Tencent’s gaming studio, TiMi Studio Group, is assembling an international team to develop games for the metaverse, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday. “Metaverse” refers to an immersive digital world with foundations in virtual reality and mixed reality. An unnamed Tencent employee said the company referred to the “metaverse,” although the term wasn’t used in an internal Tencent letter about the project. [SCMP]

Yuanfudao has invested in a down jackets subsidiary as the Tencent-backed online tutor tries to diversify its businesses after the country launched a sweeping crackdown on private education in July. The company has hired five people for an outdoor down jacket brand, local media Late Post reported on Tuesday. A Yuanfudao-affiliated firm acquired a clothing retailer in late September. Yuanfudao responded to local media on Wednesday that education remains their core business. [Late Post, in Chinese]

ByteDance on Tuesday confirmed with local media that it is laying off employees in some departments as part of a “restructuring process.” It is unknown how many people were affected. Since Monday, many ByteDance’s Chinese employees have reported on social media that they had been laid off. Chinese media reported that at least 100 ByteDance workers in the eastern city of Wenzhou had been told to leave within two days on Oct. 12. Most affected employees were in the commercialization department, selling ads for popular apps such as Douyin and Toutiao. [National Business Daily, in Chinese]

Alibaba on Tuesday announced a new Arm-based chip that will power the cloud computing giant’s data centers. Known as Yitian 710, the chip features the most advanced 5-nanometer semiconductor technology. The chip is the third semiconductor Alibaba has introduced since 2019. Developed by Alibaba’s chip unit T-Head, the chip will only be available to the company’s data centers and will not be commercially available. Alibaba is China’s largest cloud computing provider by market share. [Bloomberg]

Consumer electronics manufacturer Foxconn revealed its first three electric vehicle prototypes on Monday, with the Apple supplier hoping to deliver a sports utility vehicle with local auto partner Yulon Motor in Taiwan in 2023. Foxconn chairman Liu Young-Way also announced plans to deliver electric buses to a Taiwanese transport service provider in 2022, and that the company will sell a sedan to an undisclosed overseas automaker in the coming years, without revealing further details. [Reuters]