The Alibaba office building in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China, on Aug 28, 2024.
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Alibaba Cloud launched Thursday its latest AI model in its “Qwen series,” as large language model competition in China continues to heat up following the “DeepSeek moment.”
The new “Qwen2.5-Omni-7B” is a multimodal model, which means it can process inputs, including text, images, audio and videos, while generating real-time text and natural speech responses, according to an announcement on Alibaba Cloud’s website.
The company says that the model can be deployed on edge devices like mobile phones, offering high efficiency without compromising performance.
“This unique combination makes it the perfect foundation for developing agile, cost-effective AI agents that deliver tangible value, especially intelligent voice applications,” Alibaba said.
For example, it could be used to help a visually impaired person navigate their environment through real-time audio description, the company added.
The new model is open-sourced on the platforms Hugging Face and Github, following a growing trend in China after DeepSeek made its breakthrough R1 model open-source.
Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. Over the past years, Alibaba Cloud says it has open-sourced over 200 generative AI models.
Amid China’s AI fervor accelerated by DeepSeek, Alibaba and other generative AI competitors have been releasing new, cost-effective models and products at an unprecedented pace.
Last week, Chinese tech giant Baidureleased a new multimodal foundational model and its first reasoning-focused model.
Alibaba, meanwhile, debuted its updated Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model in late January and released a new version of its AI assistant tool Quark earlier this month.
The company has strongly committed to its AI strategy, announcing last month a plan to invest $53 billion in its cloud computing and AI infrastructure over the next three years, exceeding what it spent in the space over the past decade.
Kai Wang, Asia senior equity analyst at Morningstar, told CNBC that large Chinese tech players such as Alibaba, which build data centers to meet the computing needs of AI in addition to building their own LLMs, are well positioned to benefit from China’s post-DeepSeek AI boom.
Alibaba secured a major win for its AI business last month when it confirmed that the company was partnering with Apple to roll out AI integration for iPhones sold in China.
On Wednesday, the group also reported an expanded strategic partnership with BMW to accelerate the integration of its AI into the carmaker’s next-generation intelligent vehicles.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.
Disposable diapers are a massive environmental offender. Roughly 300,000 of them are sent to landfills or incinerated every minute, according to the World Economic Forum, and they take hundreds of years to decompose. It’s a $60 billion business.
One alternative approach has been compostable diapers, which can be made out of wood pulp or bamboo. But composting services aren’t universally available and some of the products are less absorbent than normal nappies, critics say.
A growing number of parents are also turning to cloth diapers, but they only make up about 20% of the U.S. market.
ZymoChem is attacking the diaper problem from a different angle. Harshal Chokhawala, CEO of ZymoChem, said that 60% to 80% of a typical diaper consists of fossil-based plastics. And half of that is an ingredient called super absorbent polymer, or SAP.
“What we have created is a low carbon footprint bio-based and biodegradable version of this super absorbent polymer,” Chokhawala said.
ZymoChem, with operations in San Leandro, California, and Burlington, Vermont, invented this new type of absorbent by using a fermentation process to convert a renewable resource — sugar — from corn into biodegradable materials. It’s similar to making beer.
“We’re at a point now where we’re very close to being at cost parity with fossil based manufacturing of super absorbents,” said Chokhawala.
The company’s drop-in absorbents can be added into other diapers, which makes it different from environmentally conscious companies like Charlie Banana, Kudos and Hiro, which sell their own brand of diapers.
ZymoChem doesn’t yet have a diaper product on the market. But Lindy Fishburne, managing partner at Breakout Ventures and an investor in the company, says it’s a scalable model.
“Being able to build and grow with biology allows us to unlock a circular economy and a supply chain that is no longer petro-derived, which opens up the opportunities of where you can manufacture and how you secure supply chains,” Fishburne said.
Other investors include Toyota Ventures, GS Futures, KDT Ventures, Cavallo Ventures and Lululemon. The company has raised a total of $35 million.
