Latest news with #MisaZhuMingming
South China Morning Post
05-04-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
How Alibaba is turning into China's AI powerhouse and a school for entrepreneurs
Misa Zhu Mingming, an engineer who had worked at Alibaba Group Holding , left in 2014 to found his own venture, Rokid. The start-up, which develops smart glasses, was backed by angel investors that included Vision Plus Capital, formed by Eddie Wu Yongming and others before Wu became CEO of Alibaba in 2023. Advertisement A decade later, Rokid has emerged as one of the most prominent technology start-ups in Hangzhou, Alibaba's home city in eastern China. Over the past months, its augmented reality (AR) glasses, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) models, have been making waves on social media and in the stock market, earning Rokid recognition as the 'seventh little dragon' in the city, following the rise of the 'six little dragons' that included DeepSeek and Unitree Robotics 'I filled most of my knowledge gaps during my four years as an engineer' at Alibaba, Zhu said in a recent interview, adding that he had learned about marketing, operations and finance during his time there. Zhu and his start-up exemplify how Alibaba is empowering the development of China's AI industry through people who once worked at the company, particularly in Hangzhou. By the end of 2024, 85 AI start-ups had been founded by former Alibaba employees, with 45 per cent based in the city, according to information from the Chinese database ITJuzi. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. While e-commerce remains Alibaba's core business, with Taobao and Tmall contributing the bulk of its revenues and profits, the Hangzhou-based company, established by Jack Ma in 1999, is increasingly viewed as a facilitator of entrepreneurship through its AI capabilities rather than merely an online marketplace operator. Chinese tech giant Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Photo: AFP While DeepSeek, the start-up founded by Liang Wenfeng, has garnered headlines for its low-cost but high-performance models, the lab, consisting of about 200 young scientists focusing mostly on research, is less equipped to educate users about its products.
South China Morning Post
25-02-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Rokid's AI-infused AR glasses wow China with script projection, smart ring control
Chinese augmented-reality (AR) device maker Rokid made waves on social media and in the stock market after its founder showed how the start-up's artificial intelligence (AI) glasses could be used in a real-world setting. Advertisement While speaking last week at a government event in Rokid's hometown Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, founder Misa Zhu Mingming had his speech notes projected directly onto a pair of AR glasses he was wearing, instead of reading from a printed script or the prompter. He was able to flip through the virtual pages using a smart ring on his finger, according to a video shared by the company. Rokid Glasses have become the latest example of AI being used to upgrade products made in China. Producers of smart glasses, along with manufacturers from industries such as robotics and electric vehicles , have found new momentum after adopting advanced open-source AI models from start-up DeepSeek Rokid's presentation on February 18 sparked lively discussions online. Last weekend, the hashtag #ScriptOnGlassesTurnPagesWithRing became the tenth top-trending topic on Chinese microblogging site Sina. The Rokid Glasses are seen during at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month. Photo: EPA-EFE The AI Wearable Index, which tracks 50 publicly-listed Chinese companies related to the sector, surged more than 10 per cent in the past five trading days, according to financial data provider Wind Information. Leading the group is Shanghai-listed Mingyue Optical Lens, which climbed over 10 per cent on Tuesday. Advertisement Rokid Glasses, the company's first AR glasses equipped with large language models (LLMs), are designed to recognise images, interpret words and navigate roads. At 49 grams, they weigh similar to a pair of regular sunglasses and have a battery life of around four hours after being charged for 10 minutes inside a case.
South China Morning Post
07-02-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
DeepSeek's AI models give fresh boost to China's smart glasses to take on Meta
Published: 6:00pm, 7 Feb 2025 DeepSeek 's open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models are injecting fresh momentum into Chinese makers of smart glasses , as the technology enables developers to integrate more advanced capabilities into their products at a lower cost. 'DeepSeek's low-cost, high-price-performance model has fundamentally reshaped the economics of AI deployment,' said Misa Zhu Mingming , founder and chief executive of Hangzhou -based Rokid, a start-up that makes AI-equipped augmented-reality (AR) glasses. The price of adopting the reasoning model DeepSeek-R1 , for example, 'is far below that of [OpenAI's] GPT-4o model', Zhu told the South China Morning Post. He added that this would help companies in its field slash a considerable amount on research, development and operating expenses. DeepSeek is reshaping the industry, according to Zhu. Combined with China's advantages in hardware supply chain and optics, DeepSeek's AI models offer a more flexible solution for the smart glasses sector, which can help expand the adoption of these products, he said. That assessment reflects how DeepSeek, over the past few weeks, has become synonymous with China's efforts to overcome tech bottlenecks, including US trade restrictions on key components such as advanced semiconductors .
