Kr Evening Post | Large U.S. enterprises have bid farewell to the layoff wave and resumed recruitment; dozens of enterprises including NVIDIA, Microsoft, IBM have set up a new alliance, which aims to jointly guarantee AI security; the General Provisions on Cost Accounting Model for the Photovoltaic Industry has been released to guide orderly competition in the industry.
Big Companies:
HSBC Holdings announced on July 27 that it will establish the Global Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (CoE) in Singapore in the second half of this year, aiming to develop AI capabilities that can be scaled across the group's global network, and plans to recruit over 100 AI specialists. The statement said that the center will initially focus on enhancing customer wealth management experience, introducing intelligent treasury solutions, and developing AI-enabled digital payments. (Jiemian)
Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.5 tops both OpenRouter's global weekly and monthly rankings
36Kr learned that according to the latest data from OpenRouter on July 27, Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.5 ranked first in both the weekly and monthly global large model call volume rankings, becoming the only model with call volume exceeding 10T worldwide in that week. Since May, the global call volume of MiMo-V2.5 has continued to rise, with the weekly token volume gradually increasing from 1.46T to 10.46T, representing an increase of about 616% in two months.
Meituan AI "Xiao Tuan" fully upgraded
36Kr learned that on July 27, Meituan announced the full upgrade of its local life AI-native assistant "Xiao Tuan". In addition to search, Q&A and decision assistance, the new version of "Xiao Tuan" further upgrades its agent execution capability: after users put forward demands, "Xiao Tuan" can combine real-time information to assist in completing various local life service-related operations such as placing orders, hailing rides, and booking seats. Up to now, the information service of "Xiao Tuan" has covered more than 2,800 cities across China, with a total of over 700 million merchant information verifications completed and more than 1.3 billion user reviews collected. During this year's May Day holiday, the cumulative exposure of "Xiao Tuan" related services exceeded 3.9 billion times.
POSCO International, South Korea's largest trading company, has launched a pilot to tokenize trade accounts receivable on the blockchain, which is expected to speed up commercial payments between its global subsidiaries. The company generated revenue of USD 22.2 billion last year across its steel, energy and battery materials businesses. The company said it is working with LG CNS, the technology arm of the LG Group, to issue, transfer and settle receivables on the Layer-1 blockchain Injective (INJ), the two companies told CoinDesk in a press briefing. The pilot uses accounts receivable generated from real trades between POSCO International's overseas businesses and their counterparties, rather than simulated transactions. (Sina Finance)
WeCom intelligent assistant "Da Yuan" launches internal beta test
36Kr learned that according to WeChat Official, WeCom's intelligent assistant "Da Yuan" has now launched the internal beta test, supporting the invocation of dozens of capabilities such as WeCom's intelligent documents, intelligent spreadsheets, meetings, and schedules.
Large U.S. enterprises bid farewell to layoff wave and restart recruitment
Major U.S. giants admit that they may eventually need to expand their staff. Over the past few months, large employers have regarded recruitment as a costly last resort. Now, the employment strategies across all walks of life have shifted collectively. In recent days, several companies including railroad giant CSX and Google's parent company Alphabet have told investors that they plan to achieve growth targets and seize emerging technology development opportunities through recruitment. This expansion move to increase headcount at least slightly completely reverses the mainstream rhetoric of enterprises for most of the AI era. Previously, affected by the uncertainty of economic prospects and the widespread belief that AI can take over a large number of job tasks, leading enterprises basically froze new headcount additions. (Sina Finance)
On July 27, enterprises including Nvidia, Microsoft, Adobe, SpaceX AI, IBM, SAP, Dell, Cisco announced the establishment of the Open Secure AI Alliance, aiming to build and share open tools to promote the responsible use of AI. The alliance members also include Cadence, Capital One, Cloudera, Cloudflare, Cognition, CrowdStrike, Databricks, DoorDash, Elastic, HPE, Hugging Face, LangChain, Linux Foundation, NAVER, NetApp, Nous Research, OpenClaw, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, Red Hat, Reflection AI, Salesforce, SK Telecom, ServiceNow, Siemens, Snowflake, Synopsys, Thinking Machines Lab and TrendAI. (Jiemian)
Investment and Financing:
Recently, physical AI company Zhengqi Future announced that it has completed 3 rounds of angel series financing totaling hundreds of millions of yuan in 8 months, with core investors including CDH VGC, Linear Capital, SAIC Motor Hengxu Capital, Brio Capital, Zhengxuan Investment, Fosun Investment and others. The company is positioned as "technology + product" dual-driven, focusing on Door-to-Door mobile tasks, and its core brand QUORRA is dedicated to building short-distance mobility robots. At present, the first product of the brand has been mass-produced and has received commercial orders in more than ten countries and regions around the world. It plans to launch DTC business overseas within this year, and simultaneously complete the opening of Tmall and JD flagship stores as well as the deployment of offline outlets in multiple provinces and cities across China.
