Beijing subsidizes robots as workforce shrinks

Financial Times

China is pouring subsidies into embodied AI and robotics development to address its demographic crisis and shrinking workforce, making automation a key pillar of national economic strategy.

arXiv

VibeThinker-3B proves that 3B parameter models can match flagship reasoning systems through specialized training, suggesting verifiable reasoning is compressible while general knowledge requires parameter scale—reshaping assumptions about model efficiency.

Reuters

Hyundai gains complete ownership of Boston Dynamics after acquiring SoftBank's final stake, giving it full control over the Spot and Atlas robotics platforms as it accelerates commercial robot deployment.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA's Rubin platform achieves 100% liquid cooling for AI servers running at up to 45°C, reducing data center cooling energy by up to 40% and eliminating nearly all water consumption while enabling higher compute densities. This represents a critical efficiency breakthrough as AI workloads scale and traditional air cooling becomes inadequate for high-power chips.

Reuters

The White House is reviewing Chinese subsidized robotics imports to protect domestic manufacturers, signaling protectionist trade policies in advanced automation technology.