Startup exits continue to be a major deal in Southeast Asia, but a nearly 20-year-old company might help bridge the gap to Hong Kong with an IPO before the end of the year. We look at PatSnap’s listing ambitions and a tactical fundraising announcement from Sarvam, India’s leading sovereign AI contender.

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PatSnap, the low-profile contender to put Southeast Asia on Hong Kong’s IPO map

Can Southeast Asian companies find their much-needed IPO exits in Hong Kong? We are about to find out after Singapore’s PatSnap confidentially filed to go public in a dual listing across Singapore and Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg.

It’s well known that Southeast Asian startups have struggled to find the meaningful exits that venture capital ecosystems require. IPOs for Grab and GoTo, two regional flag-carriers, have massively underwhelmed and younger companies have struggled to find a path to public markets. Hong Kong, by contrast, has become a destination for tech IPOs, with AI a particular hit since MiniMax and Zhipu went at the start of this year with stellar returns for investors.

PatSnap is looking to raise between $300-$400 million at a valuation of over $2 billion, Bloomberg says, and it has some of the elements that might appeal to HKEX investors.

The 19-year-old company specialises in intellectual property, specifically it operates a database of over 120 million patents which helps companies manage their own patents and innovation, keep an eye on competitors, develop new opportunities and more. I will confess I didn’t fully comprehend its value when I wrote about it during my time at TechCrunch, but it appears increasingly important during these AI-fuelled times. AI technology allows PatSnap customers to run deeper analysis and research on the patent world, be it their own, their industries or their rivals, to help develop their own IP and innovation.

“Patent data let us kick down the door and earn respect, but now we’re looking at completely different products,” Ray Chohan, one of PatSnap’s co-founders, told me back in 2018. Even then, they were developing new products to position themselves as “the software stack for R&D teams.” No doubt AI has put that into overdrive.

The company claims over 15,000 customers. It includes HongShan, SoftBank and Tencent among its backers who gave it around $400 million in capital to date and valued the business at over $1 billion.

PatSnap can play up its position as an AI business. Its website has visible cues including a chatbot interface and agents that can scour its patent database and extract data and intelligence.

The listing is being tipped to come “as early as this year,” which suggests it could slip into 2027.

Given its previous valuation, Bloomberg’s $2 billion-plus target for the IPO isn’t particularly outrageous. Without knowing the full details, it looks like this is an opportunistic punt at Hong Kong given the company’s AI credentials and Hong Kong’s track record this year. Zhipu’s stock price has surged to give it a valuation of over $80 billion, up from around $6.6 billion when the bell rang. A relatively modest valuation isn’t necessarily a hurdle, and an exit is better than no exit, as the rhetoric goes.

We’ve seen a couple of Thai companies linked with Hong Kong IPOs, Bitkub and Line Man, but PatSnap would be the first to walk the path. I’m also curious to see what happens on the Singapore IPO side, particularly with data centre firm DayOne tipped to take a US-Singapore IPO route.

Singapore has much work to do to catch Hong Kong. A recent Financial Times article noted that IPOs on SGX increased from six in 2024 to 16 in 2025. HKEX, meanwhile, had 119 IPOs in 2025. This year already, it has hosted two blockbuster LLM listings and a host of AI companies across chip design, production and more.

Sarvam pops out a timely funding announcement but many questions remain

Timing is everything. A day after we wrote about the need for sovereign AI solutions in Asia, India’s Sarvam raised $234 million at a $1.5 billion valuation.

This round has been rumoured for a few months (I even mentioned yesterday it still hasn’t been confirmed) and it looks like this announcement is fairly opportunistic since the target total raise is $300 million. Clearly now is a good time to be a bit more public about fundraising for a homegrown AI model for India, and of course trumpet that it is now a unicorn business. (Does that still have meaning these days…?)

That pitch convinced IT services giant HCLTech, which led the round with a $150 million cheque and is joined by Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners. Rather interestingly, Bloomberg noted in previous reporting that Sarvam wasn’t able to convince major investors SoftBank, Prosus, a16z, General Atlantic and Accel to join the party.

Sarvam disclosed some numbers including that it handles 2 million conversations and 10 million API calls per day, with 500,000 hours of audio transcribed per month. It says a leading fintech uses its model for its 350,000-person sales force and claims it was adopted by a leading insurance provider.

Everyone wants to fund a local alternative to Claude or ChatGPT, but the dynamics at play here are insanely tough. The company hasn’t defined its user focus yet. That’s important as we’ve seen from Anthropic doubling down on enterprise in its battle with ChatGPT.

Sarvam has a consumer AI chatbot, covering the basics, but will it focus on covering all Indian businesses? Is this a play for enterprise because it is more lucrative? Can it get the government to mandate adoption? Probably not.

Then there’s the issue of quality. Sarvam covers more than 22 Indian languages, but Claude and OpenAI are better products than anything else on the market. That includes Chinese models that have taken billions of dollars to develop. It feels unlikely Sarvam can compete on merit in the near future.

Then that returns us to the sovereign and patriotic argument, which has only really played out in China. And still we read weekly of how Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance and other big tech Chinese firms continue to buy Nvidia and use US models overseas.

Asia needs more sovereign AI solutions, at the risk of repeating yesterday’s newsletter. But it’s not clear why investors should be a part of that, too.

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Deals

Tencent has reportedly invested $20 million in the new AI lab founded by Junyang Lin, the former lead researcher behind Alibaba’s Qwen models [The Information]

Singapore’s Pints AI, which helps banks and insurers automate processes whilst remaining audited and compliant, raised $5.6 million in a pre-Series A round led by Tin Men Capital. [TechNode]

Kazakhstan wants to turn cheap and available power into AI infrastructure exports, and plans to spend up to $10 billion on computing projects, including $1 billion from a state-run telco, to develop data centres with Nvidia tech support [Bloomberg]

Markets

Zhipu shares soared further after it revealed plans to make GLM-5.2, its latest and most powerful large language model, open source [South China Morning Post]

Xiaohongshu, the parent of RedNote, reportedly plans to file for a Hong Kong IPO this month. Its last valuation was $17 billion in a 2024 funding round, but shares are said to have exchanged hands in secondary markets for as much as $31 billion. [Bloomberg]

Enflame Technology, an AI chipmaker that Tencent owns 20% of, will go public on Shanghai’s STAR board with plans to raise 6 billion yuan ($888 million) at a valuation of around $9 billion-plus. [Bloomberg]

In other news:

ByteDance is said to be in talks to expand its Chinese AI inference chip partnerships with deals from Iluvatar CoreX and potentially Baidu’s Kunlunxin on the table. It works with Huawei and Cambricon. [Reuters]

Tiezhen Wang, a former Hugging Face executive, believes China’s open-source AI push is mounting a serious challenge to OpenAI’s dominance, with freely available models increasingly matching proprietary ones on performance. [Rest of World]

Google and Black Lotus Labs worked with the FBI to dismantle a massive Chinese phishing-as-a-service that used thousands of phishing websites to steal credit card data and passwords [Bleeping Computer]

Google also revealed that a Chinese-linked hacking group spent over two years quietly stealing data from US and Canadian academic, medical, and military research institutions between September 2023 and November 2025. [Reuters]

Investors and analysts say China’s humanoid robotics industry risks repeating the electric vehicle sector’s brutal price wars [Caixing Global]

Anthropic’s launch and then withdrawal of its newest models have put AI sovereignty on the map worldwide. We look at how the landscape is across Asia’s biggest regions, the good, bad and ugly.

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AI sovereignty looks wildly different across China, India, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia

Companies, governments and citizens across Asia will start this week with acute knowledge of the term ‘sovereign AI’ after Anthropic withdrew its new Mythos and Fable models just days after their launch. In crucial subtext, the company says the US government ordered it to suspend access to the models for all foreign nations. Instead, it removed them for all users, US or otherwise while it works to “ensure compliance.”

Ignoring the complexities of Anthropic’s relationship with the US government, MG Siegler has a thorough account, developments over the last few days show that reliance on US technology is not advisable. We wrote about the importance of digital sovereignty last month in terms of storage and compute, and that extends to AI models, too.

That’s a new difficulty that governments across the world, and, in our case, Asia, must now navigate. Not all countries are equipped to handle the situation as we shall see.

China

China is a unique case. It is well into its own self-sufficiency strategy, which runs from its own storage and cloud computing options, to AI models, chipsets, memory and even venture capital, stock market and more.

That’s the blueprint. Beijing’s tempestuous relationship with Washington forced its hand, while its tech companies have been forced by both the US and China’s own aspirations. China, of course, already has a world-class tech industry and ecosystem, which few others can boast.

There’s much more to say, but for now we’ll leave this here as China is not in crisis around AI sovereignty. In fact, Anthropic and Washington’s moves stand to potentially benefit China as it leaves a void for reliable AI services that Chinese companies could move into.

India

China is streets ahead, but India is the new kid on the block when it comes to the sovereign tech stack. India has a cluster of companies developing AI models for the nation.

That’s led by Sarvam, which was reportedly raising up to $350 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in April and offers an indigenous AI chat app. Others in the race include early-mover Krutrim, but parent company Ola has pivoted it towards cloud after challenges, government-funded BharatGen and AI4Bharat, an open source data initiative that emerged from IIT Madras.

Sarvam’s founders have, unsurprisingly, called the Mythos/Fable incident a wakeup call that shows overseas service providers can’t be relied upon

“From our vantage point, it is super clear that India will build, leverage, and create massive business value and societal impact with sovereign AI,” CEO and co-founder Pratyush Kumar wrote on X.

On the government side, IndiaAI Mission was launched two years ago with the goal of helping Indian companies access AI services. Now, its mandate is adjusting to creating local AI infrastructure with the goal of increasing capacity and reducing that reliance on overseas providers. Already, the initiative has secured more than 38,000 GPUs.

South Korea and Japan

South Korea may be better placed than India based on the here and now. It has treated sovereign AI as an industrial strategy and engaged some of its top names.

The government selected five teams for a national AI model programme, including Naver Cloud, LG AI Research, SK Telecom and NC AI. Also involved was Upstage, an AI startup that’s rumoured to be heading for an IPO at a $3.3 billion valuation.

Korea has many of the infrastructure pieces already. From globally competitive chip and memory companies Samsung and SK Hynix, to cloud and internet players, telecom operators and a government with a set of ambitious national technology goals.

On the model side, Naver, LG and Upstage have developed models with the potential for distribution. SK Telecom is also building a strong model, and it recently tied up with Nvidia on infrastructure.

Japan’s approach is a little more disparate, but from similar starting blocks. Sakana AI catches the eye, having been founded by former Google researchers and backed by major investors including Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital and Google. While it is one of Japan’s startup hits, with a valuation of $2.65 billion, it isn’t specifically developing sovereign AI.

Like Korea, the local push has largely come from corporations like NTT, Rakuten, NEC and Fujitsu, which have been or are developing Japan-specific language models. The push is less about sovereign AI and more around bringing AI into corporations and consumer services, and integrating it into robotics, manufacturing, etc.

Southeast Asia

As a diverse and multi-country region, Southeast Asia’s status quo on sovereign AI and homegrown technology is more complicated and fragmented than the single markets we assessed. As we mentioned last month, the situation is worrying as the region tends to be a market for overseas players from the US, China and beyond.

AI Singapore, a government initiative, is developing the Sea-Lion model for the region. The open source model supports languages including Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, Burmese, Lao and Khmer, but significantly lags top tier international models in terms of capabilities.

Elsewhere in the region, Indonesia’s GoTo developed local LLM Sahabat-AI, Malaysia has ILMU and there are other smaller developments taking place. Clearly, though, developing sovereign AI models that can hold their own will be a huge challenge. Given the length of time and effort development takes, many governments may not prioritise them.

In Thailand, for example, the aptly named TH-AI Pass is a 1.6 billion THB ($50 million) programme to fund access to premium AI tools for 5 million citizens for one year. The initiative attracted controversy for its short-term nature and scrutiny around the tender, but it sums up the mindset of governments that have fallen behind.

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Deals

Alibaba bid $1.5 billion for Chinese grocery delivery firm Pupu to beef up its online commerce fight with Meituan [Bloomberg]

US firm BizLink is buying Singapore’s Interplex Datacom, which makes high-speed connectivity solutions for data centres, AI and communications networks, from Ennovi, its Blackstone-owned parent company, for $850 million [Bloomberg]

NTT Global Data Centers, a unit of Japan’s NTT, is seeking to raise at least $1 billion in fresh capital for US development projects [Bloomberg]

Equal AI raised $30 million to build an India-focused AI assistant that screens calls and summarises why someone is calling [TechCrunch]

Residential rooftop solar startup SolarSquare raised $50-55 million led by B Capital at a valuation of $450-500 million [Economic Times]

Rekise Marine raised $9.7M led by Accel and NKSquared to build autonomous ships and submarines for the Indian Navy [Economic Times]

Meesho acquired B2B grocery platform Kirana Club for Rs 202 crore ($24.3M) to expand beyond its consumer marketplace [Entrackr]

Markets

India’s Razorpay has reportedly confidentially filed for a domestic IPO that’s rumoured to value it at $5-6 billion, a drop from its previous high of $7.5 billion [Economic Times]

Humanoid robot maker EngineAI confidentially filed for a Hong Kong IPO, it previously raised $200 million in April [Bloomberg]

In a mirror of what’s happening in Korea, chipmaker Kioxia last week overtook Toyota to become Japan’s most valuable company as AI-driven demand pushed its market cap above 44T yen ($274B) [Japan Times]

Speaking of which, Korea’s SK Hynix is reportedly leaning toward Nasdaq for its planned US listing as it aims to capitalise on its surging business [Reuters]

MetaX looks like being the next Chinese chipmaker to list in Hong Kong [Bloomberg]

Regulatory heat

Meta is reportedly building separation between itself and Manus as an unwinding of its acquisition remains pending. Meta has halted data sharing, barred Manus staff from accessing its internal systems and Meta employees can no longer use Manus tools for internal projects. [Bloomberg]

South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission fined Coupang a national record 624.7 billion won ($409 million) for a data breach last December that exposed 33.7 million user accounts [Bloomberg]

South Korean police charged Bithumb CEO Lee Jae-won on suspicion of bribery suspicions, alleging the crypto exchange hired the son of a sitting lawmaker in exchange for favours [The Block]

China’s top labour union newspaper is sounding the alarm over AI’s threat to workers’ rights, urging regulators to tighten oversight of algorithms and give trade unions a greater role in shaping workplace protections. [Bloomberg]

In other news:

Tata Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said AI agents could replace half the jobs at TCS, Asia’s largest software services firm [Bloomberg]

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and state assets regulator have jointly ordered local governments and state-owned enterprises to deploy humanoid robots across manufacturing, logistics, retail, and healthcare. The directive sets a target of more than 10,000 units in commercial use by end of 2026. link

Alibaba replaced DingTalk CEO and co-creator Chen Hang following reports of an internal debate over the workplace app’s role in the company’s broader AI strategy [Bloomberg]

I really wanted to focus on day one of SuperAI, given there’s 10,000-plus attendees, great chats and a host of major tech firms, but Anthropic’s news is the biggest talking point. Ironically, it may create a huge opportunity for AI companies in Asia, especially China.

