The pivot doesn't look out of place at CES, where Chinese electronics companies are increasingly applying their manufacturing prowess to new industries. If you've never been to Shenzhen, China's electronics capital, the annual CES trade show in Las Vegas is the next best thing. I'm reporting this week from the sprawling event, surrounded by fancy, strange, and often unnecessary gadgets, and despite my sore legs, I've barely scratched the surface. There are at least 900 Chinese tech companies attending CES this year, almost a quarter of the total exhibitors, according to an analysis of the conference's exhibitor directory. I even saw two Chinese humanoid robots at different booths dancing to the same viral Chinese rap song five minutes apart.

In the AI boom, chatbots and GPTs come and go quickly. On a drizzly and windswept afternoon this summer, I visited the headquarters of Rokid, a startup developing smart glasses in Hangzhou, China. As I chatted with engineers, their words were swiftly translated from Mandarin to English, and then transcribed onto a tiny translucent screen just above my right eye using one of the company's new prototype devices. Rokid's high-tech spectacles use Qwen, an open-weight large language model developed by the Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba. OpenAI's GPT-5, Google's Gemini 3, and Anthropic's Claude often score higher on benchmarks designed to gauge different dimensions of machine cleverness.

While the coronavirus pandemic is rapidly spreading in many countries across the globe, it also seems to be slowing down in some regions. China, for example, recently announced that it will lift lockdown imposed on Hubei located in Central China as that no domestic cases were reported after a long time. Additionally, after two months of total lockdown, the country has opened up a couple of public places that are attracting crowds. In order, to stay safe and detect people infected with the COVID-19 virus, China is equipping its officers with AI-powered smart glasses to find people with a fever, one of the symptoms of COVID-19. Security Staff at the Hongyuan park, section of Xixi wetland preserve in Eastern China are wearing these AI-powered smart glasses which help them to detect the body temperature of the park visitors.

In comics, television and film, there is almost no hiding from Superman because of his powerful X-ray vision. The famous exception is his inability to see through lead. Nearly 82 years since this superhero first appeared in Action Comics #1 on April 1938, the line between science fiction and reality is blurring fast in China, as more advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology are being used to help stop the coronavirus from spreading. Roving security staff at Hongyuan Park, part of the Xixi Wetland preserve in Hangzhou in eastern China, now have the power to quickly detect the body temperature of all park visitors from a distance of up to 1 meter, thanks to "non-contact thermal augmented reality" smart glasses supplied by AI start-up Rokid Corp. The company said on Thursday that each smart glass user will be capable of checking the temperature of several hundred people within two minutes – a vast coverage and speed that would make even Superman proud – to eliminate queues at the park entrance.

In comics, television and film, there is almost no hiding from Superman because of his powerful X-ray vision. The famous exception is his inability to see through lead. Nearly 82 years since this superhero first appeared in Action Comics #1 on April 1938, the line between science fiction and reality is blurring fast in China, as more advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology are being used to help stop the coronavirus from spreading. Roving security staff at Hongyuan Park, part of the Xixi Wetland preserve in Hangzhou in eastern China, now have the power to quickly detect the body temperature of all park visitors from a distance of up to 1 meter, thanks to "non-contact thermal augmented reality" smart glasses supplied by AI start-up Rokid Corp. The company said on Thursday that each smart glass user will be capable of checking the temperature of several hundred people within two minutes – a vast coverage and speed that would make even Superman proud – to eliminate queues at the park entrance.

Rokid, a Chinese startup that makes an AI voice assistant and smart devices, just raised a Series B extension round led by Temasek Holdings, with participation from Credit Suisse, IDG Capital and CDIB Capital. The size of the round was not released, but a source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch that it is $100 million. The company's previous funding was its Series B round, which was announced in November 2016. Founder and chief executive officer Mingming Zhu says Rokid raised a Series B instead of a C round because the company, which is based in Hangzhou, China with research centers in Beijing and San Francisco that develop its proprietary natural language processing, image processing, face recognition and robotics technology, is still in its early stages. Rokid wants to focus on gathering more resources and bringing in strategic investors like Temasek Holdings before moving on to a Series C.

Rokid's AR glasses aren't ready for public consumption, but the company is releasing them this year anyway. Rokid is an AI company based in China and it's made a name for itself building smart home products, but its latest gadget is a pair of frames that aim to be the AR glasses of our sci-fi dreams. Right now, however, their functionality is limited. The Rokid glasses respond to basic hand gestures like sliding tiles of a menu left and right simply by swiping the air, or selecting one by making a fist. The images appear in the upper-right corner of the lenses, superimposed over the real world.

Rokid Corporation, Ltd., an artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company, today announced that it has raised in excess of $50 million in Series B funding at a post-funding valuation of $450 million. Rokid is a smart home device featuring advanced AI and deep learning that enriches a consumer's life by delivering information on-demand and performing tasks via voice and visual interactions. Rokid's superior engineering and elegant design makes it an essential family companion. This latest infusion builds upon a successful Series A round raised in 2015, and will be used for product development and to expand its world-class team, with an emphasis on research, hardware/software development, design, and user experience in U.S. and China. This round was led by Advantech and existing investors, IDG Capital Partners and Walden International.