Meituan

JD.com has introduced an AI-enabled smart helmet for food couriers, joining Alibaba and Meituan in deploying similar technology to enhance rider safety and delivery efficiency. The helmet features an AI voice assistant and environment-sensing camera to minimize risks.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has launched an AI-enabled smart helmet for food couriers, following similar initiatives by Alibaba Group Holding and Meituan. The helmet features an AI-driven voice assistant and a camera to enhance rider safety and delivery efficiency.

Asian technology stocks experienced a sell-off with SoftBank declining 7%, while AI-related investments faced losses. Chinese internet companies listed in Hong Kong, including Tencent, Meituan, Baidu, and Kuaishou, saw increased trading values despite broader regional weakness.

Uber plans to acquire Delivery Hero for $15 billion, expanding its food delivery operations to 50 new markets and making it the largest food delivery company outside China. The deal combines Uber's services with Delivery Hero's brands like foodpanda and Hungerstation, surpassing competitors like DoorDash in market reach and revenue projections.

Alibaba Group Holding's shares rose 12.2% in Hong Kong amid expectations of revenue growth driven by AI demand and reduced food delivery losses. Equity analysts anticipate reaccelerated revenue in the June quarter, with rivals Tencent and Meituan also seeing share gains.

Even Realities, a smart glasses maker, achieved a $1B valuation after securing $150M in funding led by Meituan and Tencent. The company is developing camera-free smart glasses and was founded by an ex-Apple team.

Brazil’s antitrust body Cade revived a case against China-backed delivery app 99Food. Market leader iFood requested an investigation into 99Food and Keeta for below-cost pricing. 99Food is owned by China’s DiDi, and Keeta by China’s Meituan.

LongCat-2.0, a 1.6 trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts AI model, operated under the alias 'Owl Alpha' for two months before being claimed by Meituan. The model offers significantly lower pricing than GPT-5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.

Taiwan raided the local offices of US IT firm Super Micro over allegations of smuggling Nvidia chips into China. The US has banned exporting advanced chips to China due to fears they could enhance China's AI capabilities, but Chinese tech firms like Meituan continue to develop advanced AI models using home-grown hardware.

iFood, Brazil’s leading food-delivery app, requested an antitrust investigation into two Chinese-backed competitors, 99Food (owned by DiDi) and Keeta (Meituan’s overseas brand), alleging they use deep discounts to gain market advantage.

Meituan employees are anxious about potential layoffs amid rumors of significant cuts to product roles and other departments as the company adapts to the AI era. Meituan denied the rumors, but workers remain concerned about job security.

JD.com founder Richard Liu plans to retrain 700,000 blue-collar delivery workers as robots automate manual tasks, transitioning them into office-based roles focused on robot repair and maintenance. The company has partnered with 120 schools in China to facilitate this retraining, ensuring workers are not displaced by automation.

Meituan is set to gain a significant financial windfall from investments in frontier tech, including Zhipu AI, despite reporting a third consecutive quarterly adjusted net loss of 4.97 billion yuan (US$735 million). The company's bets on AI and robotics are highlighted as a potential boost amid financial challenges.

China's 'Seven Titans' tech stocks have declined as deflationary pressures outweigh the AI boom's positive impact. The slump highlights economic challenges overshadowing advancements in artificial intelligence.