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Anthropic’s price and performance opens opportunities for everyone else

The first day of SuperAI in Singapore was hectic, with an East-meets-West that put Google, Stripe, Mistral and others in the same room as Alibaba, Tencent, StepFun, MiniMax, Z.ai and others. Notable examples were OpenAI and Anthropic, who were not just absent from the stage but absent from the entire show itself.

It’s tough to build a commercial show about AI without the two biggest companies that are building in AI, but there’s a broad mix of companies that range from those providing the building blocks like compute, storage and hardware, to more ambitious companies developing services and those on stage giving us the one-liners. AGI is apparently a decade away, according to MIT physicist Max Tegmark, but a high-level debate between futurist and former VC Balaji Srinivasan and tech analyst Benedict Evans showed that we really can’t tell what the future will bring.

There’s more certainty that Singapore will continue to be a major part of the development of AI in Asia. It continues to be the logical base for companies from the West to hit when they expand to this region, for example the aforementioned Mistral and Stripe, and a key hub of internationalisation for Chinese firms.

The biggest news from SuperAI wasn’t anything said on stage, it was the release of Anthropic’s newest model Claude Fable 5, the first time one of its new Mythos models has been available publicly.

I’m assuming most readers are already familiar with the details, but Fable 5 ships with built-in safeguards in response to the claimed power that Mythos brings. Mythos 5, the version without the guardrails, ships only to selected partners, which include cybersecurity organisations, infrastructure providers and others who had access to the preview model in order to “secure critically important software.”

Also, and maybe most importantly, Anthropic is giving users of its subscription plans access to Fable for two weeks. From then, it will be available on a usage credit basis until “sufficient capacity” allows it to be restored to subscription plans.

That feels like a major moment in how AI is being sold.

For the first time, there’s a real tiering system. Not just in terms of how Mythos was distributed during its preview mode but how it will be used going forward.

Anthropic is the market leader when it comes to business and enterprise adoption of AI, but Mythos and Fable are considerably more expensive than ever before.

It’s already challenging for big-spending companies to track the ROI of their increased AI spend, Uber’s COO is one executive to note that in public. Some are spending as much on tokens as salaries, if not more.

Despite Mythos/Fable’s increased capabilities, that justification debate gets harder for Anthropic’s target customer. For others, these solutions likely become prohibitively expensive or just simply unnecessary for the scope of what they need. That could leave a window for a pack of other AI companies.

Notably, Chinese AI firms have had to build more with less due to limited access to top-of-the-range hardware and more constrained finances. There are also companies like Weka, who I met at SuperAI, that help optimise the tech stack, whether that is hardware usage, token spend or other costs, which could have just become even more important.

The days of everyone moving to the newest model the day it comes out may be gone. What happens next could be hugely important for AI companies in Asia.

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AI, chips and data centres

Meta Platforms is getting its first data centre in India after it agreed to lease a 168-megawatt data centre in Jamnagar, which will run on renewable energy and use desalinated seawater for cooling [Reuters]

China plans to spend around 2 trillion yuan ($295 billion) over five years building a nationwide network of interconnected data centres. The National Development and Reform Commission is drafting the blueprint, with state-owned carriers China Mobile and China Telecom set to operate the bulk of the infrastructure. [Bloomberg]

Singapore launched a national research supercomputer capable of 115 petaFLOPS, nearly four times the combined capacity of its predecessors. ASPIRE 2B, as it is called, is backed by a $270 million investment from the National Research Foundation. [The Edge Singapore]

Foxconn will invest in 1 gigawatt of solar and wind capacity in Vietnam to power its local factories and suppliers [Nikkei]

India’s Zoho unveiled a homegrown server platform called Nathu La which marks its first foray into hardware and it took five years to develop. It claims the servers have already reduced its data centre power consumption by as much as 18% and lowered costs by 20-30%. [Business Wire]

Deals

A coalition of Chinese tech firms including memory chipmaker CXMT and Alibaba has launched a 3.91 billion yuan ($577 million) private equity fund for deep-tech sectors with a focus on long-term financing over shorter-term VC-type deals. [South China Morning Post]

Ant Group’s international arm is in talks to raise about $1 billion at a valuation of $10 billion or more. Existing backers General Atlantic and Silver Lake are said to be among those being approached as the firm weighs a Hong Kong IPO. [Bloomberg]

Japan’s Mujin, which makes operating systems for industrial robots used by Toyota and Fast Retailing, is said to be raising an extension to its $233 million Series D which would value it over $1 billion ahead of an IPO before the end of the year. [Bloomberg]

NTT, Japan’s largest telecom operator, is launching a $500 million venture fund this month with offices in Silicon Valley and Tokyo to back optical networking startups competing in the AI data centre market. [Nikkei]

Markets

SoftBank’s efforts to raise at least $6 billion through a margin loan backed by its OpenAI stake are said to have stalled, just weeks after it cut the target from $10 billion [Bloomberg]

SK Hynix is reportedly looking for a US listing as soon as August to maximise its incredible stock market run [Reuters]

Xi’an UniIC, a Tsinghua UniGroup-backed DRAM maker that’s a smaller rival to CXMT, is also heading to public markets after completing mandatory phases for a Beijing listing [South China Morning Post]

Restructuring

Moonshot, DeepRoute.ai and Kling, the AI business from Kuaishou, are unwinding their offshore holding structures (‘red chip’ structures) to enable domestic listings in China and avoid Manus-like scrutiny [Financial Times]

A Singapore court is seizing the majority stake that Capital A, AirAsia’s holding company, holds in fintech firm BigPay and its 11.45% share in logistics unit Teleport after it lost an arbitration case brought by two shareholders [Bloomberg]

Sea is cutting around 8% of its developer workforce for Shopee, removing hundreds of jobs, as the company doubles down on AI [The Straits Times]

Microsoft is cutting between 200 and 400 jobs at its Azure cloud operations in China across Beijing and Shanghai [South China Morning Post]

Other news

India has reportedly frozen final commercial clearances for Elon Musk’s Starlink due to security concerns [Bloomberg]

China’s new drone regulations have hammered the country’s market, formerly worth $26 billion. Second-hand device retailer Leyishou saw a 30% price crash as owners offloaded unwanted machines [Financial Times]

Taiwan is weighing tighter export controls on AI chip sales to China, seeking to align more closely with US restrictions and crack down on semiconductor smuggling [Bloomberg]

How robotics firm Unitree’s growth strategy mimics those used by BYD and DJI to leverage its quadruped robot dominance to create and lead the humanoid market [SemiAnalysis]

OpenAI says it banned China-linked accounts that used ChatGPT to seed anti-data-centre content in US social media debates [OpenAI]

Chinese AI companies aren’t waiting for their American peers to go public. StepFun, founded by former Microsoft China and Asia research executives, is the latest heading for a Hong Kong IPO, with its embedded AI models in more than 40 million smartphones and, through a Geely tie-up, targeting over one million vehicles.

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StepFun joins China's AI IPO queue, unwinding offshore structure for Hong Kong listing

OpenAI and Anthropic have both started the process to go public, but China’s AI IPOs are moving forward even faster. On the heels of MiniMax and Zhipu’s Hong Kong listings at the turn of the year comes StepFun, which is the latest to line up for HKEX.

The company is tipped to raise as much as $500 million from its IPO at a valuation that could reach $12 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Despite a lower profile outside of China, StepFun has been red hot with investors raising upwards of $3.5 billion. That includes a $2.5 billion round in May.

StepFun reminds me of the old days of China tech as few of these deals were announced officially, which makes it tricky to track its financing with certainty. Still, that massive round was larger than the IPO proceeds MiniMax and Zhipu netted. It missed on their insane share price growth, but it can hit public markets better capitalised and with a differentiated story.

You may not be familiar with StepFun, but you shouldn’t ignore it or lump it in with others as its business model is quite different to Western rivals. The company was founded by former Microsoft China and Asia research executives and it focuses on embedded AI, so putting smart and capable AI features and systems inside devices, cars and more.

It has consumer and developer services but its specialism is as an infrastructure layer connector. StepFun has deals with Geely, Huawei and others which use its base models, often alongside their own, to build AI systems. Its products are in more than 40 million smartphones, and Geely, which has links through StepFun chairman Yin Qi, is aiming to reach over one million vehicles with StepFun’s help.

StepFun has also reportedly unwound its ‘red chip’ structure, an offshore setup commonly used by Chinese startups to raise foreign capital. That makes it more domestically anchored, a necessity in the current climate as it prepares for a Hong Kong listing.

As you might expect, it has strong ties within China. Partnerships with Biren, Cambricon, Moore Threads and others are designed to optimise StepFun’s models for Chinese chips and reduce reliance on Nvidia.

We should know more soon, as StepFun is said to list on Monday.

Moonshot AI seeks $30B valuation in new funding round

Speaking of private AI companies soaking up money, Bloomberg reports that Moonshot AI is in the market to raise $2 billion at a valuation of $30 billion. It also notes that Moonshot’s ARR reached $200 million in April, lots of caveats apply to those figures, especially for AI companies

In a show of how hot the market is right now, this round is supposedly coming just after Moonshot closed funding led by Meituan which values it at $20 billion. Prior to that, its previous fundraising came in December when it was valued at (just) $4 billion.

Obviously a lot has happened in the last six months, chiefly those IPOs from MiniMax and Zhipu which gave a new level for valuing Chinese AI companies. More importantly, it showed that retail markets in China are more than ready to invest in AI companies.

Unsurprisingly, Moonshot, which you’ll recall is behind the Kimi AI model and service, is moving towards an IPO of its own. Back in April, it, like StepFun, unwound its red chip structure to set itself up for a China-focused listing.

We know the two public AI firms are exploring additional listings and, related to that, South China Morning Post looked into the disparity between MiniMax, which trades at HK$148 billion (US$19 billion), and Zhipu, HK$540 billion (US$69 billion).

“Analysts attribute the swing to Zhipu’s stronger AI model capabilities and enterprise focus, and warn the gap could widen as MiniMax faces looming share lock-up expiries while Zhipu gains fresh liquidity through Stock Connect,” it concluded. The firms were added to the Hang Seng Tech Index on Monday, a big jump in acceptance for AI stocks.

Things will only get more challenging for Chinese AI firms as the impact of DeepSeek’s new V4 models fully plays out. Already, the ultra-low price point has sparked a price war that is going to tighten margins even further. We noted back in December that it was already hard enough for them to make money.

Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of State Security has warned that “AI relay services,” which bundle access to overseas AI models through a single interface, pose risks of data leaks, privacy breaches, and unauthorized cross-border data transfers.

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Deals:

Singapore-based Silicon Box, which specializes in panel-level semiconductor packaging and chiplet integration, raised $77.65 million in debt financing from Ares Management, InnoVen Capital, January Capital and Abound Capital. There’s an option to add another $75 million. The round follows a $150 million equity raise. [Silicon Box]

Indian fintech Navi is in talks to raise $250-300 million at a post-money valuation of $1.8-2 billion. [The Economic Times]

Temasek led a $300 million round for London-based AI startup PhysicsX, which builds AI models for manufacturing jet engines and semiconductors, at a $2.4 billion valuation [Bloomberg]

Markets:

Indian quick commerce company Zepto filed an updated draft red herring prospectus with SEBI on Monday for a $1 billion (Rs 9,500 crore) IPO, edging closer to one of the year’s most anticipated new-age listings. [The Economic Times]

The company posted a 75% jump in quarterly revenue to Rs 7,498 crore ($898 million) in the fourth quarter of FY26, while narrowing its net loss to Rs 1,539 crore ($184 million) [The Economic Times]

Japanese taxi-hailing app Go priced its IPO at the top of its range, raising $553 million at a valuation of $1.1 billion [Bloomberg]

Chips & AI:

Hangzhou-based Prinano claims to have cracked mass production of photonic chips without deep ultraviolet lithography, a breakthrough that could slash manufacturing costs by 90%. [South China Morning Post]

Alibaba created Token Foundry, a new AI unit that merges its Tongyi Lab and Future Life Lab under CEO Eddie Wu [South China Morning Post]

In other news:

A Cambodian crackdown is said to be driving scam networks toward Sri Lanka, lured by infrastructure and visa-free access [Bloomberg]

The US added Alibaba, Baidu, and BYD to its list of companies believed to be aiding China’s military. [Reuters]

FPT Corporation and NVIDIA have launched Nemotron-Personas-Vietnam, an open-source synthetic dataset designed to help developers build AI systems tailored to Vietnamese language, culture, and economic context. [TechNode]

Nvidia’s Korea tour continued with a deal with LG that expands its robotics partnership to deploy humanoid robots for industrial use cases [Bloomberg]

Nvidia and LG Group are building a shared AI factory to accelerate LG’s expansion into robotics, autonomous driving and data center technologies [Nvidia Blog]

Samsung Electronics’ co-CEO, who is ​head of its chip division, ‌said he discussed cooperation in next-generation foundry ​chips with Jensen ​Huang during his recent trip to ⁠Seoul [Reuters]

India’s top six IT firms grew combined revenue to $103.1 billion in FY26 from $95.9 billion in FY23, but headcount stagnated at 1.9 million and active tech job openings hit a two-year low [The Economic Times]

Data centres sound boring, but they’re important, incredibly lucrative and tapping into Singapore’s public markets. Today, we look at how DayOne and AirTrunk announced massive deals with a view to tapping Singapore for capital.

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Data centre players announce major deals with eyes on Singapore listings

Two data centre players with public market goals in Singapore announced massive deals to gear up for potential listings after DayOne raised a further $2.5 billion and AirTrunk, a major player based in Australia, committed $30 billion to growth in India.

We profiled DayOne recently, and it is the international offshoot from China’s top data centre business, GDS International. The company announced its $4.5 billion Series C round closed on Friday. That’s a deal that looks like its last venture capital funding injection before it goes public through a strongly-rumoured IPO.

That’s a huge sum but it’s not all new money. The round was first announced in January as $2 billion so the company has more than doubled it by adding a further $2.5 billion. That comes from new backers that include the Indonesia Investment Authority, which has potential synergies in the future, and Achi Capital Partners, a China-based fund that claims to focus on late -stage semiconductor and tech deals and buyouts.

The money is going towards expansion, as you’d expect, with “key” markets Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Finland and Spain all namechecked in the announcement. DayOne said it has secured more than 1.5 GW of total bookings since it was spun out in 2022.

DayOne looks primed to go public with PE firms Coatue and Hillhouse established as its largest shareholders following this round, SoftBank’s Vision Fund is another backer and it has accrued nearly $6.5 billion in investor capital to date. Clearly this is the size of investment and calibre of backers that will want to cash in on the AI boom by taking the company public. GDS International is already listed in Hong Kong and the Nasdaq. Speculation suggests DayOne is taking a similar path by exploring a Singapore-US listing, taking advantage of new rules that enable simultaneous SGX-Nasdaq floats.

