Aug 18, 2025

China Recap is a weekly roundup tracking Chinese companies expanding abroad, covering market entries, funding rounds, product launches, and global partnerships. China's corporate globalization strategy is evolving fast. Industry giants are rewriting the global playbook, while a new generation of companies charts fresh paths overseas. China Recap tracks both—focusing on strategic expansion, brand building, and localized operations—to help readers make sense of shifting trends and understand how Chinese firms are reshaping their global approach. Last week, Chinese chipmakers were observed accelerating innovation in artificial intelligence hardware, pursuing breakthroughs as demand remained strong despite shifts in the global trade order: DeepSeek delays R2 launch over chip woes DeepSeek has reportedly delayed its R2 model launch after unsuccessful training runs on Huawei's Ascend chips, opting to use Nvidia hardware while continuing to use Ascend for inference. The delay highlighted China's chip performance gap with US rivals, slowed market momentum, and was compounded by extended data labelling. — Financial Times Iluvatar CoreX eyes Hong Kong IPO Iluvatar CoreX is weighing a Hong Kong IPO that could raise USD 300–400 million, according to sources cited by Bloomberg . Backed by Centurium Capital, the chipmaker is gaining traction as Beijing pushes firms to reduce reliance on Nvidia. Discussions are preliminary, and deal terms may still change. Huawei unveils UCM for AI inference Huawei has unveiled UCM, a toolkit that uses key-value caching to speed up inference, expand context windows, and reduce token processing costs. Already in trial at UnionPay for customer service and marketing, UCM is set to be open-sourced in September. — IT Zhijia SMIC sees sharp rise in Chinese chip demand SMIC said Chinese chipmakers are rapidly gaining market share, with some increasing wafer orders tenfold over the past two years. Co-CEO Zhao Haijun said supply is expected to remain tight until October due to rising demand for power and analog chips. In the second quarter of 2025, the firm's revenue rose 16.2% year-on-year to USD 2.2 billion, while net profit fell 19.5% to USD 132 million. — Nikkei Asia Porosvoc raises Series A funding Chinese firm Porosvoc has raised an eight-figure RMB sum in Series A funding from Hanlian Semiconductor Industry Fund to advance R&D in intelligent speech enhancement and interaction technologies. Founded in 2018, the company develops tri-core audio AI chips and algorithms for products spanning smart terminals, AI PCs, intercoms, and AI-powered toys. — 36Kr That wraps up this edition of China Recap. If your company is expanding internationally, we'd love to hear about your latest milestones. Get in touch to share your story.