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China still remains world’s largest engine for growth

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BEIJING, Feb. 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — A report from People’s Daily: 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently raised its growth forecast for the Chinese economy and other emerging economies in Asia in 2024. At the same time, the IMF has increased its global economic growth forecast for this year by 0.2 percentage points to 3.1 percent due to the resilience of major economies like China.

The IMF pointed out that the lift of China’s economic growth forecast reflects the continuation of the strong growth momentum in the Chinese economy last year, which exceeded expectations, as well as the stimulating effect of relevant policies implemented by the Chinese government.

In 2023, China’s GDP exceeded 126 trillion yuan ($17.51 trillion), growing 5.2 percent from a year ago. China still remains the largest engine of global growth. In January 2024, the country’s economic vitality showed signs of recovery, sending positive signals for the year’s economic performance.

Not only the IMF, other international financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and UBS Group recently have also released reports indicating that China’s consumption and service industries will continue its post-pandemic recovery trend in 2024.

Recently, leaders of international institutions and multinational companies have made frequent visits to China, including a Japanese economic delegation, a delegation led by the World Bank executive director, Danone Group from France, Amway Group from the United States and BMW from Germany. They showed confidence in the Chinese market and hoped to deepen practical cooperation with China.

At Xiaomo International Logistics Port in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong province, a roll-on/roll-off ship owned by Chinese new energy vehicle maker BYD set sail, carrying over 5,000 Chinese made NEVs and heading towards the Flushing Port in the Netherlands and the Bremerhaven Port in Germany.

In 2023, China became the world’s largest exporter of automobiles for the first time. Statistics show that one in every three cars exported by China is an electric passenger vehicle. Last year, China’s exports of NEVs, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic modules surpassed 1 trillion yuan, leading the world in market share.

At the Alashankou port in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, ChinaEurope freight trains departed one after another, carrying daily necessities, automobiles and spare parts, machinery equipment, and other goods manufactured in various parts of China to Europe.

In 2023, ChinaEurope freight trains made 17,000 trips throughout the year, transporting 1.9 million twenty-foot equivalent units, marking a 6 percent and 18 percent increase, respectively, compared to the previous year.

This “golden channel” of international land transportation has connected 217 cities in 25 countries between China and Europe, injecting continuous momentum into bilateral trade and economic exchanges.

China is the only country with industries across all categories in the United Nations (UN) industrial classification. “Chinese companies have significant advantages in terms of innovation capability, iteration, and manufacturing efficiency, and behind this is China’s well-developed industrial chain and its massive market,” said Tang Zhimin, director of China ASEAN Studies at the Bangkok-based Panyapiwat Institute of Management.

China is a major trading partner for over 140 countries and regions. Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum, noted that China is shifting from investment- and infrastructure-driven growth to innovation-led growth, and it holds a crucial position in global economy and trade.

Sonali Jain-Chandra, chief of an IMF team conducting discussions on the 2023 Article IV Consultation in China, noted that the policies implemented by the Chinese government will have a positive impact on the economy.

She also said that research conducted by the IMF indicated that when China’s growth rate rises by 1 percentage point, growth in other countries increases by around 0.3 percentage points.

She believes that China’s economic growth in 2024 will still surpass the global average, making China a major contributor to global economic growth in that year.

In the new year, various regions in China have outlined their “roadmaps” to build a world-class business environment that is market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized.

Shanghai has proposed further advancing high-level reform and opening up, enhancing development momentum and competitiveness, and vigorously promoting pioneering reforms and leading opening-up initiatives in all aspects.

Guizhou province will implement actions to improve the quality and efficiency of foreign trade. Chongqing municipality will advance high-level construction of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor to build itself into a highland of opening up.

China is focusing on accelerating the development of new productive forces and embracing innovation and transformation as important new trends in its economy.

The country is actively promoting digitalization and green, low-carbon transformation in industries. Xiao Song, global executive vice-president of Siemens, said that foreign companies deeply feel China is becoming an “innovation field” for cutting-edge technologies.

“The fundamentals sustaining China’s economic recovery and long-term growth remain unchanged. As an open country, China will continue to bring more cooperation opportunities to the world. The future of China’s economy is bright, and we are full of confidence in it,” said Liu Sushe, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission.

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SOURCE People’s Daily

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Ally Waste Acquires Swift Integrated Services, Expanding Service Capabilities and Market Reach

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GILBERT, Ariz., Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Ally Waste, a nationwide provider of comprehensive waste solutions for multifamily communities, announced today that it has acquired Swift Integrated Services, a Utah-based provider of dumpster management, doorstep trash pickup, and waste brokerage services.

