China's Consumer-Grade XR Market: AR Soars, VR Adjusts in Q1 2026, AR Set for Mass Market Surge in H2

Alibaba's financial report stated that T-Head Semiconductor Co., Ltd., as its chip design subsidiary, had achieved widespread industrial application of its independently developed AI chips, with large-scale application cases first emerging in the automotive industry. Over 100,000 Zhenwu PPU cards had been deployed on Alibaba Cloud's public cloud platform, and more than 30 leading automakers and autonomous driving companies were conducting intelligent driving R&D based on this chip. The Zhenwu chip, together with Alibaba Cloud and the Qwen model, formed a complete integrated technology stack, significantly enhancing training and inference efficiency.

Global demand for new-type energy storage surged, driving sustained strong orders for energy storage battery cells and a tightening supply-demand pattern for battery cells. Amid the robust momentum of operating at nearly full capacity, top-tier battery enterprises and second-tier producers ramped up investment, as the industry shifted from earlier cautious wait-and-see approaches to proactive capacity expansion. Wang Pengcheng, co-founder and president of Hithium, which ranked second globally in energy storage battery cell shipments, recently stated that the company's orders had been booked through 2027. More precisely, "by the end of 2027, all orders have been locked in ahead of schedule." He also candidly pointed out a phenomenon within the industry: although the capacity utilization rate of top-tier players already exceeded 95%, the reality was that there was overcapacity in outdated capacity while advanced capacity was severely insufficient. He emphasized that the industry should be vigilant against low-level redundant construction at this stage. When discussing Hithium's own expansion considerations, Wang Pengcheng declared, "All capacity going forward must be advanced capacity only. We will not build redundant capacity, and we will not expand unless we are leading.

Russian producer Seligdar released its Q1 2026 production results, with tin concentrates production up 10% YoY to 921 mt. More than half of the tin concentrates production came from the Solnechny Production Complex, whose production was up 8% compared to the same period in 2025. Although tin ore mining volume declined 10% to 264,000 mt in Q1, ore processing volume (including pre-concentration through XRT sorting) remained flat compared to the previous period at 279,000 mt.