China’s AI bombshell 💥 Energy for 60,000 years? 🔋 Quantum speed breakthrough ⚛️

2025-03-10 | subscribe | homepage

Welcome back to this week’s edition of the China Insights Weekly Newsletter!

Key highlights shaping the week:

• Alibaba’s QwQ-32B AI uses 1,500x less memory than OpenAI’s O1-mini

• China’s Manus AI is the 'world's first' fully autonomous AI agent

• China’s Quantum computer 1Mx faster than Google’s

• Thorium reactor could power China for 60,000 years

Dive deeper into these stories and more by clicking the headlines below. We value your feedback. Let us know your thoughts or suggestions on LinkedIn, X or Facebook.

🚀 Headlines

Alibaba released memory efficient AI model QwQ-32B, Chinese startup launched the world's first fully autonomous AI agent Manus (link, link)

Alibaba's Qwen Team has released open source QwQ-32B, a 32-billion-parameter reasoning model that matches the performance of DeepSeek-R1 and outperforms OpenAI's o1-mini. QwQ-32B is designed for complex problem-solving tasks and is more memory and compute-efficient than its competitors. The model uses a multi-stage reinforcement learning approach, focusing first on math and coding tasks, and then on general capabilities. QwQ-32B achieves comparable performance to DeepSeek’s R1, requiring only 24 GB of GPU vRAM compared to DeepSeek-R1's 1,500 GB. The efficiency makes it a valuable tool for enterprises seeking AI solutions for tasks like automated data analysis and software development.

Chinese AI startup Monica.Im, founded by Xiao Hong in 2023, has launched an AI agent named Manus, which outperforms OpenAI's Deep Research. Manus achieved top performance in the General AI Assistants benchmark, a third-party evaluation system. Manus can write code, browse the web, and operate applications, delivering complete task results to users. In a demo, Manus reviewed resumes, ranked candidates, and generated an Excel spreadsheet. It also compiled a list of properties in New York and compared stock performances. Currently, Manus is accessible only through invitation.

China Feb NEV wholesale at 840,000, up 85% from last year (link)

China's new energy vehicle (NEV) wholesale sales in February were estimated at 840,000 units, marking an 82% year-on-year increase but a 5% decline from January, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). The year-on-year growth is attributed to the Chinese New Year holidays, which fell entirely in February last year but were split between January and February this year. Major manufacturers with over 10,000 wholesale sales accounted for 91.8% of January's total NEV sales. In February, BYD led with 318,233 NEV wholesale sales, followed by Geely Auto with 98,433. SAIC-GM-Wuling sold 57,156 NEVs, Chery 44,375, Changan Automobile 38,046, and Tesla 30,688. Despite a seasonal drop during the holidays, NEVs are driving the post-holiday market recovery.