarks such as agent search, agent tool invocation, and tool interaction reasoning. In random complex tasks that rely on tool invocation, it can significantly reduce the adaptation and training costs of new tools in real - world scenarios. The new model also supports the "re - thinking" mode, allowing it to simultaneously activate 8 "brains" to perform tasks. It can be freely experienced on the LongCat official website.
Investment and Financing:
Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation Announces Acquisition of US Shale Gas Assets Worth $7.53 Billion
Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation announced on Friday that it will acquire US shale gas assets for a total price (including debt) of $7.53 billion. This move by the Japanese general trading company aims to further consolidate its layout in the US energy market.
Today's Views:
On January 16th, Jin Yuzhi, CEO of Huawei's Intelligent Automotive Solution BU, shared the usage data of Huawei's Qiankun users in 2025, including 5.42 billion kilometers of assisted - driving mileage, 2.12 million potential collisions avoided, 330 million times of assisted parking, an active - user ratio of 98% for assisted driving, and 2.6 billion times of smart - assistant wake - ups. Jin Yuzhi revealed that starting from early February, ADS 4.1 will be gradually installed in vehicles. ADS 5 will be launched before the auto show in April this year.
Wei Zhejia of TSMC: Sufficient Power Is Needed to Expand Production Without Restrictions
At TSMC's earnings conference on the 15th, regarding the limitations in developing AI, Wei Zhejia, the company's chairman and president, said that he is worried about the power - supply issue. The construction of power - supply cores such as turbines and nuclear power plants has a significant impact on AI development. In addition, analysts are concerned about the bottlenecks in expanding production capacity due to AI demand. Wei Zhejia directly replied that sufficient power is needed to expand production capacity without restrictions.
Other Noteworthy News:
36Kr learned that according to statistics from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, from January to December 2025, the cumulative production of power and energy - storage batteries in China was 1755.6 GWh, a year - on - year increase of 60.1%. During the same period, the cumulative sales of power and energy - storage batteries in China were 1700.5 GWh, a year - on - year increase of 63.6%. Among them, the cumulative sales of power batteries were 1200.9 GWh, accounting for 70.6% of the total sales, with a year - on - year increase of 51.8%; the cumulative sales of energy - storage batteries were 499.6 GWh, accounting for 29.4% of the total sales, with a year - on - year increase of 101.3%. In December, the sales of power and energy - storage batteries in China were 199.3 GWh, a month - on - month increase of 11.1% and a year - on - year increase of 57.5%. Among them, the sales of power batteries were 143.8 GWh, accounting for 72.1% of the total sales, with a month - on - month increase of 7.3% and a year - on - year increase of 49.2%; the sales of energy - storage batteries were 55.6 GWh, accounting for 27.9% of the total sales, with a month - on - month increase of 22.4% and a year - on - year increase of 84.0%.
Spain Sets a New Record for International Tourist Numbers in 2025
Data released by Spain's Ministry of Industry and Tourism on January 15th showed that the number of international tourists received by Spain in 2025 increased by 3.5% compared to the previous year, reaching 97 million, a new record high. The data also showed that the consumption of international tourists in Spain in 2025 increased by 6.8% compared to the previous year, reaching a record 135 billion euros. The role of tourism in driving employment has become more prominent. In December last year, the number of people employed in tourism - related industries in Spain increased by 2.4% year - on - year, reaching 2.75 million, also setting a new record high.