In another major piece of news from last week, a rival data centre player backed by big names in private equity announced its own deal worth billions. Sydney-headquartered AirTrunk said it will invest $30 billion in India by 2030, signaling a doubling down into the market.

Already, 11-year-old AirTrunk has a local presence in India courtesy of its acquisition of domestic data centre operator Lumina CloudInfra in April. Now it is upping its original commitment of $5 billion in investments and 600 MW portfolio of planned capacity with this new pledge.

The company’s backers include Blackstone and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which has over $500 billion in AUM. The two are part of a consortium that acquired the business in a 2024 deal that valued it at $17 billion. There’s plenty of overlap with DayOne, as AirTrunk’s business spans Southeast Asia, Japan, Hong Kong, the Middle East and India.

Like DayOne, AirTrunk is looking to tap Singapore for liquidity albeit through a REIT IPO that could raise $1.5 billion, according to reports. That would mean selective assets are open to investment, unlike DayOne which would offer ownership in its full business.

Neither company’s plans have been confirmed, but the reports show Singapore as an ideal option for data centre firms wanting to tap public markets.

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Korea is the world’s first AI economy

Korea might become the world’s first AI economy. It already is when you consider its KOSPI public market index is dominated by Samsung and SK Hynix’s incredible run as AI stocks. But now things got more official with the nomination of an experienced tech operator as the country’s new prime minister.

Han Seong-sook, a former CEO of tech giant Naver, is moving from her role leading the SME and startup ministry after President Lee Jae Myung proposed her for PM. Han made her name as Naver’s CEO for five years during which she focused on payments and acquisitions, including the $600 million purchase of Wattpad in 2021.

Her candidacy, which could see her become Korea’s first female PM for nearly 20 years, is being linked directly to Korea’s surge as its companies and economy reap the benefits of the AI boom.

It’s not all plain sailing, however. Just this morning, the KOSPI plunged 8% in response to tension around the Middle East and speculation around a US interest rate hike. That triggered a circuit breaker, barely one week after hitting new records. Japan’s Topix, which hit all-time highs at the end of last month, fell sharply, too.

The rollercoaster ride highlights the position Korea, and other countries in Asia, find themselves in as the supplier of key technologies to AI kingpins like Nvidia. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in Seoul last week, following a trip to Taiwan for key tech show Computex, where he met with the who’s who of tech and announced that SK Hynix and Samsung were clear to supply much-needed high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia’s next-generation platform.

The duo, and US rival Micron, may be greenlit but it was SK Hynix that closed first with a partnership that covers the co-development of AI memory chips, and building out AI data centres.

Unsurprisingly, the economy is rocketing, as data in the Financial Times illustrates:

South Korea is emerging as one of the biggest winners of the AI boom and global rearmament wave, with demand for its chips, ships and tanks driving the economy to 3.6 per cent growth in the first quarter, up from 1.6 per cent in the fourth quarter. Exports surged 38 per cent to a record $220bn

But now it’s anyone’s guess how the public market will perform.

Deals & Markets

Seed-stage startup funding in Japan fell 42% last year to 19.9 billion yen ($124 million), its lowest level in a decade [Nikkei Asia]

Foxconn hit record earnings for 2025 and raised its dividends to a new high [Digitimes]

Chips:

A research team claimed Huawei’s Ascend 910C chips have been used to post-train the DeepSeek-V4-Pro model, in what is a major validation for China’s self-sufficiency push [South China Morning Post]

China launched its first prefabricated computing power hub in Qingdao, Shandong province. It claims facilities can be built in just five months, and with overall costs reduced by 20% [Bloomberg]

In other news:

Korean police are investigating local users of Polymarket over alleged illegal gambling [Bloomberg]

China’s securities regulator tightened oversight of the country’s private fund industry, raising registration requirements, cracking down on illegal activity, and pushing capital toward tech-focused venture investments [Reuters]

Indonesia arrested former government officials in a corruption case related to a multi-billion dollar programme to provide free school meals [AP News]

US semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials plans to expand its Southeast Asia workforce by 25% this year, adding at least 1,000 workers primarily in Singapore [Nikkei Asia]

Thailand’s consumer watchdog plans to sue Meta for allegedly allowing scammers to defraud Facebook users through ads and failing to protect consumers [Reuters]

The US Trade Representative opened a trade investigation into Vietnam over its failure to curb online piracy [Torrent Freak]

We’re looking at some classic US tech strategies in Asia today. Starting with how Anthropic is missing out on opportunities across Asia, and how Amazon has taken its eye off opportunities in India.

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Anthropic is taking the classic US Big Tech approach to Asia

What’s up with Anthropic in Asia? The company behind Claude completely missed Singapore government’s massive AI push, which attracted OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and others, and it still doesn’t have an office in the country.

Straits Times this week reported that Anthropic is planning an office in the country based on the company posting four roles for Singapore-based positions. That seems like a big deal, until you look at the details of the roles.

• Head of APAC Accounting

• Product Support Specialist (Singapore - Weekend Coverage)

• Product Support Specialist (Singapore)

• Regional Research Economist, Economic Research

One of them is indeed just for weekends. This is hardly the basis for a Singapore office to open. Consider that its rivals are working with Singapore’s government to bring AI into decision making, deployment, commerce, education and more.

That might not be an immediate money spinner, but it is a unique opportunity to give Google, OpenAI and others valuable insights. Being part of regulatory sandboxes and national training and educational initiatives can develop expertise and insight that’s sure to be valuable in future and beyond Asia Pacific.

Anthropic appears to have a classic case of Silicon Valley in Asia. Its focus in the region is entirely on sales and business development, collecting the dollars, rather than market opportunities. (That’s despite Singaporean funds GIC and Temasek being prominent investors in Anthropic’s most recent funding round.)

That makes sense as that’s how Google, Facebook and others began. Singapore was typically the Asia HQ, and it was composed of sales and policy specialists rather than tech or R&D folks.

Anthropic currently has offices in Bangalore, Tokyo and Seoul.

India makes sense given it is one of the largest markets for AI usage worldwide, but OpenAI beat it to a local presence there and it appears to have stronger relationships in the country.

Back in February at India’s AI summit, OpenAI announced partnerships with Tata Group, nearly half a dozen universities and plans to add two new offices to take its locations in India to three. Anthropic partnered with RazorPay and announced the aforementioned Bangalore office.

Its locations in Korea and Japan look driven by demand from clients. There’s nothing wrong with that, it is entirely logical, but it recalls the FAANG strategy of seeking out revenue.

It feels inevitable that Anthropic will catch up and open shop in Singapore, pursue partnerships with the government and more, but it would be logical to expect that to come before it goes public. The company filed its S-1 draft this week to kickstart that process (sidenote: it’s amusing to see a confidential document being announced in public) but its Asia Pacific strategy still seems very unformed.

There’s no doubt that prioritising the US is again about maximising revenue, since that’s where the largest paying customers are based. But Anthropic’s shallow dive into Asia is leaving money on the table and it means missing a trick by not exploring opportunities to collaborate with governments and organisations in a way that can’t easily be done in the US and other markets.

It’s official: Amazon India isn’t the force it used to be

Last month, we reflected that Amazon’s exit from Singapore, its only market in Southeast Asia, was because it simply wasn’t up for the tough battle of e-commerce in the region. India is by far a bigger bet, I wrote at the time. That remains true, but a Bloomberg report this week digs into a seeming change of strategy in India, where Amazon has fallen behind rivals Flipkart and Reliance because it’s less keen to invest.

It is late to the quick commerce industry, which has worked in India unlike other markets, it ducked out of paying for domestic cricket league rights, which catapulted video rival JioStar into pole position, and has generally dialed back the enthusiasm and ambition it showed when it launched in India in 2013.

Notably, Jeff Bezos was CEO back then. Chastened by Amazon’s exit from China, Bezos took charge of the India push. He was often visibly present in the market, ranging from wearing local fashion to meeting the PM. Today, Andy Jassy, then a senior executive within AWS, runs the show. Amazon India is run out of Seattle HQ not the CEO office.

This paragraph from Bloomberg sums the situation up:

Thirteen years later, it’s clear the model hasn’t worked as anticipated. Amazon occupies an awkward middle ground in India. It’s too large to pivot quickly and too constrained to match rivals’ agility. Its brand is trusted, and the Prime subscription program keeps millions of customers loyal. But across the company’s myriad businesses — retail, video streaming, payments, rapid delivery — local rivals have challenged Amazon to a degree it hasn’t experienced outside of China.

Jassy is said to have switched the focus to “operational profitability” in India, rather than continuing the brutal battle with Flipkart, owned by US arch rival Walmart, or chasing to catch the new kids on the block like Zepto, which is reportedly headed for an IPO at a valuation of at least $6 billion. Chasing either is not simple, these companies are growing whilst posting losses but, of all companies, Amazon is best suited. Not just because it has deep pockets, but it has a history of investing for growth in places where it sees huge potential. AWS being a prime example.

It has spent big in India, of course. Amazon’s total spend in the country is on track to reach $35 billion by 2030, but what began as an e-commerce push has become more focused on investing in cloud and AI services.

One of the most interesting nuggets from the Bloomberg story is that Amazon’s India executive had looked into spinning out the business and taking it public. Flipkart is in the process of going public at a valuation of around $60 billion, for context. The report claims an India listing may be revisited, having been dismissed by Jassy in 2021. First up, Amazon will try to list physical retailer More Retail which it co-owns with a PE firm.

Bloomberg’s reporting on the internals of the organisation, alongside the public events of the last decade, makes a compelling case that Amazon is no longer the force it once was in India.

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Deals

New reporting suggests DeepSeek is raising 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in its ongoing round which would value it at up to 400 billion yuan ($59 billion). Founder Liang Wenfeng is said to be committing 20 billion yuan personally, that’s nearly half the round. Tencent, battery specialist CATL, NetEase. JD.com and China’s AI fund among the investors linked [Reuters]

Vanguard slashed its valuation of Ola to roughly $70.3 million, a huge mark down from its peak valuation of $7.3 billion in 2021 [Entrackr]

Indian premium grocery delivery startup FirstClub raised a $55 million Series B round led by Peak XV Partners and Sofina at a $255 million valuation [TechCrunch]

Peak XV Partners is also reportedly in talks to lead a $10 million round in Bengaluru-based enterprise voice AI startup Ringg AI [Economic Times]

PayPay, the Japan-based digital payments company that just went public and is backed by SoftBank, is acquiring a 70.2% stake in T&D Financial Life Insurance for ¥134.3 billion ($840 million) [Bloomberg]

Markets

PaXini Tech, a robotics company developing dexterous hands and humanoid robots, is reportedly exploring a Hong Kong IPO as soon as this year [Bloomberg]

Baidu expects to list its chip unit Kunlunxin Technology in Hong Kong this year, according to CFO Henry He [Wall Street Journal]

Audio-video platform Kuku FM has filed for an IPO in its native India at a target valuation of reportedly $1.75 billion [Economic Times]

In other news:

Bloomberg has a definitive read on India’s efforts to build a sovereign AI ecosystem, ranging from compute infrastructure to homegrown AI models. Issues include reliance on overseas cloud, a late start and, well, huge cost Bloomberg

Nvidia named Vietnam a focal point of its sovereign AI strategy at GTC Taipei. Local player Viettel AI is building a national AI application on Nvidia’s open model infrastructure [Vietnam Plus]

ByteDance risks squandering its lead in China’s consumer AI race by monetising too soon, according to analysts [South China Morning Post]

Alibaba is opening its Qwen AI app to external agents and third-party skills. KFC, Luckin Coffee and Mixue Group are among the first partners [Nikkei Asia]

Gulf Development, owned by Thailand’s richest man, plans to spend as much as 140 billion baht ($4.3 billion) over the next five years to expand data centers and other AI infrastructure. Gulf previously forayed into crypto among other things. [Bloomberg]

Ride-hailing is on the agenda today as Grab is forced to defend its use of Chinese tech as its big Taiwan acquisition goes through the regulator phase, and Vietnam’s VinFast might finally have found a business that works.

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VinFast’s Green SM taxi service heads to India in wider Asia push

A new ride-hailing service is zooming through Asia after Green SM, the all EV taxi service from Vietnam’s VinFast, revealed plans to launch in India and expand its availability in the Philippines.

Green SM (the last part stands for smart mobility) was started in 2023 as a response to Vietnam’s national climate change goals. It is owned by Vingroup founder Pham Nhat Vuong, a billionaire whose areas of focus range from real estate and hospitality to healthcare, education and technology. VinFast is its take on Tesla, but it struggled to expand to the US market despite spending big on talent and talking big on ambition.

At its peak in 2023, VinFast listed on the Nasdaq via a merger. But its shares are down nearly 80% and it hasn’t delivered on plans to build in the US. VinFast was sued by North Carolina last month for failing to deliver on a promise to build a manufacturing facility in the state in a symbol of that failure. Broadly, it is seen as a company that tried to be like Tesla but failed rather embarrassingly.

Despite that all, however, Green SM looks like its most promising auto-related venture to date. The service is available in Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines and Indonesia. In the latter market, a tie-in with Gojek has helped its Cyan-coloured taxi pop up across Jakarta.

Now, it is pushing the pedal with plans to launch in India this Friday starting in Delhi. The rise of Rapido shows India has room for alternatives to Uber and Ola, but the startup focused on smaller cities and towns with a cost-conscious approach. It’s unclear if Green SM will take a similar approach. A challenger, EV-only ride-hailing firm in India may ring bells. BluSmart took a very similar position, raising more than $200 million from investors. Its business fell apart last year when it emerged that its founders committed fraud.

The service is also expanding in the Philippines, where it secured a $32.4 million loan from the Philippine National Bank to grow its local fleet. Operating there as Green GSM, the company has partnered with Xentro Group, a conglomerate best known for its malls and renewable energy interests.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Green SM. One of its fleet stalled on a train crossing in April, causing a deadly crash that claimed 16 lives and triggered an investigation. That probe has been completed but there’s no word yet on what sanctions the company may face.

VinFast previously faced issues around its cars in the US, with some owners reporting erratic steering and crashes. With active taxi fleets in the 10,000s across multiple countries, VinFast should have ironed out those basic issues to give it a shot at growing the Green SM service. The ultimate goal may be to raise awareness of its EVs and increase their appeal to increase sales, because disrupting the ride-hailing market in Asia is no easy undertaking.

Grab defends China tech use as Taiwan reviews Foodpanda deal

Sticking with ride-hailing, Grab has been forced to defend its operations and data security after concerns were raised in Taiwan over its use of Chinese services.

Grab is awaiting regulatory approval for its acquisition of Foodpanda Taiwan for $600 million, but already it is on the back foot. Concerns were raised about the Singapore-based firm’s use of Huawei Petal Maps, a Google Maps alternative that’s part of its tech stack in Southeast Asia.

Grab said in a statement it would not use the Huawei service in Taiwan. It also pushed back on claims that it uses Chinese cloud storage for its data.

“We do not use Alibaba Cloud for the storage of Grab’s app data… Amazon Web Services is our preferred provider for our data storage needs for our core operations and infrastructure,” it added.

