Moonshot AI completed $3.5B+ Series F funding round at $35B valuation, positioning as leading Chinese LLM player.

**Midea Group** reported that extreme heat across Europe has driven surging air conditioning demand. Its Wuhu and Guangzhou facilities received 200,000 new orders for European customers within a single month. The company's PortaSplit mobile split AC units have logged over 160,000 new orders since June. In July, 20,000 of 30,000 emergency units ordered by France were already shipped.

**New Oriental** disclosed fourth-quarter and full-year unaudited results for the period ending May 31, 2026. Fourth-quarter net revenue reached $1.53 billion, up 23% year-over-year. Fourth-quarter operating profit stood at $85.8 million, compared to an $8.7 million loss in the prior-year period.

**Lingyang AgentOne** formally deployed four AI employee roles on July 29, covering AI sales, AI customer service, AI operations, and AI marketing. Enterprises can build customized scenario-specific "X employees" using AgentOne's capabilities alongside Lingyang FDE (Front-end Deployment Engineer) teams. CEO Peng Xinyu stated: "AgentOne is outcome-driven, data-grounded, and benchmark-guided, helping enterprises achieve growth in the AI era."

**UMC** announced on July 29 plans to expand its Singapore fab's cleanroom capacity and initiate new factory shell construction at its Tainan Science Park site. The expansion targets near-term customer demand and will serve as the future base for P7 and P8 fab phases, broadening the company's advanced packaging footprint.

**Moonshot AI's Kimi** completed Series F financing of over $3.5 billion at a post-money valuation of $35 billion. Due to oversubscription by more than threefold, the round closed ahead of schedule. The previously planned Series G (Pre-IPO) round has been accelerated and will commence earlier, with a pre-money valuation of $50 billion.

**Meibang Shares** disclosed first-half results showing revenue of 555 million yuan, up 14.34% year-over-year, with net profit of 51.07 million yuan, up 41.32% year-over-year, and basic earnings per share of 0.38 yuan.

**Hermès** reported second-quarter sales of €4.1 billion, up 7% at constant exchange rates in line with market expectations. All markets except the Middle East achieved growth during the three-month period ending June 30.

**BMW** is offering voluntary severance packages to thousands of German employees as part of its cost reduction and competitiveness drive. The global plan targets roughly 8,000 positions, predominantly in Germany, primarily affecting R&D, product planning, and corporate functions, with production-line workers excluded. Management layers will be streamlined over coming months. The program begins October and extends through 2027.

**Jitech Integration** achieved mass production of ICNA3611, China's first domestically developed OLED display touch-integrated (TDDI) chip, in mainstream models of major domestic brands.

**Zhigutianchu**, an intelligent cooking robot company, completed a strategic financing round of approximately 100 million yuan. Led by China Merchants Investment with participation from Yueqian Capital, Yunqi Capital, and other existing investors, the funding will accelerate physical AI development and global expansion of Chinese and pan-Asian culinary concepts.

**China's Ministry of Commerce** issued a directive advancing construction of urban "15-minute convenient living circles." The notice calls for localities to accelerate progress toward completing 10,000 such circles nationwide in 2026 while maintaining quality standards. The ministry encouraged promoting domestic consumer goods, foreign-trade products, local specialties, and international brands within these circles, and incentivized appliance trade-in programs, smart product subsidies, and vehicle trade-in policies through community-based demonstrations and point-of-sale services.

**China's Foreign Ministry**, responding to US FCC import restrictions on foreign-made advanced robots including humanoid robots, stated on July 29 through spokesperson Mao Ning that China opposes the US's broadened interpretation of national security to suppress Chinese enterprises. Protectionism cannot enhance US competitiveness and will harm American businesses and consumers, the statement said. China pledged to take necessary countermeasures to safeguard legitimate rights of Chinese companies.

**The Bank of England** is evaluating the Asian stock exposure of investment banks operating in London to mitigate concentration risk tied to a narrow set of AI-related companies. Regulators are assessing how banks finance Asian investments for hedge funds and institutions through UK operations. The AI boom has concentrated investor flows toward select Asian firms including SK Hynix and TSMC, with some banks deriving greater revenues from Asian financing than from European business.