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Analysis and scoops about the business of technology from Bloomberg's journalists around the world.
Analysis and scoops about the business of technology from Bloomberg's journalists around the world.
Analysis and scoops about the business of technology from Bloomberg's journalists around the world.
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Welcome to Tech In Depth, our daily newsletter about the business of tech from Bloomberg's journalists around the world. Today, Zheping Huang writes about the OpenClaw rush in China.
Tech Across the Globe
- Apple delays home display: The iPhone maker is postponing a smart home display until later this year as it struggles to finish AI upgrades to its Siri digital assistant, an integral part of the new product.
- OpenAI's acquisition: The maker of ChatGPT has agreed to buy Promptfoo, a startup that lets large businesses fix security issues in AI models during their development.
- Uber's pitch to women: The rideshare company is going nationwide in the US with its optional feature that matches women passengers and drivers, expanding a safety measure as it seeks to resolve sexual assault complaints.
Revalued
OpenAI partner Nscale has raised $2 billion in funding that values the data center developer at $14.6 billion. That places the UK-based firm among Europe's most valuable startups. The company also added former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg as directors.
AI lobsters everywhere
KimiClaw. AutoClaw. QClaw. MaxClaw. The latest mania gripping China's tech circles is "raising lobsters," as the world's biggest internet population dives headlong into the world of artificial intelligence agents.
OpenClaw, the viral, open source tool for creating autonomous AI, has spawned a new ecosystem within China's tech arena with a level of exuberance that eclipses Silicon Valley. No, seriously. The language of lobster husbandry -- referring to the process of using what was previously known as Clawdbot to create an agent that would do complex tasks like organizing a schedule or triage email -- is everywhere across the Chinese internet. Companies are starting their WeChat posts with the ???? emoji and promising their customization is the easiest way to get in on the trend.
Tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba, along with AI upstarts ranging from Moonshot to MiniMax, have rolled out their own tweaks of the software touting simple, one-click adoption. A slew of government agencies, in cities from Shenzhen to Wuxi, have issued notices offering multimillion-yuan subsidies to startups leveraging OpenClaw to make advances.
Investors have rallied to the potential winners, with Tencent jumping some 7% on Tuesday and MiniMax surpassing Baidu in market value. Now priced north of $44 billion, MiniMax is trading at more than 500 times its 2025 revenue (of just $79 million), while longtime internet leader Baidu is trading at just 2.3 times.
The mood is febrile, even without a full understanding of all the potential uses -- and pitfalls -- of amateur coders crafting their own software and self-steering AI.
I attended one of the OpenClaw meetups proliferating across China recently at the Beijing offices of Zhipu, one of the leading domestic AI model makers. The company treated young founders and engineers to pizzas and spicy crayfish -- playing on the claw theme -- as speakers shared how they are tapping OpenClaw for new ventures. One example was a Chinese-language, AI-only social network called ClawdChat, which mimics the globally oriented Moltbook, one of the first breakout hits post-OpenClaw. Another speaker said he brings five MacBook Air laptops wherever he goes -- to monitor and supervise his agent "minions" -- as he tries to monetize their social media posts on WeChat.
The meetups are beginning to border on the cult-like: a gathering in Shenzhen this past weekend featured a room of attendees wearing tall cartoon hats resembling cooked red lobsters. Sharp online commentators compared the scene to the Qigong mania of the 1990s, where practitioners wore tin pots on their heads to, um, connect with the universe.
Beyond the online buzz, there are a couple of things to unpack regarding why China stands out in this moment. First, the country is hunting for a breakout moment in AI, one that's comparable to the success of DeepSeek's open source model a year ago. We've been waiting with baited breath for a successor product from DeepSeek, and in its absence, OpenClaw looks like the hit the industry craves. Its open source mandate fits Beijing's push to use open software to compete against the proprietary offerings from US frontier AI labs.
But there is of course the long-term commercial play too. For the country's top cloud providers and model makers, the goal is to capitalize on the frenzy and drive consumption on their platforms. While US OpenClaw users typically rely on a spare computer to operate their code -- commonly a Mac Mini -- many Chinese internet companies now offer virtual machines where it can also run in the cloud. The hypercompetitive nature of the AI race in the country means they will pursue users at all costs, with pricing that risks eroding negligible margins.
The flurry evokes the heady days of China's booming tech sector before a sweeping regulatory crackdown hit in late 2020. In that era, venture capitalists, founders, and opportunists swarmed every emerging niche -- from the sharing economy of bike rentals to the once-hot minting of crypto tokens. It is a high-stake scramble to either get ahead or claw back lost ground.
"The core business is phenomenal and they never needed that deal -- it was a nice to have, not a must have. It's hard to look at this in any negative way."Alicia Reese, analyst at Wedbush
Speaking about Netflix and the collapse of its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros.' studio and streaming businesses.
Read
The day's most read story in tech and entertainment
Anthropic sued the US government over its decision to label the AI startup a supply chain risk. The legal action intensified a dispute between the company and the Pentagon over the limits that should be placed on the use of AI by the military. Anthropic claims the designation was put in place as punishment for its disagreement with the Trump administration.
Moved
$250 Million
The valuation for Lyzr AI, a boost of five times from its value in October. The New York-based startup builds infrastructure for enterprise AI agents.