Pushback on the usage of Chinese service and support is wholly expected in Taiwan. The country’s antitrust regulator struck down Uber’s proposed purchase of Foodpanda Taiwan one year ago, and even though Grab is not currently active in the country, it is sure to shine that level of intensity on this deal.

By contrast, Grab’s acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asia deal in 2018 was essentially waved through by regulators even though it represented a merger of two dominant businesses in nearly half a dozen countries, with the potential to negatively impact millions of gig economy workers. Singapore handed down a $9.5 million fine and required the Uber Singapore app to remain operational for 3 weeks longer than the companies had proposed.

Taiwan might look like a cakewalk, but Grab will need to up its government affairs game. Particularly if it continues to chase M&A and acquisitions.

In other Grab-related side quests, the company is exploring opportunities for autonomous vehicles and delivery robots in Vietnam

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Deals

MUFG, Japan’s largest financial group, is launching a $250 million fund targeting early and growth-stage startups in India, with a focus on fintech [Economic Times]

Following MiniMax, Zhipu AI plans to seek a secondary listing in China to supplement its Hong Kong IPO in January [Reuters]

BlackRock will buy a 15.2% stake in Japanese taxi app Go for $175 million as part of the company’s Tokyo IPO [Nikkei Asia]

Korean rocket startup Unastella raised $24 million in a Series B round, bringing total funding to $44 million [TechCrunch]

Oyo’s parent company Prism has secured the market regulator approval to proceed with its IPO [Economic Times]

ONDC, India’s government-backed digital commerce network, raised $26 million from a group including Zoho, Uber, Paytm and BSE Technologies [Economic Times]

Markets

Didi posted a net loss of $177 million as it continues to spend big to battle competitors, particularly Meituan in Brazil, but revenue grew 10% year-on-year [Reuters]

Meituan, meanwhile, posted a $690 million loss down from $2.1 billion in the previous quarter, revenue rose 6% year-on-year [South China Morning Post]

In other news:

Geedge Networks, a Chinese company that sells a commercial version of China’s Great Firewall, is building AI tools designed to help authoritarian governments identify potential dissidents before they speak out [New York Times]

At least seven Chinese universities tied to the military and defence sector are seeking access to Nvidia’s H200 chips [Bloomberg]

Revolut has quietly rolled out its services to thousands of users in India ahead of broader launch [TechCrunch]

Coinbase is also making moves in India after it added support for direct rupee deposits and withdrawals in India, becoming the only international crypto exchange to offer the feature [Economic Times]

MiniMax is on the charge after it revealed major growth ahead of reports that it is planning to list in China, following its initial IPO in Hong Kong in January.

The company raised $620 million for its HKEX listing and its share price is up nearly 5x since then. Rival Zhipu went public days before, and its shares have surged from 131.50 HKD to 1,492 HKD at the time of writing, that’s over 10x and it shows the appetite that retail investors are showing for AI stocks. It’s little wonder then that MiniMax wants greater exposure.

Bloomberg reports that MiniMax has “begun preparations for a domestic listing, according to a regulatory filing” and you’d imagine that Zhipu is undergoing the same process. The duo will need to raise serious capital to compete with DeepSeek, which reportedly remains in talks to raise $3-$4 billion from its first-ever external round of funding.

MiniMax has started to be more vocal in preparation for this next listing after it revealed that its global enterprise and developer user base has grown fivefold over the last six months. The company also claimed its ARR has more than doubled in the last two months. It previously reported $150 million in ARR.

Those numbers fall far short of its US peers, Anthropic claims $14 billion ARR, but the narrative line is that MiniMax isn’t just relying on a Chinese audience since it has made a breakthrough overseas. That’s a key battleground for China’s top AI providers, with DeepSeek the obvious example as it put China on the map when it burst on the scene in late 2024/early 2025.

In one blow, however, MiniMax failed to dismiss a California lawsuit from Disney, Universal and Warner Bros Discovery which claim IP theft tied to its Hailuo image and video AI system.

Right on time for its newest push, the firm released its newest AI model:

It’s shaping up to be a pivotal second half of the year for China’s AI challengers.

Housekeeping: ATR is in half-term mode this week so the newsletter will publish on Wednesday and Friday only this week, unless there’s earth shattering news. Next week, we’ll be at Super AI in Singapore.

See you again on Wednesday,

Jon

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Memory maker CXMT, a key piece in the Chinese tech stack, targets blockbuster $4.3B IPO

Speaking of major AI IPOs in China, memory giant CXMT is gearing up to raise $4.3 billion in what could be China’s largest listing since 2022.

ChangXin Memory Technologies, to use its full name, specialises in DRAM chips which are used in smartphones, PCs, servers and other technology products. The ten-year-old company just received approval to list on the STAR Board, the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s market for tech companies.

CXMT is the world’s fourth largest DRAM maker worldwide, and China’s only competitor. It trails the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, which are going through a boom period as demand rockets thanks to the growth of AI. We haven’t seen a breakdown of its financials, but, in an early tease, CXMT claimed revenue in Q1 increased by 719% to reach $7.4 billion.

If China is to build its own self-sufficient tech stack, memory is a key part so CXMT will have a major role to play. There’s every suggestion that it won’t stop there, and overseas expansion would be a target in the same way Chinese companies sold smartphones, networking gear and more internationally.

Given the stellar performance of Samsung and SK Hynix this year, CXMT is sitting in a good position hence the potentially blockbuster IPO figures.

China

China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals at companies including Alibaba and DeepSeek, extending state controls deeper into the private sector link

ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 drew attention at Cannes after two shorts made on the platform were selected for Marché du Film and AI feature Hell Grind premiered at a parallel summit link

ByteDance is offering discounted stock options tied to Seed AI to retain staff amid poaching from rivals including Tencent link

Huawei proposed a chip design approach that prioritises transmission speed over shrinking semiconductors, though it remains unclear whether it is a true breakthrough link

Huawei’s He Tingbo has emerged as a central figure in China’s semiconductor self-reliance push after leading the company’s chip development through years of US sanctions link

Every domestically made humanoid robot in China will be assigned a unique digital ID under a new national tracking platform aimed at setting standards and tightening oversight link

Iran acquired Chinese technology to cut its 90 million citizens off from the global internet permanently, a senior official says link

A man was executed for murdering a prominent gaming tycoon link

China is upgrading its surveillance network with AI that automates real-time tracking, behavioural analysis and unrest prediction link

AI chips were added to Beijing’s official secure and reliable technology assessments, widening a state push to replace Western products with domestic alternatives link

Alibaba’s Qwen3.7-Max ranked fourth on a major coding leaderboard, making it the only company besides Anthropic to place in the top five link

Chinese companies will invest another €940M ($1.1B) in Serbia from July across auto parts, humanoid robots, energy and AI link

Beijing is warning tech companies not to replace workers with AI as youth unemployment stays high link

EU regulators have opened a full investigation into JD.com’s $2.5B bid for Ceconomy over possible Chinese state subsidies link

And EU regulators fined Temu €200M ($232M) for failing to curb illegal product sales, with more penalties possible link

But Germany and Spain are pushing back against EU plans to ban Chinese telecom suppliers including Huawei under new cybersecurity rules link

JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong says the company will do everything possible to protect jobs as AI and robotics spread across its 900,000-strong workforce link

BYD unveiled what it says is China’s first automotive-grade 4nm chip for self-driving cars, escalating its rivalry with Huawei link

Wingtech created an independent management structure for Nexperia’s Chinese unit as it fights to regain control of the Dutch chipmaker link

HongShan emerged as the lead bidder for Blackstone’s 45% stake in Leica Camera and may pursue a listing for the company link

A tech tourism boom is drawing visitors willing to pay up to $9,000 for tours of EV factories, robotaxis and AI and robotics companies link

Oversight of food delivery platforms will be tightened by forcing verification of restaurant licences and real locations link

AMD CEO Lisa Su’s understated China approach is drawing contrast with Jensen Huang’s more theatrical style link

In earnings:

• Pony AI raised its 2026 robotaxi fleet target to 3,500 vehicles after Q1 revenue jumped 145% to $34.3M and beat estimates link

• Xiaomi’s Q1 net income fell 57% to 4.72B yuan as rising memory prices hit its smartphone business, prompting a HK$20B buyback link

• Meanwhile, Xiaomi plans to invest more than 60B yuan ($8.8B) in AI over the next three years as it looks to keep its smartphones and EVs competitive link

• Kuaishou beat Q1 estimates with 33.7B yuan ($5B) in revenue as commercialisation of its AI video generator Kling accelerated link

• PDD missed quarterly revenue estimates as domestic competition overshadowed a recovery at Temu, with sales up 11% to 106B yuan ($15.6B) link

India

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal says the company has a better shot than Amazon at winning quick commerce link

Swiggy says it will prioritise profitability over matching the spending binge of quick commerce rivals, even if that costs users link

Udaan is in talks to raise $50-60M from M&G Prudential and Lightspeed at a flat $1.8B valuation in what could be its final private round before an IPO link

Tata Electronics plans to begin chip packaging for global automotive and industrial clients at its upcoming Jagiroad OSAT facility, building on early shipments from Vemagal and India’s chip ambitions link

Fairdeal.Market raised $15M from Bertelsmann India Investments, Water Bridge Ventures and Incubate Asia Fund link

India’s VC sector is rushing to launch deeptech funds to tap the government’s research and innovation pool link

Human Archive raised $8.2M to use India’s gig economy to capture first-person task data for robot training link

Peak XV and Activate are reportedly in talks to back Wispr Flow in a round that would value the voice dictation startup at $2B link

India is stress-testing sensitive software against Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos model, with Infosys, TCS and CERT-In probing risks in secure environments link

Global companies are using Indian tech hubs and AI to bring more creative work in-house and cut reliance on ad agencies link

Netrasemi launched its A2000 edge AI chip, with commercial production due next year link

Indian founders are using a court ruling against Google’s ad business to revive criticism of competitor keyword advertising link

Byju Raveendran was sentenced to six months in jail by a Singapore court for contempt after repeatedly defying asset-related orders link

But Raveendran says he has reached a settlement in principle with lenders after Singapore’s contempt ruling link

Southeast Asia

Optical components maker Wuxi Taclink is considering a Singapore listing that could raise at least $156M and make it the first mainland China-traded company to do so link

Singapore’s GIC and Temasek have joined Anthropic’s $65B Series H, valuing the AI company at $965B link

Indonesia blocked Polymarket as it widens its crackdown on online betting link

Thailand’s Line Man Wongnai is expanding beyond food delivery and targeting a 2027 IPO as it doubles down with new services and AI investment link

Crypto platform Hodlnaut’s former CEO Zhu Juntao was charged in Singapore with six counts of fraud over TerraUSD exposure link

Singapore’s VC market fell for a third straight year in 2025, with deal value down 34% to $4.6B link

Singapore’s MarsLab unveiled an AI inference infrastructure roadmap for enterprise and edge deployment link

Sea has built a dedicated AI investment team under the president’s office to scout startups globally and speed its shift beyond ecommerce link

Japan

Sakura Internet may raise capital spending to as much as ¥30B ($190M) this fiscal year as AI demand pushes server usage to 80-90% and forces more data centre expansion link

Japanese electronic component makers posted record fiscal 2025 shipments of ¥4.61T ($28.9B), but they continue to lose share to Chinese and Taiwanese rivals link

SoftBank is lining up IPOs for energy developer SB Energy and autonomous robotics spinout Roze link

About 30 major Japanese companies are considering investing in a new SoftBank venture focused on building domestic physical AI link

Japan passed a law creating a powerful interministerial body to scrutinise foreign investment more closely link

SoftBank plans to invest up to €75B ($87B) to build 5 gigawatts of AI data centre capacity in France link

South Korea

Following the flurry of deals for Upbit parent Dunamu, OKX Ventures and Korea Investment & Securities will each invest 80B won ($53M) for a 19.6% stake in rival crypto exchange Coinone, pending approval link

Samsung’s largest union approved a pay deal that gives chip workers an average bonus of about $340,000, averting a strike link

Samsung Electronics plans to invest $1.5B in Vietnam to build a semiconductor testing plant with operations due to start in November 2027 link

Seoul prosecutors have charged five people behind Solana memecoin CatFi over an alleged rug pull link

Samsung began shipping samples of its 12-layer HBM4E memory to major clients, taking an early lead in AI accelerator components link

XCENA, a South Korea and US-based chip startup focused on near-memory compute for AI inference, raised $135M at a $570M valuation link

Kakao workers are threatening to strike in June in a dispute over profit sharing link

Rest of Asia

Hong Kong finalised rules for licensing firms that advise on and manage virtual assets, a milestone in its push to become a crypto hub link

Taiwan prosecutors say three people smuggled Nvidia AI chips to China through Japan by falsifying export documents for Supermicro servers link

MediaTek began working with Intel on advanced chip packaging as it bets on AI hardware and infrastructure demand link

Airwallex, the Aussie startup that famously rejected a $1 billion acquisition from Stripe, is now valued at $12 billion. But, more importantly, we look at how it is now upping its PR game as it deals with constant links to China.

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How Airwallex played the classic strategic leak card

Airwallex, the Australia-headquartered fintech firm, had a tough day on Thursday as news came out that it is relocating more than 100 staff from its Chinese offices in the face of concerns about close links to the country.

The eight-year-old company was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs in Australia. They leveraged the cost efficiency and talent in China by opening offices there and hiring for roles. That’s always going to make things tricky when operating globally, but particularly in these current times.

Airwallex has offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong and the Financial Times reported that Airwallex “has been steadily moving employees who do not work in China-facing roles out of the country.”

Arguably, it is naive at best or plain stupid at worst to locate international roles for a non-Chinese company inside China. Doing so gives credence to concerns that Airwallex has nefarious ties with the Chinese government, a claim prominent US VC Keith Rabois made last December.

Rabois, who backed fintech rival Ramp, claimed Airwallex is sending customer data to China and that it “has become a Chinese backdoor into sensitive American data like from AI labs and defense contractors.” He doubled down again yesterday.

That’s a tough narrative to push back against, especially in the post-Manus era. Zhang sparred with Rabois on Twitter, but it was a futile fight with an uneven matchup. But now Airwallex has finally upped its communications game after it hired a big hitter: Rachael Horwitz, a Silicon Valley comms veteran who spent the last 15 years at Facebook, Google, Twitter and A16z among other recognisable companies.

Horwitz joined Airwallex in February, according to LinkedIn, and already there are signs of a difference.

Following the FT story, which was damaging for Airwallex and those alleged China connections, Axios ran a report claiming Airwallex raised new capital at a valuation of $12 billion. That’s a 50% raise on its last valuation and Axios included other figures, including a 50% jump in ARR and Airwallex now processes $100 billion for 40,000 businesses in the US market.

To the regular eye, this looks like a great scoop (Axios, indeed, framed the story as a scoop), but 90% of the time these stories are based on a strategic leak inside the company. A CEO or comms executive gives the information to a journalist, but that it should not be sourced directly from the company.

Journalists take the bait, as it makes them look capable of getting private and hard-to-get information, and companies are happy because the framing sure looks better than it coming directly from them.

In this case, Airwallex certainly looks like it used this tactic as an effort to downplay the FT story.

