3 Before 9: March 23, 2026

Tencent launched a tool called ClawBot on Sunday that embeds the open-source OpenClaw AI agent inside WeChat as a contact, giving the app's one billion-plus monthly users a way to delegate tasks such as file transfers, email and scheduling through the messaging interface. The move follows Tencent's release earlier this month of its own agent suite - QClaw for consumers, Lighthouse for developers and WorkBuddy for enterprises - and comes as nearly 1,000 people queued outside the company's Shenzhen headquarters to have engineers help them install OpenClaw on their laptops. Chinese authorities have already restricted state-run enterprises and government agencies from running OpenClaw on office machines over security concerns, but consumer enthusiasm shows no sign of slowing.

Alibaba Group reported a 67 per cent drop in quarterly profit to 16.3 billion yuan ($2.4 billion), even as its cloud division posted 36 per cent revenue growth to 43.3 billion yuan ($6.2 billion). CEO Eddie Wu responded by setting a five-year target of $100 billion in annual cloud and AI revenue - roughly five times current levels - requiring sustained growth of at least 35 per cent a year. The company has also raised cloud and storage prices by up to 34 per cent and consolidated multiple AI teams under a new Alibaba Token Hub to accelerate commercialisation of its Qwen models, which now reach over 300 million monthly active users.

SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy has begun construction on a 10-gigawatt data centre campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in Pike County, Ohio, backed by 9.2 gigawatts of new natural gas generation costing $33.3 billion. A further $4.2 billion will go toward transmission upgrades in partnership with AEP Ohio. The project is the first major tranche of Japan's $550 billion US investment commitment negotiated under the Trump administration's tariff agreement, with CEO Masayoshi Son describing it as essential infrastructure for AI to "transform every industry."