Hello everyone, it’s Cissy from Hong Kong, your #tech Asia host this week. It’s been seriously hot; on Sunday downtown hit 36.9C, the hottest day since 1884, partly due to Typhoon Dolphin trapping warm air. Evening hikes felt pleasant because of a nice spray.

China’s tech race is heating up, especially hardware. Unitree, China’s top humanoid‑robot maker, drew huge retail demand before its Shanghai IPO. The final online allocation rate was <0.0181 % and it attracted 9.78mn online applications, the lowest on record for the Star Market.

Sony Group and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. will mass‑produce next‑gen image sensor chips in Kumamoto, Japan, as early as 2029. A joint venture, about 60 % owned by Sony and 40 % by TSMC, is expected to launch by fiscal 2026 end, aiming for sharper camera sensors for Apple and a long‑term bet on “physical AI.”

ByteDance is training a model with up to 10 trillion parameters, triple the size of China’s current leader, while state funds poured $8.9 bn to prop up falling chip stocks. Rare‑earth export controls are forcing new supply‑chain thinking, but China still dominates the global market.