With an experienced head of communications on board, you can expect the company to be a lot savvier in the US market. Horwitz may tap her network to bring in more experienced communications hires in other markets to raise the bar on how the startup communicates.

Airwallex is upping its game, but those China links won’t go away any time soon.

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Korea’s top crypto exchange is now a corporate playground

Crypto exchanges aren’t exactly synonymous with corporations, but Korea’s largest trading platform has made the leap after a range of major institutions picked up strategic stakes for big money.

Dunamu, the parent of the Upbit exchange, announced in December it would be acquired by internet giant Naver in a $10 billion-plus deal. But it is signing up major names while it waits to conclude the deal, which has been delayed due to regulatory issues and even rumoured to be postponed.

Three major Samsung units, Samsung Securities, Samsung SDS, and Samsung Card, are buying a 4% stake collectively for 613 billion Korean won ($407.7 million), according to The Block. That follows Hana Bank becoming its fourth-largest shareholder after buying 6.55% of the business for 1.003 trillion Korean won, around $670 million.

The share sales come from Kakao shedding some of its ownership, and the new partners are each planning with Upbit. That ranges from tokenised securities, to blockchain in logistics and digital asset payments.

Corporate interest in Dunamu reflects crypto’s ongoing inclusion in Korea’s financial system. The country has always been a hot spot for trading, it is often one of the first Asian markets crypto companies target with local marketing or hiring, and now incoming new regulation around stablecoins and tokenising real world assets is making it appealing to corporations, too.

In other news:

Beijing is warning tech companies not to replace workers with AI [Wall Street Journal]

JD.com. founder Liu Qiangdong vowed to prevent its 900,000 workforce from losing their jobs to automation [Bloomberg]

Meanwhile the EU is looking into JD’s $2.5 billion acquisition offer for Germany’s Ceconomy, which reportedly may involve China state subsidies [Reuters]

Singapore’s venture capital market fell for the third straight year in 2025, according to an EY Parthenon report [Technode Global]

MiniMax says it recorded a 5x surge in its global enterprise and developer users in the last six months [South China Morning Post]

BYD unveiled what it claims is China’s first automotive-grade 4nm chip for self-driving cars, raising the stakes in its rivalry with Huawei [Bloomberg]

Vietnam-based solar energy startup Stride raised $15 million [Deal Street Asia]

We took a delayed Memorial Day break but today have details on how tech’s soaring AI spending is impacting Asia’s key supply chain markets, and influencing one of China’s most important tech companies: ByteDance.

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ByteDance is spending money on AI like a US company

ByteDance is taking Chinese tech spending on AI to US levels after it committed to doubling its capital spending to more than $70 billion this year.

The TikTok owner could spend between 400-500 billion CNY, or $59-$74 billion, Bloomberg reported, as it develops its data centre and AI strategy. Potentially the figure could reach $100 billion by next year, the report claimed.

ByteDance spent around $25 billion last year, but with a $50 billion profit during that period, it has cash to funnel back into the spending spree to make it feasible.

US tech giants spend significantly more than their Chinese peers. Amazon spent over $130 billion on capex last year, and forecast $200 billion this year. Alphabet predicted $185 billion in capex in 2026. Meta increased its spending range guidance for this year to $115-$135 billion, a jump of over 70%.

ByteDance’s spending plans are significantly higher than Tencent, $12 billion last year, and Alibaba, $19 billion, in what’s perhaps a reflection of the firm’s more global focus and product range. Even though it has ceded majority control of TikTok US, revenue from outside of China accounts for over 30% of total income. International revenue is said to have grown by nearly 50% last year, outpacing 20% growth in China.

In another reflection of its more global status, ByteDance is said to have struck a deal to develop custom chips with Qualcomm to power its AI data centres.

Qualcomm announced the mystery ‘hyperscaler’ partner at the end of April, sending its share price soaring by 20%, and now Bloomberg unmasked the partner as ByteDance.

The duo will work on ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) built specifically to handle heavy workloads in ByteDance data centres. It’s a big deal to get Qualcomm into the AI business, and offset a reliance on smartphones, and another big indicator of the scale of ByteDance’s commitment to building AI services. ByteDance has data centres across Europe, including two projects in Finland, the US and Southeast Asia, where it just committed a further $25 billion for TikTok.

We looked at the contrast between Alibaba and Tencent’s approaches to AI earlier this month, with the former commercialising its work and the latter opting to embed it into its existing products. It’s tough to analyse a private company like ByteDance, but it has a strong and global product portfolio and is already putting AI to work in products like TikTok, CapCut and Lark. You’d imagine it is also playing with newer ideas and future products which these infrastructure investments will enable.

Taiwan reaps rewards from AI boom

The AI boom is hitting differently this year in Asia since tech giants are actually spending the enormous sums they pledged last year.

Most of the headlines were around projected spending. As we enter a second year of inflated capex forecasts, data centres coming online and more, so the supply chain countries are seeing tangible impact.

South Korea has been the most visible beneficiary, but Taiwan is very much in the picture as a trio of updates shows clearly.

Taiwan tech borrowing surges

Taiwan makes the magic happen. That’s why Taiwanese tech firms have doubled their borrowing this year to $14.5 billion in order to meet the growing needs of increased AI spending, according to Bloomberg:

Hardware manufacturers such as chip component makers and server builders, vital parts of the global AI supply chain, have been driving the surge in borrowing as procurement and capital expenditure needs accelerate.

The jump is quite insane as the accompanying graphic shows.

TSMC employees promised another big bonus

Samsung managed to avert a strike with its semiconductor workers with potential average bonuses of $300,000, and now it is the turn of TSMC.

Its CEO told staff at a hastily-arranged town hall meeting that they can expect their profit-sharing bonuses to rise by at least 30% this year. That bonus already took a big hike last year, as Bloomberg (again) reports:

TSMC’s overall employee profit-sharing pool grew roughly in line with its bottom line last year. The company allocated about NT$103 billion for the program in 2025, up 46.6% from the year before. The chipmaker in its articles of incorporation has pledged to set aside no less than 1% of its annual profit for its incentive program.

Keeping the staff happy may be TSMC’s biggest crisis to date, argues long-time Taiwan watcher Tim Culpan.

Nvidia doubles down on Taiwan

Meanwhile, Nvidia is doubling down on Taiwan. Well tripling or quadrupling down, according to its ever-quotable CEO Jensen Huang.

“Four years ago, five years ago, Nvidia was spending about 10, 15 billion dollars a year in Taiwan. Now we’re spending 100, going to 150 billion dollars in Taiwan each year,” he said at the launch of its new headquarters, which will begin production in 2030 and is said to cost $5 billion.

Rival AMD last week announced plans to invest $10 billion into building its capacity and infrastructure in Taiwan.

In other news:

China is overhauling its surveillance network with AI that automates real-time tracking, behavioral analysis, and unrest prediction, in the most significant upgrade to the decade-old system yet. [FT]

CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies), the world’s fourth-largest memory maker and a key part of China’s self-sufficiency strategy, got approval for an IPO that could raise at least $4.3 billion and become China’s largest listing for nearly five years [Bloomberg]

SK Hynix crossed the $1 trillion valuation mark as the AI spending boom continues to lift its business [CNBC]

Samsung Electronics plans to invest $1.5 billion in Vietnam to build a semiconductor testing plant [Reuters]

The founder of disgraced edtech Byju’s is said to be close to a settlement after being sentenced to six months in jail for contempt of court [Economic Times]

The former CEO of defunct crypto lending platform Hodlnaut was charged in Singapore with six counts of fraud over allegedly misleading statements about the company’s exposure to the TerraUSD collapse [The Block]

Kuaishou beat first-quarter estimates with $5 billion in revenue thanks to the commercialisation of its AI video generator Kling [SCMP]

PDD Holdings, the parent of Temu, missed quarterly revenue on account of tough domestic competition [Bloomberg]

We’ve seen a lot of cloud and AI deals in Southeast Asia recently, but the region looks like it’s taking the short-term option rather than the harder long-term around data sovereignty. We take a deeper look into the topic today.

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A data sovereignty crisis is looming in Southeast Asia

The world’s biggest economies are moving to control where sensitive data is stored, who can access it and which laws govern it. Southeast Asia, by contrast, is sleepwalking into a digital crisis.

We’ve been here before in Southeast Asia. Platforms like Facebook and Google brought a global standard for how its 400 million internet users communicate. That opened up business and global conversation, but thorny issues around content removal, censorship and ad approvals were effectively outsourced to private companies in California.

That shaped politics, society and daily life across the region, but the data sovereignty question could reach even further. Data is now a national security issue. Businesses increasingly treat data as both intellectual property and the basis for future growth, planning and competitive advantage. Storing that data with an overseas provider, then processing it through AI systems built elsewhere, creates obvious strategic risks.

That helps explain why many of the world’s biggest economies are trying to build sovereign data and AI stacks of their own, with tighter control over how critical data is stored, processed and governed. Southeast Asia, however, is entering the AI era as a host, not an owner, and that could have major implications.

Sovereign data plays emerge

Europe may be the best example as the region unites to reduce its exposure to US hyperscalers. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure dominate the global cloud market, but they’re subject to the US CLOUD Act. This legislation can compel them to provide data regardless of where it is stored.

It isn’t only the US. Canada has laws that have been used to force European companies to provide data while China, a major presence in Southeast Asia, is well known for its data control.

The concern is real. Hyperscalers have become the norm for any business seeking quick and easy cloud storage. These services are used for all types of data from personal information from consumers right to more sensitive details from government agencies, healthcare systems, financial institutions and more. Even a low chance of data being accessed is a major systemic risk.

In response, European cloud providers are developing ‘sovereign’ alternatives to US products, which differentiate by storing data locally. But adoption is tough as the products are less mature and struggle for distribution.

There’s also a key piece missing, and that’s AI. Concern is not just around how data is stored, but also how it is processed. That’s crucial for sovereignty and that’s where European AI providers like Mistral are trying to push their credentials as an option for European businesses, governments and other institutions.

The ‘sovereign stack’ is less mature in India, but the country is championing homegrown AI services, with Sarvam gaining momentum. Yotta, India’s largest operator of Nvidia chips, is preparing for an IPO as it builds out what it calls a sovereign data infrastructure.

Selling the cloud, not building it

Southeast Asia isn’t just sitting still on developing alternatives, it is actively helping hyperscalers to entrench themselves.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, TikTok and others have pledged to spend tens of billions of dollars on AI and cloud spending in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and beyond in the coming years.

Southeast Asia may not have the capacity to develop alternatives, but it has stepped up with legal frameworks. Vietnam is the region’s strictest. It mandates local data storage and access, a challenging topic for US firms like Google and Facebook who balanced the value of the market with complying with local demands.

But Southeast Asia is a loose political union, composed of rival nations who are competing for investment from US, Chinese and other overseas data companies. Winning mega contracts, like TikTok’s planned $25 billion infrastructure deal, is likely to trump any longer term concerns around data access and security.

New era, same story

The current situation feels remarkably like the previous digital era of social media and mobile messaging. In both eras, Southeast Asia was an important region that represented a large and highly engaged user base with strong growth potential. That was important for convincing public markets or private investors of global revenue and adoption opportunities.

The region embraced platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, often topping active user charts, but that led to countries ceding control of the discourse to overseas platforms.

Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte used Facebook heavily in his rise to power in 2016, leaning on its advertising, community building and some alleged disinformation. In Thailand, meanwhile, critical information from the government, its police and armed forces flows freely through messaging app Line.

Southeast Asia lost its digital sovereignty to these platforms, but more is at stake with the cloud and AI.

In other news you won’t want to miss:

Xiaomi committed $8.8 billion to funding AI technology over the next three years [South China Morning Post]

Huawei claims it has found a way to close its roughly five-year gap with TSMC, a move that could change assumptions in the chip manufacturing industry if successful [Bloomberg]

India’s Udaan, the e-commerce platform, is said to be raising $50-60 million from existing backers M&G Prudential and Lightspeed Venture Partners at a flat $1.8 billion valuation, the deal is reportedly a pre-IPO round [Economic Times]

Indonesia blocked prediction market platform Polymarket as it continues to crack down on online betting [The Block]

China will assign every domestically made humanoid robot a unique digital ID, tracking each machine from production to recycling [South China Morning Post]

That’s the takeaway from an insightful feature from David Oks, who explains how the initial impact is being felt by emerging markets where budget phones simply can’t be produced and sold for less than $100 any longer.

We’ve tracked Korea’s AI boom, with SK Hynix and Samsung posting record revenues as demand for high bandwidth memory (HBM) spikes as the demands that AI places on compute powers necessitates more memory, and more advanced memory systems. Global memory makers are already at capacity, and booked for years in advance, which means producing the type of memory required in smartphones is secondary, which creates greater scarcity and increased prices.

That’s hitting the brands that previously performed the miracle of delivering a smartphone experience for as little as $50, and in turn the consumers who buy said devices, as Oaks notes:

That means that the budget smartphone makers have been forced to pass memory costs onto consumers: smartphones that sold for $50 are now selling for $120 or more. And price-sensitive consumers have responded by simply not buying phones.

In the early months of 2026, Transsion announced that its net profit for 2025 had fallen by 54 percent, and that it would cut its annual shipment target by 40 percent. We’re seeing the same with other low-market and mid-market smartphone companies.

Oppo slashed its shipment target by more than 20 percent; Vivo, in the same position, cut by nearly 15 percent. In the first quarter of 2026, Xiaomi’s annual shipments fell 19 percent year over year.

The impact is hitting across the board. Indonesia, for example, saw overall smartphone shipments decrease 9% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, but the premium segment was up 30%.

That’s indicative of a trend that puts Apple in a good spot. It had to stump up a premium to secure memory from Samsung but, having done so, its devices appeal even more than before. The differentiation of product Apple sells makes the lower priced models competitive on cost which is powerful alongside Apple’s brand and the life expectancy of an iPhone.

Anecdotally, the base iPhone 17 is drawing attention in India and possibly other markets, though where things go from here remains to be seen.

In case you missed our editions last week, we wrote about:

• The Manus co-founders are raising $1 billion to lodge an audacious bid to buy back their startup

• Uber is taking an interest in Asia again after making a major investment

• Singapore is making itself an AI deployment hub and OpenAI, Google and Nvidia are in for the ride

• Malaysia welcomed its first AI IPO as SkyeChip went public raising $90 million

• India’s Uber rival Rapido is revving up after raising $250 million

• Apple Pay is stalling in India because big banks there don’t really need it

• US prediction market platforms Polymarket and Kalshi continue to operate in India, despite a warning

• Local rivals are competing with Nvidia to offer ‘sovereign’ alternatives in Asia

• Amazon assured us that it is spending a lot of money on AI in Southeast Asia

If you don’t manage to open our emails some days, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn or WhatsApp so you don’t miss a story or insight.

