Baidu Inc. surged more than 14% Friday after brokerages including Citigroup tested the company's just-unveiled ChatGPT-like service and granted it their preliminary approval.

Chinese tech companies have joined the global rush to develop rival software, with Alibaba and JD.com announcing similar projects. But Baidu's Ernie Bot, unveiled at a press event in Beijing on Thursday, fell short of expectations, with the company's co-founder and chief executive, Robin Li, showing only a prerecorded demonstration of the software's capabilities, rather than a live interaction.

On Thursday, Baidu CEO Robin Li gave a one-hour presentation on Ernie that only offered a small glimpse into the chatbot. The jury is still out on what Ernie can do and how it actually works. For now, Ernie is only available for testing through invitation and others need to get on a waitlist. TechCrunch hasn't tried it yet, so it's unfair to draw any conclusions about Ernie's capability.

Hitachi will provide local governments with a system to quickly dispatch electric vehicles to supply energy to areas in the event power is cut off following a disaster, Nikkei has learned. Auto dealers and transportation companies will need to register the number of cars and their recharging status with Hitachi's system in advance. Following a disaster, the most suitable EVs will be dispatched using information from traffic patterns and dealers near evacuation centers.

Meta, the parent firm of Facebook and Instagram, is working on a standalone, text-based social network app.

US regulators said Silicon Valley Bank depositors would be fully repaid as they acted to shore up the banking system after the lender's implosion, unveiling emergency funding measures and closing down a second financial institution.

Apple is facing an unprecedented wave of executive departures. Also: The company will shake up its sales operations with a focus on India, a yellow iPhone arrives, and Amazon's Ring and Sonos introduce key new products.

Suppliers to Dutch chip-making machines giant ASML Holding are considering building plants in Southeast Asia instead of China amid political tensions between Beijing and the West, according to two sources and documents seen by Reuters.

Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and other tech firms are scrambling to assess whether they must halt sales to units of China's Inspur Group after its addition to a US export blacklist last week.

Chinese artificial intelligence groups are skirting export controls to access high-end US chips through intermediaries, revealing potential loopholes in Washington's blockade of cutting-edge technology to the country.

Artificial intelligence was supposed to be Google's thing.

Lin Jun-cheng, a veteran engineer who worked for TSMC for nearly 19 years, has been hired by Samsung as a vice president.

Japan's capital will more than double certain subsidies for residential electrical-vehicle chargers next year as part of an effort to increase the number available at apartment buildings 150-fold in less than a decade, albeit from a low base. New apartment towers will also be required to have EV chargers starting in fiscal 2025 -- the first such mandate anywhere in Japan.

Chinese automotive chipmaker SiEngine Technology this week said it completed a 500 million yuan ($72.5 million) Series A+ funding round in the fourth quarter of last year. The round, whose participants included Teda Venture Capital, Haier Capital, SPDB International Holdings, Wuhan S&T Investment Company and Tongxi Capital, will help boost chip output among other uses. Existing shareholders Grandsyn Capital, Yuexiu Fund and Vision Knight Capital also took part in the funding.

A joint venture between the U.S. unit of Spanish engineering group ACS and Philadelphia-based Yates Construction has won a contract to build an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Kansas as part of a $4 billion investment by Japan's Panasonic group, the companies said on Wednesday.

Tesla could begin producing its first cars in Mexico in 2024, with the electric vehicle maker close to receiving its final permits allowing factory construction to begin in Nuevo Leon near the US-Mexico border, the state's governor said on Monday.

In late 2020, Alibaba founder Jack Ma also disappeared from public view for three months, after making comments critical of market regulators. Mr Bao's disappearance also comes after a series of cases of high-profile Chinese executives going missing as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign.

The National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund will commit CNY12.9 billion towards Yangtze Memory Technologies, according to a government website that discloses company registration information. The capital infusion from the Big Fund, as Beijing's signature investment vehicle is commonly known, was slated for completion on Januar 31, according to Tianyancha.

Rare earth elements are a bone of contention in EV supply chains, as it can be hard to secure supplies of them, and a large majority of worldwide production is either sourced or processed in China.

Tesla's leadership said Wednesday at an investor event held at the company's factory near the Texan capital that while silicon carbide transistors are key components, "we've figured out a way to use 75% less without compromising the performance or the efficiency of the car."