“Every acquisition we make starts with the same question: Will it help us serve customers better? Swift expands our reach and brings capabilities that allow us to support more of our customers’ waste needs. We’re excited to welcome the Swift team to Ally and build on what they’ve created,” said James Crawley, CEO of Ally Waste.

The acquisition expands Ally Waste’s presence in Utah, Florida, and Idaho markets while strengthening the company’s waste stream optimization capabilities. It also brings waste brokerage capabilities to Ally, giving current customers another way to address their waste needs as the offering is integrated.

“Joining Ally gives us the opportunity to build on what we’ve created while bringing our customers the support and resources of a nationwide team,” said Indigo Schumann-Curtis, President of Swift Integrated Services. “Our customers can expect business as usual, with many of the same people continuing to support them. I’m excited about what our teams can accomplish together.”

Swift Integrated Services customers can expect continuity in both service and support throughout the transition. The Swift team will continue with Ally, bringing established customer relationships and deep market knowledge to the combined organization.

About Ally Waste

Ally Waste is a nationwide provider of comprehensive waste solutions for multifamily communities, including valet trash and recycling, bulk removal, and waste stream optimization services. Its technology gives owners and operators clear visibility into what they’re paying for waste across a portfolio, paired with on-the-ground teams who put those insights into action.

The company’s culture is grounded in its values of Integrity, Grit, and Humility. These principles drive Ally Waste’s commitment to supporting multifamily teams and delivering consistent, high-quality service that improves everyday life for residents and on-site staff. Learn more at www.allywaste.com.

Media Contact:
Doridé Uvaldo
duvaldo@allywaste.com

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SOURCE Ally Waste

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Gupshup Launches Self-Serve Voice AI Platform, Extending Conversational Engagement into Phone Calls

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Businesses can now build, test, and deploy AI voice agents across support, sales, and operations – alongside WhatsApp, RCS, and SMS – from a single platform

MUMBAI, India and SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Gupshup launched its Voice AI Platform, a self-serve console for building and running AI voice agents that handle calls end to end. The launch extends Gupshup’s engagement platform from messaging into voice, bringing support, sales, and operations onto the same infrastructure businesses use for WhatsApp, RCS, and SMS.

Gupshup’s Voice AI Platform resolves support calls, qualifies and converts leads, and automates operational calls such as scheduling, verification, and payment reminders, so human teams can focus on conversations that require a person.

The platform covers agent lifecycle in a no-code, prompt-based interface. Businesses configure an agent’s voice, language, knowledge base, system prompt, and workflows, then connect it to tools their teams use. Before going live, teams define guardrails, run simulations, and validate behaviour with tests – comparing models. Once deployed, analytics track success rates, satisfaction, and language usage, with transcripts, conversation history, and debug logs for review.

Gupshup’s platform is the first to bring unique capabilities. First, voice is a channel extension of a platform serving businesses across WhatsApp, RCS, and SMS – enabling voice-and-messaging experiences within a customer journey. Second, it supports telephony: PSTN and WhatsApp voice channels, on-premise and cloud deployment, and the option to bring PSTN infrastructure. Third, it is model-flexible – businesses choose speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and LLM providers rather than accepting a stack.

The platform builds on Gupshup’s experience powering customer engagement for 50,000+ businesses across 100+ countries and 25+ industries, processing 10 billion interactions monthly, including 500 million voice calls per month.

The Voice AI Platform has been beta tested and delivered outcomes across deployments. Users receive 100 minutes of credits to test, and pricing starts at USD 0.035 (INR 3.50) per minute.

“For customer engagement in emerging markets, Voice AI drives universal access – reaching every user regardless of language or literacy. In developed markets, it drives efficiency and automation. In both, it delivers cost savings, revenue growth, and satisfaction. With the launch of its Voice AI Platform alongside its messaging, Gupshup offers the only unified self-serve platform for customer engagement across voice and messaging,” said Beerud Sheth, Co-founder and CEO, Gupshup.

The Voice AI Platform is available to businesses at voiceai.gupshup.io.

For more information, visit www.gupshup.ai.