See you tomorrow,

Jon

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China

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng told investors in the company’s $10B funding round that he will prioritise AI research and open-source models over near-term profits link

CATL plans to invest in DeepSeek’s funding round as it expands sales of power equipment to AI data centres link

DeepSeek is making its 75% discount on the V4-Pro model permanent link

Funding for China’s AI startups nearly tripled year on year in the first quarter to more than CNY110B ($16.2B) link

Shein acquired sustainable fashion Everlane for about $100M, marking a sharp drop from its earlier billion-dollar ambitions and an antidote against concerns around Shein’s environmental footprint link

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he expects China to eventually reopen to US-made AI chips link

But China banned imports of a new Nvidia gaming chip designed to comply with US export controls link

And China has yet to allow a single purchase of Nvidia’s H200 chip six months after Trump approved it for sale link

Moonshot AI plans to overhaul its corporate structure ahead of a Hong Kong IPO to align with Beijing’s tighter overseas listing rules link

Yangtze Memory Technologies has started the process for a long-awaited IPO to tap investor demand for AI-linked chipmakers link

ChangXin Memory Technologies reported a 1,688% jump in quarterly profit as AI demand and higher DRAM prices lifted revenue link

IDG Capital is seeking to raise about $2B for a growth fund focused on consumer tech and other consumer businesses including in China link

A previously unknown flaw in Huawei enterprise router software triggered a nationwide telecoms outage in Luxembourg last year link

US senators will introduce legislation to help allied governments buy American AI technology and counter China’s overseas influence link

Alibaba unveiled its Zhenwu M890 AI accelerator as it expands its push to build a full-stack AI ecosystem link

Alibaba also unveiled new AI models, cloud infrastructure and chips as it pushes to become China’s AI factory link

The European Commission will propose temporarily lifting sanctions on Yangzhou Yangjie Electronic Technology after automakers warned of supply chain disruption link

SMIC won approval to acquire the remaining 49% stake in its Beijing foundry unit in a deal valued at CNY40.6B ($5.97B) link

Wingtech Technology sued Nexperia and five other entities, seeking CNY8B ($1.18B) in compensation over restrictions on its control of the Dutch chipmaker link

TP-Link is facing growing scrutiny in Washington over its ties to China as it tries to expand in the US market link

Foreign private equity firms are retreating from China’s data centre sector as tighter cybersecurity rules make overseas ownership harder link

China is accelerating construction of a national computing network to turn AI infrastructure into a public utility as token demand surges link

Xpeng has begun mass production of robotaxis in Guangzhou link

Baidu reported a smaller-than-expected 1% drop in quarterly revenue as growth in its AI businesses offset weakness in its core internet operations link

India

Simplismart is in talks to raise $20M from Nvidia at a valuation of about $100M as the chipmaker deepens its India AI push link

An Indian court ordered Apple to cooperate with an antitrust probe into the iPhone apps market, rejecting its bid to pause the case link

A grey market for discounted AI credits is emerging in India as founders resell tokens from Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic link

Microsoft’s biggest India data centre is on track to open by mid-2026 as demand for Azure and Copilot grows link

Peak XV Partners joined UK-based Primer’s $100M funding round, extending its run of overseas bets link

Scapia raised $63M in a General Catalyst-led round that more than doubled its valuation to more than $500M link

Shastra VC launched a $100M fund to back deeptech, defence, AI and renewable energy startups link

SolarSquare is in talks to raise $55M to $60M in a Series C at a valuation of $450M to $500M link

A viral video of Indian garment workers wearing camera-equipped headbands has raised fears that factories are using their movements to train AI systems link

Southeast Asia

Grab will take control of Indonesian digital lender Superbank after its combined ownership rose above 50% link

US authorities extradited a Ukrainian woman from Thailand to face conspiracy charges tied to the alleged Forsage crypto Ponzi scheme link

The US and the Philippines are moving “quickly” on a planned 4,000-acre AI hub in the Philippines link

Filipino virtual assistants are using AI tools to power LinkedIn thought leadership services for Western executives for as little as $7 an hour link

Vietnam enacted one of the world’s first comprehensive AI laws, setting risk-based rules for AI models and deepfakes link

Singapore revoked the major payment institution licence of crypto liquidity provider BSQ over serious regulatory breaches link

Doozy Robotics raised seed funding from Cocoon Capital, though it did not disclose the amount link

An Indonesian court sentenced the head of Terra Drone’s local unit to 16 months in prison over a fire that killed 22 employees link

Malaysia will require online platforms to limit account registration for users under 16 and tighten content governance from 1 June link

Taiwan

AMD pledged to invest more than $10B across Taiwan’s AI ecosystem link

The AI boom is generating a fresh Asian savings glut led by soaring chip exports from Taiwan and South Korea, according to Oxford Economics link

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called on Super Micro to tighten compliance after Taiwan detained three people over allegedly mislabelled AI servers link

Taiwanese authorities are seeking to detain three people accused of using forged documents to smuggle Nvidia AI chips to China link

Japan

Polymarket appointed a Japan representative and is lobbying for approval of prediction markets by 2030 link

Japan is drafting cybersecurity guidelines to use advanced AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Mythos to detect and fix software vulnerabilities link

Memory maker Kioxia is preparing a US float to boost liquidity and broaden its investor base link

Japan plans to let dual-use tech startups receive advance payments on government contracts to ease financing pressure link

SoftBank faces growing internal concern over Masayoshi Son’s $60B-plus bet on OpenAI link

Japan will soon issue guidelines encouraging startups to consider acquisitions as an alternative to IPOs link

South Korea

LetinAR raised $18.5M ahead of a planned 2027 IPO as competition heats up in AI smart glasses link

Samsung reached a tentative last-minute deal with its labour union, averting a strike at the world’s biggest memory chipmaker link

Samsung will pay about KRW40T ($26.6B) in bonuses to semiconductor staff after striking a last-minute deal with labour unions link

Samsung’s last-minute profit-sharing deal averted a strike but deepened tensions over a widening bonus gap between chip staff and other workers link

Hong Kong

Morgan Stanley has issued restricted iPhones and iPads to its Hong Kong investment banking team for use in mainland China amid data compliance concerns link

It’s been a month since China demanded Meta unwind its $2 billion purchase of Manus. That was unprecedented, but things might get wilder still as the startup’s founders are raising capital to buy their business back with a view to taking it public.

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The Manus saga just took another wild twist

Just when you thought it couldn’t get weirder, the Manus founders are plotting to buy their business back from Meta less than six months after the ill-fated deal was announced.

Bloomberg reports that Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao and Zhang Tao are “in discussions” with external investors to raise around $1 billion to finance the buyback. The trio would make up the remainder of the capital required to complete the deal.

It looks like the financing would come at a valuation of at least $2 billion, roughly what Meta paid for Manus, which would give the investors a very sizable chunk of ownership. Bloomberg reports also that the new entity would be a Chinese joint venture with plans to take it to a Hong Kong IPO, presumably fairly quickly in order to sweeten the deal for investors.

There’s no precedent for the unwinding of Manus-Meta, which readers will know is being forced by China, but this would certainly mark a fairly wild development if what Bloomberg reports comes to pass.

Founders buying back companies that they sold is not uncommon, but typically the timeframe for such deals is years and usually they are given away in a fire sale because things haven’t worked out. Wistful founders take control again because they want to restore their baby to full health.

That’s not exactly the case here. But the alternative to a founder-led buyback is fairly grim, so this appears to be a better option.

A few key points will be critical:

How much IP and talent has Manus surrendered to Meta?

The company was on track to gross $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, but Meta integrated its products into its platform, particularly Facebook ad sales, and key Manus staff began working from Meta’s Singapore office.

What does Manus’ roadmap look like?

The first six months of an acquisition are about assimilation, which was happening as we established, so the firm would need to get back into independent, startup mode to show it can maintain and grow at IPO levels.

What investors will back it?

A quick run to HKEX could sway investors into backing Manus by providing a clear exit strategy, but will that attract value additive backers? Would retail investors embrace a returning prodigal son stock? Again, zero precedent.

But with Zhipu shares up 8X this year and Minimax’s doubling over the same period, a Hong Kong listing looks a lot more appealing than the current limbo.

Amazon assures us it is spending a lot of money on AI in Southeast Asia

OpenAI, Google, Nvidia and others are on board for Singapore’s national AI strategy and robotics programme, but Amazon was a notable name missing from the flurry of partnerships announced earlier this week.

Perhaps conscious of that absence, and the closure of its Singapore operations which came with job losses, Amazon said today that it is on track to spend more than $33 billion on AI infrastructure in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand by 2039.

Amazon’s news announcements are always curious things, and this one is no exception.

When it closed its local Singapore service, Amazon led with a press release titled “Amazon Singapore to expand International Store selection in response to customer demand.” That definitely didn’t tell the story.

Yesterday’s AI announcement had similar characteristics.

Amazon didn’t announce anything but big numbers which are tough to substantiate:

Amazon’s planned investments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand in cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure are expected to reach over US$33 billion by 2039, supporting over 56,300 full-time-equivalent jobs annually and add US$64 billion to the four countries’ collective GDP by 2039.

2039 is a long way away, and claiming, let alone forecasting, GDP is highly speculative.

Amazon has trained over 2.7 million individuals across Southeast Asia on cloud skills since 2017.

Ok…

In 2025 alone, Amazon invested more than US$3 billion - including infrastructure and employee compensation - across its various businesses including Stores, Amazon Web Services, Global Selling, Devices, and Entertainment in Southeast Asia.

Breaking out employee compensation is interesting, although that is certainly part of an investment package when developing new infrastructure.

Amazon certainly looked keen to say something about Southeast Asia this week. Here it is.

In other news you won’t want to miss:

Grab is taking majority control of Indonesian digital lender Superbank after taking a stake from former partner Singtel [Business Times]

Samsung Electronics workers won’t go on strike after the company agreed to pay around 40 trillion won ($26.6 billion) in bonuses to semiconductor employees after reaching a last-minute deal [Bloomberg]

Indian credit card startup Scapia raised $63 million in a General Catalyst-led funding round, more than doubling its valuation to over $500 million [TechCrunch]

Malaysia’s communications regulator ordered TikTok to explain its delayed response to offensive and fake content targeting the royal institution [Channel News Asia]

India’s Shastra VC launched a $100 million fund targeting deeptech, defense, AI, and renewable energy startups, investing between $500,000 and $3 million per startup [The Economic Times]

An Indonesian court sentenced the head of Japanese drone developer Terra Drone’s local unit to 16 months in prison for negligent homicide in connection with a fire that killed 22 employees and injured 15 [Nikkei Asia]

Singapore is making moves to become a global AI deployment hub after the government brokered deals with OpenAI, Google and Nvidia. Meanwhile Nvidia’s biggest rivals look like sovereign AI stacks, which are emerging in China and South Korea.

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Singapore bets on being a global AI deployment hub

Singapore is making a big play to be Asia’s AI innovation and deployment lab after it announced partnerships with Google, OpenAI and Nvidia, and programmes to test and deploy robotic technologies.

A range of partnerships were announced on the first day of the ATxSummit, headlined by OpenAI committing $230 million to its ‘OpenAI for Singapore’ initiative. That will include the opening of its first ‘Applied AI Lab’ outside of the US, creating 200 jobs in Singapore. Google opened its DeepMind Lab in Singapore last year, and it will ramp up its activities to work with the government.

Both companies will work with Singapore’s Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) to develop its national AI strategy. These broadly include working with local businesses and educators to raise AI adoption, understanding and available talent.

Google, meanwhile, will work with science-focused agencies—the National Research Foundation (NRF) and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)— to provide its scientific research and analysis tools. It is also exploring the use of AI for healthcare to support doctors and patients.

Robotics is another major area for Singapore’s AI strategy. Nvidia announced that it will open its first research hub in Singapore, its second in Asia, to develop “embodied AI,’ a term for robotics, drones and other hardware linked to AI systems.

Nvidia will be the first of a number of companies to use Singapore to explore embodied AI. The country is opening a testbed to allow private companies to design, test and deploy robotics technology for their business. There will also be a centre for intelligent robotics to develop solutions for services like delivery, cleaning and other use cases to complement human workers. Grab, DHL and China’s Unitree are among some of the recognisable names signed up for these initiatives.

With a population of just 6 million and less than 800 square kilometres of land, Singapore has a huge disadvantage but having established itself as a global financial hub, AI is a major pillar for its next phase of growth.

“With AI reshaping economies, businesses and the workforce, Singapore’s response has been deliberate: growing new sectors, anchoring global frontier companies here, and equipping our people with the skills to thrive in this new environment,” said Chng Kai Fong, MDDI permanent secretary, in a quote that pretty much encapsulates the goal.

Singapore does not have the scale of China, India or the US, but it is betting that it can be the testbed where AI moves from theory and demonstration to deployment and practice. With the government firmly on board, it’s a compelling proposition.

Rivals turn up heat as Nvidia admits ‘conceding’ Chinese market

Nvidia just had a monster quarter with revenue increasing by 85%, but its situation in China remains unclear and rivals are jumping at the possibility to build strong alternatives to its product. Two emerged yesterday.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said demand for AI chips in China is huge, but he admitted that his company has “largely conceded” the market. Nvidia has continued to exclude China revenue from its financial reports.

Alibaba revealed its newest AI chip, Zhenwu M890, which it claims makes a 3x performance jump compared to its current offering. T-Head, the Alibaba chip unit, hasn’t revealed key performance metrics for the new product yet, and its memory capacity and bandwidth are below Western competitors.

Crucially, though, Nvidia remains kneecapped in China. That gives Alibaba and domestic rivals like Huawei and Cambricon a clear shot at winning market share in a country where technology self-sufficiency is increasingly crucial. T-Head has delivered 560,000 Zhenwu units to more than 400 customers across 20 industries, the company said.

In South Korea, meanwhile, chip startup FuriosaAI is beginning to introduce its new AI data centre chip which it claims can match the performance of Nvidia’s products while costing less to operate. LG and Samsung are among the early customers of this second-generation chip.

The company claims its chips run with strict power efficiency, which allows them to be more cost effective than alternatives. Korea doesn’t have the same self-sufficiency push as China, but FuriosaAI’s new chip is integrating with major local data systems, including the Samsung Cloud Platform. That configuration enables sovereign AI and cloud solutions which is compelling for domestic companies keen to avoid overseas vendors.

Not every country can offer a domestic stack, but where it can there will be more credible challengers for Nvidia.

In other news you won’t want to miss:

Samsung reached a tentative last-minute deal with its labour union to avert a strike that was set to begin today [Reuters]

Peak XV Partners joined a $100 million round for Primer, a London-based payment infrastructure startup, marking another overseas deal for the India-based fund [The Economic Times]

Indonesian investment app Pluang raised $10 million led by Japan’s MUFG [Technode Global]

China is seeking a balance between AI growth and labour stability, as recent court rulings suggest a new focus on protecting employees from AI-driven displacement [The New York Times]

After Uber sold its China and Southeast Asia businesses long ago, Asia felt like an afterthought. But now the US ride-hailing giant looks poised to get serious about the region again. We also have news of an AI IPO and AI-related exit in Malaysia.

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Uber’s Delivery Hero stake could reopen the door to Asia

Uber is about to get more serious about Asia again after it became the largest shareholder of Delivery Hero, the Germany-based company that operates Foodpanda, Korea’s Baemin and other food delivery brands across the world.

