Taking stock: China gains in the AI race
episodePreviously titled “Taking Stock: China Gains in AI race” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Suuret päätökset voivat viedä kauas. Siksi tarvitsen rinnalleni kumppanin, joka ymmärtää minne olen menossa. Hello, I'm Rahul Tandon.
Welcome to Business Daily on the week that... People are always asking about all of the work I've gotten done. Not that type of work.
All right, do you want to have a guess, either of you, this week? Who is that?
Guessing it's Kim Kardashian. Oh, well, look at that. Look at that.
That's the sort of performance that we want on this programme. No need to ask. We always know you're going to be able to answer all the questions. There was Kim Kardashian launching her new revamped energy drink with what I have to say was quite a strange video, but it's gone viral there. Would it make you want to drink it? Do you need an energy drink when you're on taking stock, Rebecca?
Never. Surely this is energizing enough.
Well, I'm glad you said that. But, you know, celebrities getting people to try products, it works, doesn't it? It's an old formula, but it does work.
Yeah, in many ways, not such a new phenomenon, particularly for the Kardashian dynasty.
Yeah, I mean, clearly she is very good at marketing herself and her products. That's why she's worth about $2 billion. I'm not the target market for the energy drink from her, so I don't think I'll be trying it. But I got a good cup of coffee here, Raul, so I'm good.
Why are you not? I mean, energy drinks are for everybody. Even I have an occasional energy drink.
Walter, give it a go. I've tried one and certainly my kids, my son, for example, is a lot more into those. But for me, I'll stick with the caffeine and the coffee.
OK, well, listen, we like to do things differently in this programme. So we're doing the introductions a little bit later than normal, but you will have worked it out by now. We have with us Rebecca Chung-Wilkins, familiar voice, senior Asia correspondent from Bloomberg, joining us from Singapore. We're not going to talk to her about Toy Story 5 because we did last time. And she hasn't seen it yet. Walter Todd, president and chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital, based in South Carolina. Last time you were on Toy Story 5, did you actually see it, at least, Walter?
I'm embarrassed I have not. Sorry. Sorry to disappoint you, Ro.
Well, there we go. Poor start so far. They may have got the Kim Kardashian question right, but they didn't live up to their promises of going to see Toy Story 5. Wherever you are in the world this week, it has been another rollercoaster week for the world of AI. MediShares fell as the company reported that 98% of its operating cash was absorbed by AI. And we've seen $2 trillion wiped off the South Korean stock. Let us repeat that for you. $2 trillion with circuit breakers used for the first time on two consecutive days. That was on Tuesday and Wednesday. The shares of the chip makers there fell about these growing AI concerns. So lots happening there. But we wanted to take stock of who's winning the AI race because we have representatives from China and the US on the programme.
And Rebecca, a lot of people will have heard about DeepSea, Kimmy K3 by Moonshot recently, which are examples of China pushing ahead. But for those who haven't, just explain why they're so significant and why people in the US tech sector are getting a little worried.
Well, there's a few different factors, but the first part of this were these frontier models that came out of China that essentially took people by surprise. They compete with some of the most advanced AI models that we see from the US, but of course, built on a very sort of from an ideological point of view, built from a very different point of view all around this idea of the open model. And that has then been shortly followed by other developments. We've had, for example, CXMT coming to market a huge bumper IPO. Essentially, that shows that China is also able to meet these sort of vast financing demands. that we see from chip making, which is, of course, used and critical in the development of AI.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–15:01
2
What were the biggest AI market shocks this week and why do they matter?
15:01–18:32
3
Which recent Chinese AI models and companies are worrying US tech observers?
18:32–19:38
4
How are China’s frontier models, chip IPOs and domestic lithography changing the AI landscape?
19:38–27:03
Speakers
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