 

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SOURCE Gupshup Technology India Pvt Ltd

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Deepdub Launches Phantom Z 3.4 Conversational: Multilingual Text-to-Speech Built to Survive Real Customers, Not Just Demos

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Enterprise-grade real-time text-to-speech delivers 150ms time to first audio at full 48 kHz, with text normalization that gets account numbers, invoice totals and appointment dates right

TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Deepdub, a foundational voice AI company pioneering expressive voice technologies, announced today the launch of Phantom Z 3.4 Conversational, a new multilingual text-to-speech model with high-fidelity 48 kHz audio, improved text normalization and extended Hebrew support. The model is available to all Deepdub clients now.

For enterprises running voice agents, a call holds together when four things go right at once. The voice sounds like a person. The response arrives fast enough to feel like a conversation. The agent knows when to speak and when to listen. And every account number, date and amount comes out the way a customer would say it. When one of them slips, the call escalates to a human, and that is where containment and cost are decided. Phantom Z 3.4 Conversational is built for all four.

“Every voice model sounds impressive for two minutes in a demo. Very few survive two weeks with real customers,” said Ofir Krakowski, CEO and co-founder of Deepdub. “Deployments don’t stall on the 95% a model gets right, they stall on the misread account number, the mangled surname, the one wrong digit on a live call. We built this model for that last few percent, because in production, the last few percent is the whole product.”

In English, the work is in text normalization, the step that turns written text into spoken words. A delivery date written 2024-12-31 is read as December thirty first, twenty twenty-four rather than as a run of digits. An invoice total written $1,240 is read as one thousand two hundred forty dollars. An appointment at 14:30 is read as two thirty. A reference written Chapter VII is read as chapter seven rather than as letters. These are the categories where Deepdub’s testing puts the model ahead of the other systems it was measured against. An enterprise running more than one language gets one set of behavior to test and one contract to hold rather than two.

Phantom Z 3.4 delivers an end-to-end p95 time-to-first-audio of 150 milliseconds in real-time mode at full-range 48 kHz audio, with cross-language voice transfer from under three seconds of reference audio. Deepdub builds and trains its own speech models from random rather than licensing them, which allows the company to bring a new language into production in two weeks. Deepdub covers more than fifty locales and dialects verified by local voice and language experts, inside a platform supporting more than 50 locales and dialects.

“We run Deepdub in production for live, real-time phone calls, where latency and naturalness aren’t nice-to-haves but the key factor in whether a caller stays on the line. 3.4 is the closest we’ve heard a synthetic voice come to a real person, and our callers show it: they stay longer, talk more, and engage with our agents like we’ve never seen before,” said Adir Haziza, CTO at Voiceman.

The hardest case is Hebrew, which is written without vowels, so the same letters can spell different words. The three letters of שלט are a sign read one way and a remote control read another. A model that reads one word at a time has to guess which the sentence means, and in Hebrew a wrong guess is not an accent, it is a different word that stays invisible until a customer hears it. Phantom Z 3.4 resolves this at the source. Pronunciation is decided from the whole sentence rather than word by word, and every instance of שלט in Deepdub’s Hebrew test set was read correctly. Where a brand name or a plan tier has to be said a particular way, marking it in the text is enough. Deepdub ranks first for Hebrew text-to-speech on the public TTS Arena leaderboard hosted by ivrit.ai on Hugging Face.

In Hebrew, national ID numbers, appointment dates and transaction amounts are expanded before speech, so a balance written as 1,240 ₪ is spoken in full rather than read out as digits. In blind listening tests, Phantom Z 3.4 was preferred over Deepdub’s previous Hebrew model in 71 percent of decisive comparisons.

“We needed something that would hold up consistently across a large volume of work, so we tested it thoroughly before deciding. What stood out was that the details came out right and the Hebrew was the most natural we’d heard,” said Dor Levy, Head of Jeen Talk at Jeen AI.

About Deepdub
Deepdub is the foundational voice AI model company pioneering expressive voice technologies for global enterprises across TV, film, advertising, gaming, e-learning, and AI-agent applications. The company’s international team of technology, dubbing, and linguistic experts deliver an end-to-end voice solution that preserves the emotional and cultural integrity of original content in more than 50 locales and dialects. With an advisory board that includes media leaders such as Kevin Reilly, former Chief Content Officer at HBO Max, and Emiliano Calemzuk, former President of Fox Television Studios, Deepdub is eliminating language barriers to enable the global diffusion of media on major streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Visit https://deepdub.ai or follow us on LinkedIn for more information.

Deepdub Media Contact
Zivit Katz
Deepdub
zivit.katz@deepdub.ai

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SOURCE Deepdub

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