Rest of World
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Chinese AI firms want Silicon Valley’s top minds. Poaching them won’t be easy
Startups like MiniMax and Moonshot are setting up U.S. outposts, but massive pay gaps, weaker prestige, and national security tensions make luring talent away from OpenAI and Anthropic an uphill climb.
A rare strike in Taiwan exposes labor unrest beneath the global AI rush
Labor disputes and unionization in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry highlight growing worker discontent over the unequal distribution of profits from the AI boom.
Startups recalibrate Chinese AI for the West
A growing number of startups are editing powerful Chinese open-weight models for Western businesses that are concerned about censorship and security.
Why Africa needs its own AI off switch
Africa must develop AI systems with local control to protect critical infrastructure such as mobile money networks from growing AI-powered cyberthreats.
AI models cost more when you don’t use English
Some languages require far more tokens for AI models to process, raising costs and reducing context for the people who use them.
Big Tech’s thirst for water is sparking a global resistance
In his new book “Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires,” writer Paris Marx examines how local communities are resisting the growing demand for water to cool data centers.
Will developing nations be able to handle millions of AI agents?
It may be some time before AI agents can fully navigate the complexities and cultural nuances of developing nations.
Western open-weight models still can’t beat China
Chinese open-weight AI models offer high capability at significantly lower costs than U.S. frontier systems, but face monetization and compute challenges, experts said at a Rest of World event in San Francisco.
What the West can learn from AI optimists in the rest of the world
The developing world’s enthusiastic adoption of AI and necessity-driven innovations offer lessons for an anxiety-ridden West.
BYD expands EV shipping fleet as wars upend freight costs and key trade routes
China’s EV giant says a shortage of ships is holding back its exports.
The UAE embraces AI for kindergartners
The country’s approach offers a glimpse of what education could look like if AI literacy becomes as fundamental as reading and writing.
As U.S. blocks DJI, Insta360 races to win American creators
Regulatory clarity and market timing are a boon for smaller Chinese smart-camera maker Insta360 and its independent Antigravity drone brand.
Conflict in the Red Sea is forcing cloud giants to find a new route for the internet
Google, Meta, and Microsoft are said to be securing expensive land routes as fighting around Yemen threatens the submarine cables connecting Europe and Asia.
Not just AI. China is building technologies that challenge U.S. dominance
From batteries and solar panels to drones and satellites, China is building tech capabilities that extend well beyond AI, writes Steve Feldstein in his new book, "Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Big Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare."
The AI boom is making the world’s cheapest smartphones disappear
AI data centers are driving demand for memory chips, pushing phone makers to raise prices and abandon some of their most affordable models.
Who gets to decide if AI is safe? Africa wants a say
African companies race to adopt American and Chinese AI, with little attention paid to safety.
Awkward: Saudi Arabia’s new EV brand takes on the U.S. rival it already controls
The Saudi wealth fund’s new EV will compete with Chinese rivals and with Lucid, the U.S. carmaker the fund controls.
AI companies want to embed safety evaluators, but countries need their own
At a Rest of World event in New York last week, speakers explored how countries sidelined by the U.S.-China race can retain some control over safety standards as they adopt models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.
The open-source AI platforms vying to become China’s Hugging Face
AI model platforms ModelScope and MoArk are competing to serve Chinese-speaking developers behind the Great Firewall.
South Korea’s AI chip giants are fighting for a bigger role in America’s AI boom
Samsung and SK Hynix dominate the high-bandwidth memory market. Now they are competing to become indispensable to Nvidia, OpenAI, and other U.S. AI companies.
In the directory since 14 Oct 2026 · last checked 9 Nov 2026 · RSS