Other Notable News:
Today (the 27th), the "General Rules for Cost Accounting Model of Photovoltaic Industry" was officially released, which will guide orderly competition in the industry with a unified standard. It is understood that this accounting model unifies the cost calculation scope, calculation coefficient and calculation model of the entire industrial chain of "silicon material - silicon wafer - cell - module", forming a cost accounting framework that runs through the entire industrial chain, which can eliminate the chaos of inconsistent cost accounting calibers and separate statements in the industry. This is an important step for the photovoltaic industry management to move from self-discipline initiatives to institutionalization and standardization. (CCTV News)
Wu Zhengping, Party Secretary and Deputy Director of the China International Import Expo Bureau, introduced at the 9th CIIE press briefing held on the 27th that 57 countries and 3 international organizations have confirmed their participation in the Country Exhibition of the 9th CIIE, with Moldova, Romania and the United Nations Development Programme participating for the first time. (CCTV News)
On July 27, Guo Shugang, Director of the Equipment Industry First Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, introduced the development of China's intelligent connected vehicle industry at the 2026 World Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference media roundtable. In the next step, MIIT will accelerate the formulation and release of the "15th Five-Year Plan" for the development of the intelligent connected new energy vehicle industry, thoroughly implement the "National Standardization Development Outline", accelerate the breakthrough of a number of key core technologies, accelerate the development of key standards, international coordination and implementation, further promote the "Vehicle-Road-Cloud Integration" application pilot, production access and road traffic pilot, and promote the establishment of an ecosystem that runs through the entire industrial chain. (The Paper)
Spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce answered reporters' questions on the US claim of planned investigation and sanctions against Chinese artificial intelligence enterprises. Question: Recently, some senior U.S. officials publicly stated that they will investigate the so-called "distillation" of U.S. cutting-edge models by Chinese artificial intelligence enterprises, and may sanction Chinese enterprises on grounds such as "stealing U.S. intellectual property rights". What is China's comment on this? Answer: We have noted the relevant situation. China has always opposed the U.S. side politicizing and weaponizing science, technology and economic and trade issues, stigmatizing and imposing sanctions on Chinese enterprises under various unwarranted pretexts. The U.S. side ignores the facts that the release time of the artificial intelligence models of relevant Chinese enterprises is very close to that of the U.S. cutting-edge models, and some Chinese models have taken the lead in capabilities, labeling Chinese enterprises with the so-called reliance on "distillation" and "stealing U.S. intellectual property rights", and even threatening to suppress and sanction them. These practices have no factual basis, no legal support, adopt double standards in practice, and are typical acts of artificial intelligence hegemonism. China urges the U.S. side to listen to the objective and rational voices of the industries of the two countries, correct its hegemonic thinking, and stop smearing and threatening to sanction Chinese enterprises. For any act that substantially damages China's interests, China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate and lawful rights and interests. It is hoped that the U.S. side will earnestly implement the consensus reached by the heads of state of the two countries, move in the same direction as China, strengthen artificial intelligence dialogue and communication, jointly promote the positive and sound development of artificial intelligence, and benefit the two countries and the world by promoting and improving artificial intelligence governance. (CCTV News)