The Lululemon partnership shows that it’s not just about diapers. ZymoChem’s bio-based materials can also be used in other hygiene products and in bio-based nylon. Lululemon recently said it will use it in some of its leggings, which were traditionally made with petroleum.
Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on May 9, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Design software company Figma filed for an IPO on Tuesday, and plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol “FIG.”
The offering would be one of the hotly anticipated IPOs in recent years given Figma’s growth rate and its high private market valuation. In late 2023, a $20 billion acquisition agreement with Adobe was scrapped due to regulatory concerns in the U.K. That led Adobe to pay Figma a $1 billion termination fee.
Revenue in the first quarter increased 46% to $228.2 million from $156.2 million in the same period a year ago, according to Figma’s prospectus. The company recorded a net income of $44.9 million, compared to $13.5 million a year earlier.
As of March 31, Figma had around 450,000 customers. Of those, 1,031 were contributing at least $100,000 a year to annual revenue, up 47% from a year earlier. Clients include Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Netflix. More than half of revenue comes from outside the U.S.
Figma didn’t say how many shares it plans to sell in the IPO. The company was valued at $12.5 billion in a tender offer last year, and in April it announced that it had confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC.
Wall Street banks predicted a rush of IPOs after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November following a dry spell dating back to late 2021, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. While President Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs in April roiled markets and led a number of companies to delay their plans, activity has been picking up of late.
Stablecoin issuer Circle doubled in value in its early June debut and is now up more than sixfold from its IPO price for a market cap of almost $43 billion. Online banking company Chime also debuted in June, following Hinge Health’s IPO in May. Artificial infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which went public in March, jumped 46% in June and has quadrupled since its offering.
Buy now, pay later company Klarna, based in the U.K., filed for a U.S. IPO in March, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
Figma was founded in 2012 by CEO Dylan Field, 33, and Evan Wallace, and is based in San Francisco. The company had 1,646 employees as of March 31.
Before establishing Figma, Field spent over two years at Brown University, where he met Wallace. Field then took a Thiel Fellowship “to pursue entrepreneurial projects,” according to the filing. The two-year program that Founders Fund partner Peter Thiel established in 2011 gives young entrepreneurs a $200,000 grant along with support from founders and investors, according to an online description.
Field is the biggest individual owner of Figma, with 56.6 million Class B shares and 51.1% of voting power ahead of the IPO. He said in a letter to investors that it was time for Figma to buck the “trend of many amazing companies staying privately indefinitely.”
Databricks, SpaceX and Stripe are among high-valued companies that are still private.
“Some of the obvious benefits such as good corporate hygiene, brand awareness, liquidity, stronger currency and access to capital markets apply,” he wrote, explaining the decision. “More importantly, I like the idea of our community sharing in the ownership of Figma — and the best way to accomplish this is through public markets.”
Field added that as a public company, investors should “expect us to take big swings,” including through acquisitions. In April Figma bought the assets and team of an unnamed technology company for $14 million, according to the filing.
The IPO will also mark another much-needed win for Silicon Valley venture firms, which are in need of returns after the multi-year slump. Index Ventures is the largest outside shareholder, with a 17% stake before the offering, according to the filing. Greylock owns 16%, Kleiner Perkins controls 14% and Sequoia has a stake of 8.7%.
Figma said it faces “intense competition” and that loss of market share would “adversely affect our business,” but didn’t name any specific competitors.
Over 13 million people use Figma per month, and only one-third of them are designers, according to the filing. In March the company announced Figma Sites, a tool that turns designs into working websites. It’s one of a few new products that diversify the company away from its collaborative service for crafting app and website designs.
As of March 31, Figma had $1.54 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.
Using its cash, Figma has begun investing in digital currencies. In 2024, Figma’s board authorized a $55 million investment into a Bitwise Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. As of March 31, the holding was worth $69.5 million, according to the filing. In May, the board approved a $30 million investment in Bitcoin, and Figma spent the money on USD Coin, which is a stablecoin.