Baidu is teaming up with BYD to provide the auto giant with automated driving software to be used in multiple popular BYD models, Baidu CEO Robin Li said on Tuesday during his company’s Q4 2021 earnings call. BYD plans to adopt Baidu’s Apollo Navigation Pilot assisted driving software, which enables hands-free driving on highways, and its AVP autonomous parking system, Li revealed, without giving further details. Best-known for its search engine, Baidu is also developing electric vehicles in partnership with automaker Geely and plans to begin mass production of its first model in 2023. [Baidu earnings call transcript]

US-listed Chinese electric vehicle makers provided updates on their delivery figures for February on Tuesday, with Li Auto taking the top spot ahead of Xpeng Motors, while Nio slipped to third place. Li Auto posted deliveries of 8,414 vehicles, an increase of about 266% year on year but a 31% sequential decline on the previous month, which the Meituan-backed EV maker blamed on supply chain and production challenges in part caused by the Lunar New Year holiday and new outbreaks of Covid infections. Xpeng Motors and Nio delivered 6,225 and 6,131 EVs last month respectively. [Li Auto release]

ByteDance and Qualcomm have entered into a partnership to develop extended reality (XR) technologies, covering virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Pico Interactive, the Chinese virtual reality startup ByteDance purchased in August, will be the basis for the TikTok-owner to make its forays into the space. Pico’s XR products will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces, the chip maker’s developer program for extended reality app development. Qualcomm is cooperating with several companies including Meta’s Oculus in order to cement its fundamental role in the XR and metaverse sector. [TechCrunch]

TikTok, the popular short video app owned by ByteDance, is expanding the maximum length of videos on its platform to 10 minutes. The app previously upped the maximum length of videos from 60 seconds to three minutes in 2021. According to a release from TikTok, the app reached 1 billion monthly active users on Sep 27, 2021. The move to longer videos increases the competition between TikTok and YouTube, with the latter launching its own short video platform, YouTube Shorts, in July 2021. [The Verge]

Chinese self-driving truck startup Inceptio announced on Monday that it raised $188 million in a Series B+ which was co-led by Sequoia Capital China and Lenovo’s corporate venture capital arm, Legend Capital. Inceptio also said that it started mass production of heavy-duty trucks with semi-autonomous driving functions with an unnamed Chinese automaker late last year. An undisclosed number of heavy-duty trucks equipped with Inceptio’s technology have been deployed for daily commercial operations with safety drivers on Chinese highways. Existing investors, Meituan and Nio Capital, also participated in the financing. [Inceptio release]

A day before China’s new algorithm regulation takes effect, the country’s internet regulator highlighted a new focus on getting firmer control on companies that can influence public opinions and use algorithms in their services. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a Monday notice that the regulation requires such service providers to register their services within 10 business days of operation. Providers need to file a self-evaluation report of their algorithms, among other documents. [CAC, in Chinese]

In a rare joint move, Chinese tech giants Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent together released new low latency streaming standards on Feb. 25, aimed at shortening the traditional time lag for streaming. The new open standards will reduce latency from three to six seconds to within one second, enabling more timely broadcasting of events such as sporting occasions or e-commerce livestreams. Previously, companies had mostly built their streaming systems based on Google’s old WebRTC, which doesn’t define a signaling system. Developers therefore had to define their own standards to transmit information, with less efficient standards leading to longer latencies. [QbitAI, in Chinese]

Chinese e-commerce SaaS platform Dianxiaomi has secured $100 million in Series C, according to a 36Kr report. Tiger Global Management and China Renaissance’s Huaxing Growth Capital co-led the round with participation from returning investors GGV Capital, CDH Venture and Growth Capital, and Gaorong Capital. The proceeds will reportedly be used for recruiting talent, upgrading the service system, R&D, and globalization. The Shenzhen-based company provides enterprise resource planning software to Chinese cross-border sellers, helping them to track shipment orders and inventories and to manage customer relations and accounting. Founded in 2014, the company now provides services to 120,000 merchants around the world with its annual transaction volume hitting over 300 billion RMB ($48 billion), according to its official website. [36Kr, in Chinese]