China's central SOEs upgrade open source platform to deepen AI collaboration

An updated version of an artificial intelligence (AI) open source platform was launched Friday at the ongoing 2026 World AI Conference (WAIC) and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, marking an important step in promoting AI applications and collaboration in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) directly administered by the Chinese central government.

The AI open source platform, named "the Huanxin Community", was originally launched by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council in July last year.

Bringing together central SOEs, private companies, universities and research institutes, the Huanxin Community features computing power, industry-specific AI models, high-quality datasets, and diverse application scenarios.

The open-source platform offers free public access to 2,200 domestically produced intelligent computing cards, and has aggregated more than 4,700 AI models and 1,200 datasets.

At a WAIC forum on high-quality AI development in enterprises, the SASAC unveiled the Huanxin Community 2.0, which introduced the "Model-Data Resonance Space", a new infrastructure designed to facilitate coordinated development between AI models and big data.

"We have leveraged the comprehensive strengths of computing power, networks, and data technologies to innovatively develop a new type of infrastructure known as the 'Model-Data Resonance Space'. It will enable the data sharing within the domain, model training, full process traceability, and value sharing," said Tao Tao, vice general manager of the Digital and Intelligent Business Division of China Mobile, the organizer of the forum.

During the forum, a series of high-value AI application scenarios from central SOEs were also released. One notable example is an AI-powered hydropower management system implemented at nine hydropower stations and four photovoltaic projects in southwest China's Guizhou Province. The system has optimized operations and enabled the yielding of an additional 980 million kWh of electricity last year.

China's central SOEs upgrade open source platform to deepen AI collaboration

Nobel Laureate Omar Yaghi has vowed to tackle larger challenges by using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to make new materials, as he joined China's Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious universities.

Yaghi, the 2025 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, left his faculty post at the University of California, Berkeley and joined Tsinghua University on a full-time basis in July 2026.

In his appointment ceremony address, Yaghi said that in choosing Tsinghua, he is ready to begin again, not to slow down, not to repeat what has been done, but to pursue science with more energy, intensity, and ambition than ever before.

In an interview with China Media Group aired on Friday, the professor explained what "beginning again" means to him.

"Begin again means to address an even larger challenge than I've addressed before and this larger challenge has to do with how do we change the way we do research, can we exemplify that by combining AI, robotics and making new materials. But in the meantime, we are communicating to our discipline, in this case, chemistry, material science, that there's a new way to do science, there is a new way to make great discoveries. So the discoveries that we make here impact the world and they are done for the world," he said.

Nobel laureate says he aims to tackle larger challenges by combining AI, robotics