VinFast, an electric carmaker backed by Vietnam's richest man, delivered its first 45 VF 8 City Edition electric SUVs to US customers at nine California showrooms March 1, according to an emailed statement from parent Vingroup JSC. The vehicles will continue be delivered to customers at VinFast's stores or through a home-delivery service, it said.

HP maintained its annual guidance for cash flow even as it grapples with slumping PC demand, a sign it expects a rebound later in the year.

The Commerce Department on Tuesday kicked off the application process for semiconductor manufacturing subsidies under the $53 billion Chips Act, along with conditions aimed at advancing some of the Biden administration's priorities.

China has accused the US of overreacting after federal employees were ordered to remove the video app TikTok from government-issued phones.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sees the first signs of a turnaround in the company's business during his nearly two years at the helm of the top US chipmaker, he said yesterday. Analysts contacted by EE Times were less optimistic.

TSMC plans to construct a second chip plant in Japan to manufacture 5- and 10-nanometre chips from the second half of the decade, the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported on Friday.

Since the beginning of this year, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have been receiving a surge in orders for high bandwidth memories (HBM).

Apple has a moonshot-style project underway that dates back to the Steve Jobs era: noninvasive and continuous blood glucose monitoring.

Employee doubts are rising about TSMC's US$40 billion investment in an Arizona factory.

Forrester Research analyst Rowan Curran told MarketWatch that ChatGPT is an "iPhone moment for AI," citing Apple's reinvention of consumer electronics in 2007.

According to analysis by Swiss bank UBS, ChatGPT is the fastest growing app of all time. In January, only two months after its launch, UBS analysis estimates that ChatGPT had 100 million active users. For comparison, it took nine months for TikTok to reach 100 million.

Huawei Technologies Co is reportedly co-developing high-end electric vehicles with Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co Ltd, according to a contractor, showing that Huawei is getting increasingly involved in the vehicle industrial chain to grow its revenue. Yu Chengdong, chief executive of Huawei's intelligent automotive solution business unit, said in a reply to news website Paper.com late on Tuesday that the company has no plans to make cars itself. It is partnering with JAC Motors to help the latter produce and sell cars in a better way.

Battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology has agreed to set up a battery joint venture with leading carmaker Changan Automobile Group and its new energy vehicle subsidiary, as NEV sales in China increase. The JV will have a registered capital of CNY1.5 billion (USD218.4 million), Changan Auto announced on Feb. 17. The Chongqing-based carmaker will contribute 19 percent, Changan NEV Technology 30 percent, and CATL the rest, it added.

Lithium Chile Inc., one of three Canadian miners affected by Ottawa's snap decision to block Chinese investment in critical minerals, said the order has been satisfied, although it regrets losing an "incredible shareholder" that supplied valuable expertise.

Chinese mineral resource developers Sinomine Resource Group, Zangge Mining and Chengxin Lithium have been instructed by the Canadian government to withdraw their investments in Canadian miners due to heightened concerns about national security and the critical minerals supply chain.

China will ramp up its internal hunt for minerals and energy resources to bolster strategic reserves and increase the sale of critical mining assets such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, as well as oil and gas, the Ministry of Natural Resources announced last month in a meeting laying out priorities for this year. The new policies will encourage investment in mining exploration and give priority to land use for extracting strategic elements.

US curbs on China's access to advanced technology are killing its viability as a manufacturing base for exports, according to the head of Japan's Kyocera, as one of the world's largest makers of chip components shifts its production elsewhere and invests heavily in facilities at home.

Google has reached a key milestone in designing server processors aimed at reducing the cost of operating its data centers and keeping up with cloud business rival Amazon, according to one person with direct knowledge of the project and one person who was briefed about it. The progress means Google could start using the new chips by 2025, one of these people said.

By creating chatbot ChatGPT, artificial intelligence research and deployment company OpenAI has democratised AI, but, like all new technological developments, this carries the risk of challenges such as contextual errors, prejudice, information trustworthiness or credibility, analysts say.

While chip sales reached the highest-ever annual total in 2022, the slowdown in the second half of the year substantially limited growth. A deeper dive into the year-end data reveals how this pattern is consistent with the semiconductor industry's predictable cycle and why the current short-term downturn does not change the reality that long-term growth prospects for this foundational technology remain very promising.