The US firm acquired shares from Prosus, once Delivery Hero’s largest shareholder but now forced to sell for anti-trust reasons, to take its holdings to 19.5% with an additional 5.6% in share options. Uber said it doesn’t plan to increase its ownership, but it would be obligated to make a takeover bid if its shareholdings reached 30%, according to German regulations. Uber’s stake, estimated at €1.7 billion by Reuters, means it will be involved in budget, M&A and other parts of Delivery Hero’s strategy.

The situation with Prosus gives Uber the opportunity to take a major position within a rival business, and there could be immediate implications. Not only does this position give Uber insight into Delivery Hero’s global business, which spans Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East via 11 brands, it could put it in the driving seat to acquire Baemin, the Korean delivery giant that’s reportedly on sale for around $5.4 billion.

Baemin is a big deal. The company is a money-making machine unlike so many other delivery businesses worldwide.

The company’s revenue has more than doubled from around $1.5 billion in 2021 to more than $3.4 billion in 2025, depending on the variable exchange for the Korean won.

It’s also highly-profitable. Delivery Hero has taken around $1 billion in dividends since it bought Baemin (via parent company Woowa) in 2019 in a deal worth around $4 billion.

David Oh, who led investor relations at Woowa before transitioning to Delivery Hero Asia, offered up an insightful comparison on LinkedIn:

A food delivery platform [Baemin] generating ~$400M in annual operating profit — peaking closer to $470M in 2023 — is a genuinely rare asset globally. For context, Grab’s entire deliveries segment, spanning six Southeast Asian countries, generated $196M in Adjusted EBITDA in FY2024, and $285M in FY2025. Baemin, operating in a single market, comfortably outearns one of the world’s most recognized delivery platforms on an absolute profit basis.

Delivery Hero has been offloading assets to pay off debts of around $3 billion. In recent times, it has closed Foodpanda in several markets, including Thailand, and agreed to sell the Taiwan-based business to Grab for $600 million, having seen a deal with Uber collapse a year earlier due to competition laws. Selling Baemin fits that pattern, but the question has been to who?

Uber is reportedly part of a bid that’s fronted by Naver, the internet platform company that offers messaging, payments, commerce and content. The union of the two companies has plenty of synergies, particularly since Uber is active in Korea but it shuttered its Uber Eats service in 2019. Uber once had a sprawling business across Asia, but after exiting China and Southeast Asia, it is a patchwork relic from older times. Now, as a profitable business, it appears to be interested in the region once again.

It’s not a done deal, though. DoorDash and Alibaba are reportedly among the other bidders for Baemin.

The deal will be an important one, since it will crown the largest rival to Coupang, which is said to be responsible for eating into Baemin’s profits, which have declined in the last three years. Uber’s new position inside Delivery Hero looks like it will give it the advantage it may need to acquire Baemin and revive its Asia strategy.

Malaysia sees $90M chip IPO and battery startup sold for $240M

Malaysia had a rare tech IPO after SkyeChip became the first chip design company to list on the Bursa Malaysia stock exchange.

SkyeChip raised around $90 million from the float, the largest IPO fundraise in the country for 16 years. The IPO was oversubscribed by more than 95 times, and that appetite for the stock saw its share price rocket 4x.

We’ve seen a lot of listings linked to AI and high-performance computing, and SkyeChip can be added to the list. It designs integrated circuits which are licensed to customers for integration into their chips. Its specialisation is silicon IP and products, including application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

Malaysia is the world’s sixth-largest exporter of semiconductors, and the government has bet big on the chip industry for its future. It signed a $250 million deal with design giant ARM last year. That gave it crucial IP with a target to create 10,000 new jobs and boost its industry through upskilling. The chip industry in Malaysia has traditionally focused more on lower-skilled areas like production.

Examples like SkyeChip, which was founded in 2020 by two semiconductor veterans, will go some way to helping the country’s chip industry become more sophisticated.

In related news, TDK announced it will pay $240 million to acquire Malaysian battery startup Linergy Power to expand its capacity for energy storage in response to the boom from AI. The Japanese firm already owned 25% of Linergy, which was only founded in December 2024.

In other interesting news you won’t want to miss:

A grey market for AI credits is emerging in India after participants at Y Combinator’s Bengaluru Startup School began reselling discounted access to services from AWS, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic [The Economic Times]

Morgan Stanley has issued special devices to its entire Hong Kong investment banking team for use in mainland China, reflecting growing concerns over data compliance [FT]

Japan will issue guidelines encouraging startups to pursue acquisitions as a viable alternative to IPOs [Nikkei]

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son’s more than $60 billion bet on OpenAI is reportedly raising concerns among some insiders over his growing devotion to CEO Sam Altman. [Bloomberg]

Vietnam has enacted one of the world’s first comprehensive AI laws, requiring model classification by risk level, disclosed chatbot use and deepfakes labels [Nikkei]

Moonshot AI plans to overhaul its corporate structure in line with Beijing’s rules ahead of a Hong Kong IPO [Bloomberg]

We are looking at India today, and two very contrasting approaches as Apple plays by the rules and is forced to wait, while two very new internet platforms are defying a warning from the government.

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The wait for Apple Pay looks set to continue in India

Apple continues to be frustrated in India where it is reported that its plan to launch Apple Pay has been delayed once again.

The US firm began laying the groundwork for the launch of its mobile payment system some three years ago, and this year it did look like it was getting close to launch. But now Moneycontrol reports that it has run into roadblocks with major banks negotiating hard on transaction fee sharing.

“Apple is asking for 20 basis points (bps) per transaction but the larger banks are willing to share only 15 bps, similar to the iPhone maker’s global commission structure in the US,” the report states.

But Apple has a problem here. India is not like the US or other Western countries where Apple Pay and Google Pay are a roaring success.

India already has UPI, which enables mass market mobile payments through apps like PhonePe, which handles more than one million transactions per day. Digital payments are the norm, so cards are not as ubiquitous as in other markets. But when it does come to cards, banks control the network. That’s thanks to factors that include their distribution and the RBI (The Reserve Bank of India) giving them more freedom than non-bank entities.

The proposition is different there because Apple is no longer offering a premium and differentiated offering in a busy market of cards. It is trying to offer a service that banks don’t really need, or want since it involves them losing the already tight margins they take from cards. Smaller banks are more keen to join the Apple Pay party, as you’d expect given their need to be disruptive.

Apple’s market share does skew towards affluent customers in India, iOS is estimated to account for 5%-10% of devices, but these are consumers that already have cards. Since they’re already owned by banks, Apple is likely to have to concede ground.

But breaking policy to accommodate local markets isn’t something US companies are adept at doing so the wait for Apple Pay may drag on further.

Prediction markets defy potential ban in India

Apple may be stuck due to local conditions, but the same can’t be said of prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket. The two US platforms continue to operate in India despite likely falling foul of the country’s regulations, which obliterated the country’s real-money gaming industry when introduced last August.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in April that prediction market platforms are illegal and will be cut off by internet providers, but Kalshi and Polymarket remain accessible.

Polymarket, in particular, has been quick to respond to government issues in the past. It is currently partially or fully inaccessible in 35 countries, including the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia and Japan. It’s fairly common knowledge, however, that users access the site using VPNs that circumvent any local blocks.

So why is India not on the list?

It could be that the market isn’t particularly significant for revenue at this point. Just $1.3 million has been traded on the outcome of the 2026 IPL cricket league on Polymarket, compared to $1 billion on the outcome of this summer’s World Cup and $255 million on the Champions League.

India could be seen as a growth market for both platforms, which are heavily backed by venture capital and therefore needing to show momentum. Kalshi is valued at $22 billion while Polymarket is reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $15 billion valuation.

We might see the companies hold out as long as they can to gain attention and users, before restricting the market and seeing how many of that base will jump through the VPN hoop to continue to use the product. For now, the companies are a lot more concerned with the US market, where Kalshi holds a license to operate but Polymarket doesn’t.

In other interesting news you won’t want to miss:

Nvidia is reportedly in talks to lead a $20 million funding round in Indian generative AI startup Simplismart at a valuation of about $100 million [The Economic Times]

Jensen Huang expects China to eventually reopen to US-made AI chips [Bloomberg]

Japan plans to let startups developing dual-use technologies such as artificial intelligence, drones and space systems receive advance payments on government contract [Nikkei Asia]

A lot of LinkedIn thought leadership articles are coming from AI, with help from Philippines-based workers earning as little as $7 per hour [Rest of World]

The US is moving “very, very quickly” to establish its recently announced AI and supply chain hub in the Philippines [Bloomberg]

The ride-hailing industry might seem to be a foregone conclusion given how the market has matured and consolidated across the world, but disruptors can still be found. Take Rapido in India, which is said to be ahead of rivals Uber and Ola, raised $240 million at a $2 billion valuation led by big-hitting investors Prosus, WestBridge and Accel.

Uber is worth over $150 billion while Ola was previously valued at more than $7 billion, and it has been a unicorn since 2015, the very year Rapido was formed. It may be a latecomer, having raised just over $700 million to date, but Rapido is shaking things up.

Data from Sensor Tower suggests that Rapido had significantly more users in January and February: nearly 74 million compared to 39 million for Uber and 28 million for Ola. That puts Rapido’s numbers at more than Uber and Ola combined. Other numbers have shown a similar lead.

Rapido has found success with a focus on lower cost transportation, like motorbikes and auto rickshaws, and it covers some 400 cities and towns across India.

Interestingly, Rapido seemed to hastily announce its latest financing just one day after Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced plans for the US firm’s first India-based data centre and two new campuses in the country. During his visit, Khosrowshahi said India can become Uber’s largest market in the next 10 years.

I love the tussle for the limelight like this, it reminds me of the old days of ride-hailing rivalries and even Amazon-Flipkart back in the day in India.

In case you missed it, last week we wrote about Amazon’s failure in Southeast Asia, Shopee’s impressive growth for Sea, Thailand’s Konvy raising $22 million, how Alibaba is running rings around Tencent when it comes to AI and the weekly news.

One thing you should watch is Singapore’s Foreign Minister, a former eye surgeon, explaining at a tech conference how he built himself a ‘second brain for a diplomat’ using an AI personal agent.

Have a great Monday, we’ll be back tomorrow.

Jon

In addition to writing Asia Tech Review, I help great startups and tech companies tell their story through narrative, content and comms. Check out Fully Drafted to learn more.

China

Nvidia reportedly won US approval for about 10 Chinese firms to buy H200 AI chips, but deliveries have not started, as ever what will happen next is unclear link

Huawei put a secretive chip research lab in the spotlight ahead of Donald Trump’s China visit link

Former Alibaba Qwen lead researcher Junyang Lin is said to be seeking to raise several hundred million dollars for a new AI lab at a potential $2B valuation link

Recursive Superintelligence, the AI startup co-founded by former Meta AI researcher Tian Yuandong, raised more than $650M at a $4.65B valuation link

Tencent won conditional antitrust approval for its acquisition of podcast platform Ximalaya, the deal is worth $2.4 billion link

HongShan closed a $3B continuation fund anchored by a ByteDance stake at a roughly $370B valuation link

Chinese AI companies are pulling ahead of US rivals in AI video generation link

China says it built the world’s first dual-core quantum computer using neutral atoms, but there’s a lack of transparency and doubt from global experts link

Chinese-born engineers and researchers are becoming some of Silicon Valley’s most influential AI figures link

Unitree debuted a mecha robot that can switch from two legs to four—think real life Transformers… link

Kuaishou is reportedly preparing to spin off its Kling AI video unit ahead of a planned IPO next year at a potential $20B valuation link

Shein accused fierce rival Temu of industrial-scale copyright infringement at London’s High Court as the legal battle escalates link

France is pressing the EU to crack down on platforms including Shein and Temu link

SMIC founder Richard Chang urged China’s chip industry to focus on pragmatic breakthroughs in mature and specialty semiconductors rather than chasing 2nm hype link

AI-related exports accounted for about half of China’s export growth in April, according to Goldman Sachs and Nomura estimates link

China’s exports of rare earths and related magnets have fallen since Beijing imposed curbs last year link

Earnings:

• Alibaba reported an operating loss of 848M CNY ($125M) for the March quarter as revenue rose 3% link

• Tencent reported March-quarter revenue up 9% to 196.5B CNY ($28.9B) as net income rose to 58.1B CNY link

• JD.com reported first-quarter profit of 5.1B CNY ($750.2M), down 53.2%, while revenue rose 4.9% to 315.7B CNY link

• Ant Group’s profit fell 79% as it increased AI spending across healthcare, large language models and payments link

India

Agrani Labs, an AI chip startup co-founded by Intel and AMD veterans, is reportedly raising $100M at a $400M-$500M valuation in what could become one of India’s biggest Series A rounds link

India’s first semiconductor fab is nearing launch into a market increasingly dominated by China’s mature-node chip push link

Jio’s planned IPO is set to be fully fresh funding with no offer for sale, according to reports link

But Flipkart has now indefinitely paused its IPO plans amid market volatility link

Amazon is ramping up its 10-minute delivery push in India as it takes on market leader Blinkit in quick commerce link

Early backers including Peak XV, Ribbit Capital and Y Combinator sold 29.52 crore Groww shares for 53.18B INR ($620M) after the IPO lock-in expired link

Lightspeed is said to be cutting its latest India-focused fund to about $300M to $350M link

Former Peak XV executives Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma are launching Mettle Capital with a target of $350M to $400M link

Southeast Asia

Indonesian prosecutors are seeking an 18-year prison sentence for former education minister and Gojek co-founder Nadiem Makarim over a school laptop procurement case link

F88 is preparing for a stock market debut after turning pawnshop lending into a fast-growing consumer finance business in Vietnam link

Sea reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings as Shopee drove revenue up 47% to $7.1B link

Indian fintech Pine Labs is expanding in the Philippines through a partnership with GCash link

Google is expanding its mosquito-control project Debug in Singapore with its first overseas R&D hub and largest adult mosquito production facility link

Balaji Srinivasan is pitching his Network School project to Malaysian politicians as a way to attract global tech talent link

Qualcomm is expanding its Vietnam R&D work into chip design link

Singapore-based DayOne Data Centers is considering expanding its Series C round to more than $4B link

DayOne is also reportedly planning a dual listing in Singapore and New York that could raise about $5B at a $20B valuation link

Lightrock launched a $500M fund to back energy transition companies across South Asia, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa link

Japan

Japanese taxi-hailing app Go is set for Tokyo’s biggest IPO of 2026 at a projected valuation of 180B JPY ($1.14B) link

Kioxia is preparing a US listing after record quarterly earnings of 596.8B JPY and forecasting operating profit of 1.3T JPY ($8.2B) for the June quarter link

LY Corp and Bain Capital launched a counterbid for Kakaku.com that values the company at about 640B JPY ($4B) link

Japan’s JICA is launching a programme to train space industry professionals from developing countries including India, the Philippines and Indonesia link

Axiom Space will launch a Japan unit in July to deepen ties with local companies link

SoftBank plans to expand into AI infrastructure and battery manufacturing, including AI cloud services in Japan and large-scale battery cell production in Osaka from next fiscal year link

SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son is also considering investing as much as $100B in a French AI data centre project link

Japan’s three megabanks are set to gain access to Anthropic’s Claude Mythos by the end of May link

The country’s enterprise-led blockchain is set to issue a yen stablecoin for B2B settlements link

South Korea

Config, which is building a data layer for robotics, raised a $27M seed round led by Samsung Venture Investment at a valuation above $200M link

Hana Bank bought a 1T KRW ($670M) stake in crypto exchange company Dunamu link

WIRobotics raised about $68M in a Series B round to accelerate development of its humanoid robotics platform link

South Korea’s military is exploring a partnership with Hyundai to deploy robots in front-line roles as troop shortages worsen link

Samsung and its South Korean labour union failed to reach a pay deal, raising the risk of a full-scale strike link

OKX is advancing plans to acquire a majority stake in South Korean crypto exchange Coinone link

Taiwan

Foxconn posted strong results on AI hardware sales link

TSMC said the global chip market will hit $1.5T by 2030 as AI drives growth link

Hong Kong

Prosus is selling a 5% stake in Delivery Hero to Hong Kong-based Aspex Management for about €335M link

RoboTechnik founder Dai Jun is considering a Hong Kong dual listing after the company’s shares rose 340% over the past year link

Earnings season isn’t for everyone, but today throws up the chance to analyse two of China’s largest tech companies and their approach to AI after Alibaba and Tencent both turned in their latest financials.

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Alibaba has a long-term vision for AI but Tencent looks like its lagging

Today’s lesson is about presenting information, and in doing so we can see the massive contrast between how Alibaba and Tencent are embracing AI.

At first glance, both companies are developing strong LLMs with global pull, Tencent rebuilt its from the ground up, and they’re investing in the most promising startups out there, including, apparently, DeepSeek. But these earnings also revealed their fundamentally different approaches.

Alibaba goes long

Alibaba’s earnings initially spooked investors, and its share price dropped as much as 4% after it posted an operating loss and significantly reduced EBITDA (down 84% year-on-year) due to heavy spending on AI, cloud infrastructure and the cost of its quick commerce battle with Meituan.

The company posted an overall net profit, thanks to the breadth of its business, but the large focus on AI spending appeared to be a concern. That was until Alibaba’s management team clarified its strategy on their earnings call. Then the market changed.

The stock price rallied and was up 7.5% on the day as CEO Eddie Wu explained that ROI on the AI spending is “extremely clear” in the next 3-5 year period.

It’s certainly notable that Alibaba has flipped a switch in recent months. Its approach to AI has gone from incubating, developing and growing to now deploying and monetising. In March, a number of prominent members of its Qwen AI division left, including technical lead Junyang Lin. Wu himself is part of a new business unit formed in March that combines teams from the Qwen model research team, consumer apps, DingTalk and Quark devices.

The goal is pretty clear, getting those smarts into products and services. This week, Alibaba integrated Qwen with its Tmall and Taobao e-commerce service to give consumers AI and agentic commerce for the first time. It has also begun working with third parties including China Eastern Airlines.

Outside of its own needs, Alibaba Cloud saw annual growth increase to 38%. AI revenue accounted for less than one-quarter of the Cloud unit’s $6 billion revenue for the quarter, but Wu forecast it will grow by more than 3X to reach 30 billion CNY ($4.4 billion) by the end of the year. On the downside, he expects AI spending to be higher than first forecast.

Tencent makes it easy for investors

In Tencent’s case, less clarification was required since its results were clear on the role of AI, which is mostly for internal processes and consumers.

Pony Ma mentioned the term ‘AI’ no fewer than eight times in his statement that accompanied the earnings press release. That’s not bad for just four sentences. For comparison, Alibaba’s Wu managed just five mentions. ‘AI’ even appeared twice in the Tencent press release headline.

Tencent didn’t miss a chance to seize the AI narrative, and it did so in a way investors can follow. That included breaking out its profit figures excluding new AI products and a number of other disclosures.

It showed controlled spending.

Our core businesses continued to grow their engagement, revenue and profit, providing the cash flow to fund our AI investments, as well as use cases for future AI deployment,” Ma said in that AI-laden statement I referenced earlier. (Emphasis mine.)

It presented category leadership by claiming WorkBuddy, one of its numerous OpenClaw agents, is China’s most popular productivity AI agent based on daily users.

And, crucially, it showed bottom line growth today:

“Revenues from Marketing Services were RMB 38.2 billion [$5.6 billion] for 1Q2026, up 20% YoY, improving from 17% YoY growth in 4Q2025. We upgraded our AI-driven ad recommendation model and expanded closed-loop marketing capabilities within the Weixin ecosystem, which improved ad performance and pricing”

Tencent’s share price initially rose but it closed the US workday flat. Make of that what you will.

In other interesting news you won’t want to miss:

Junyang Lin, the aforementioned former lead researcher of Qwen, is reportedly looking to raise several hundred million dollars for a new AI lab that could be valued at $2 billion post-funding. Gaorong Ventures and HongShan are in talks to invest. [The Information]

Former Peak XV Partners managing directors Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma are said to be launching Mettle Capital, a VC firm targeting a first raise of $350 million-$400 million. [The Economic Times]

Nadiem Makarim faces a jail sentence of up to 18 years as his trial moves closer to a conclusion. [Reuters]

US investor and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan is seeking closer ties with Malaysian politicians for Network School, his unconventional educational community that is based in Forest City [Bloomberg]

SoftBank is posting profits, but it’s mostly down to paper wins from its OpenAI investment [Bloomberg]

Not a huge surprise but still notable that India is the largest market for Meta AI, the chatbot that lives inside WhatsApp—India is, of course, the largest market for WhatsApp worldwide [The Economic Times]

Yesterday we looked at Amazon, today it is Shopee. We have the details on Sea, the e-commerce service’s parent company, its latest earnings, which sent its share price soaring by more than 10%.

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Sea posts monster results as gaming and fintech fund Shopee e-commerce growth

Sea remains Southeast Asia’s top internet company by some margin after it posted impressive growth figures for its Q1 earnings period.

I will avoid throwing out a load of figures, but you can’t ignore the main ones:

• GAAP revenue: $7.1 billion, up 46.6% year-on-year

• Gross profit: $3.1 billion, up 40.7%

• Net income: $438.2 million, up 6.7%

• Adjusted EBITDA: $1.0 billion, up 9.3%

Nearly 50% revenue growth is impressive, but that came at a cost, as we’ll get to. To understand how that’s possible though, it’s important to remember that while Sea is best known for Shopee, it also operates gaming unit Garena and its Monee fintech business.

Shopee accounts for more than 60% of all revenue, and it carries the brand, but growth across the board enabled those stellar e-commerce numbers.

Doubling down on Shopee

Shopee posted strong growth, but it came at a price with cost of revenue rising 55% annually. Sea said that reflected both higher logistics costs as order volumes grew and investment in logistics capabilities.

Competition across Southeast Asia remains cutthroat. Unlocking Shopee’s next phase of growth is initially looking expensive, as gross margin fell from 46.2% to 44.3%. That would ordinarily raise concern, but Sea was able to absorb that pressure because Garena and Monee continued to grow strongly. The company managed to remain profitable overall.

Alibaba continues to fund Lazada, while TikTok Shop is still gaining ground across the region. TikTok is investing significantly in infrastructure, a show of its ambition. Those factors go some way to explaining why Sea is spending more heavily to defend and deepen Shopee’s position.

Garena’s best quarter since 2021

Gaming is how Sea started life, and it operates two big games in the form of Free Fire and Arena of Valor. Garena had its best quarter for almost five years with sales, user growth and more metrics up double-digit percentages.

That is important because these popular games, both of which are around a decade old, give it the free cash to invest more heavily into e-commerce without spooking the market with huge losses. There are even signs that the gaming business has further headroom to grow, with the rate of paying users continuing to increase year-on-year.

Growth in Brazil

Shopee launched in Brazil before Covid as part of a broader expansion plan that didn’t fully play out during the pandemic. But Sea remained committed to the Latin America market, and Brazil was Shopee’s fastest growing market in the quarter. Despite investment in logistics, fulfilment and incentives, the market remained profitable, according to Sea.

Brazil is a key part of the strategy because it offsets the competitive and maturing Southeast Asian market with a different growth story. And it isn’t just about online commerce as Sea’s flywheel starts to kick in.

Brazil became the fourth market where Monee’s loanbook has reached $1 billion, thanks to 250% annual growth. There’s likely more to come after Sea secured an SCFI license to enable more lending and credit services.

Online beauty retailer Konvy lands $22 million for Southeast Asia expansion

There’s always a lot of talk about Thailand as a startup market, chiefly how it lags the rest of Southeast Asia. That makes it particularly notable that Konvy, a Thailand-focused beauty brand and e-commerce startup, raised $22 million.

The round was led by a $15 million cheque from Cool Japan Fund (CFJ), a government-backed fund that essentially expands Japanese soft power and business interest by investing in tech startups, fashion media and more. Singapore’s Insignia Ventures was among the existing backers which also took part.

Konvy was founded in 2011 and it sells healthcare and beauty products through a mix of online and offline channels. Those include 16 physical stores in Thailand, partnerships with big name chains like Watson’s and distribution through e-commerce and social commerce platforms, particularly TikTok.

The company sells in Malaysia and the Philippines, where it has one offline store. Expansion in those two markets will be one strategy funded by this investment as well as increasing the flow of Japanese goods onto its physical and digital shelves. With CFJ’s backing, the goal is to increase the share of Japanese names among its 1,000 brands, which supply some 20,000 products to Konvy.

There’s no word on valuation, but the founders have spoken before of their desire to build a billion-dollar valued business. Konvy definitely sits in an interesting position, covering traditional e-commerce and fast-rising channels like TikTok Shop. And in a category that continues to grow in spite of economic headwinds.

In other interesting news you won’t want to miss:

Unitree, the AI company that provided dancing robots for a TV show in China’s Spring Festival, just introduced real-life transformers [SCMP]

Lightspeed is reportedly scaling back its new India fund from an original target to raise $500 million, down to $300-350 million [The Economic Times]

More than 50,000 Samsung workers could go on strike after talks between the company and its labour union, which were mediated by the government, broke down [Reuters]

Google is doubling down on mosquitos… in Singapore… the US firm is opening its largest adult mosquito production facility and an overseas R&D centre to tackle mosquito-borne diseases using AI and tech [Technode]

India’s PineLabs is expanding its merchant payment services to the Philippines [Entrackr]

Amazon tried to bury its exit from Singapore on Friday. So today, we look at why the US retail giant left Southeast Asia before the party really got going, which gives me an excuse to reminisce on some of my TechCrunch scoops.

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Amazon failed in Southeast Asia because it never even tried

Last Friday I buried the lede when I wrote in our news section that Amazon was laying off 10% of its staff in Singapore. The real story, it turns out, is that the company is ending the local services it has offered in the country since 2019. That effectively means it is exiting Southeast Asia.

Amazon isn’t known for being very communicative externally, be that with journalists or the public. You get a flavour of that from the announcement it made. Rather than explain upfront that it is leaving Singapore, it says it will “expand International Store selection [in Singapore] in response to customer demand. But the key phrase is buried within there:

“As we prioritize our investment in the Amazon International Store products our customers want most, we’ve made the decision to phase out our local fulfillment in Singapore, which includes Amazon Fresh and grocery partners,” it writes. It will continue to offer “everyday essentials” but that’s about it.

The news is not a huge surprise. Amazon moved into Singapore in 2017, viewing the launch as a potential beachhead into other markets in Southeast Asia. I broke news of Amazon’s plans the year before, but it took the US firm some time to firm things up and launch local services and its Prime membership in Singapore.

Ultimately, it did not push on and enter Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand, typical growth markets in the region, or even Singapore-adjacent Malaysia, which would have been more straightforward. Even its market share in Singapore was estimated at just 6%.

Patience required

There was a lot of excitement when Amazon came to the region as it was a validation for an emerging e-commerce market filled with enormous growth potential. Alibaba paid $1 billion to buy Lazada in 2016, with Sea going public a year later just after Amazon Singapore launched. Shopee, Sea’s e-commerce business, saw its annual GMV jump from $1.6 billion in 2017 to $127.4 billion last year.

But Amazon chose not to dive into the market.

There was, and still is, undoubted e-commerce growth potential in Southeast Asia’s e-commerce market, but it’s a path that requires serious investment and patience. Alibaba has funneled billions of dollars into Lazada, and Sea did not achieve annual profit until 2023, and it regularly posts losses since then.

Southeast Asia requires a very different approach to Amazon’s core markets. The company is famous for efficient operations but that’s difficult in markets without Western infrastructure, or archipelagos like Indonesia and its 10,000-plus islands.

Yes, Amazon has taken the long route in India, but you’d expect that of a single market with 1.5 billion people. Southeast Asia’s fragmentation and infrastructure difficulties make it a different challenge to India.

Tough local rivals

Even in Singapore, which operates like a Western city, Amazon didn’t have it all its own way.

Ahead of Amazon Singapore’s launch, Lazada teamed up with Uber and Netflix to offer a bundled membership that looked an awful lot like Amazon Prime, but with a lot more local relevancy and pull.

“When people ask me what the stand-out moments were with Lazada, beating Amazon usually makes the Top 3,” Max Bittner, the former CEO and co-founder of Lazada, wrote on LinkedIn on Friday.

“We got wind that they were to launch in Singapore with a PrimeNow offering in 2017 as a first step for their South-East Asia strategy. To counter them we acquired RedMart, a food delivery business, and entered partnerships with Netflix and Uber, offering a loyalty program called LiveUp,” he recalled.

Amazon was actually in the mix to buy Redmart, as I reported at the time, but it lowballed the competition and Lazada acquired the startup.

Lazada and Shopee certainly made life difficult for Amazon, but ultimately Amazon left Southeast Asia because it didn’t have the stomach for the tough challenge. That’s perhaps the ultimate complement to those local players, which had the foresight and patience to build for a market that was a decade away from being meaningful in size.

Amazon market cap: $2.89 trillion

Sea market cap: $51.98 billion

Alibaba market cap: $336 billion

ByteDance: unlisted — approx $550 billion on private markets

The TikTok era

Today, the e-commerce landscape looks very different. Alongside Lazada and Shopee is another global franchise with a footprint across media, e-commerce, cloud computing and more. Instead of Amazon, it’s TikTok, which competes evenly with its rivals across the region.

We wrote last week that the Chinese firm has committed $25 billion to develop data centres in Thailand to supply its growing business in Southeast Asia. That’s on par with the commitment Amazon made in India ($35 billion by 2030), where it has over a decade of business, tangible numbers and impetus to fight battles.

The level of commitment to Southeast Asia has reached new heights, and it’s not a place Amazon wants to play.

Sea’s Q1 earnings will be published later today so we’ll have more that tomorrow

In other interesting news you won’t want to miss:

Chinese AI firms are raising money like crazy in recent weeks, Recode China AI has a great read to explain what’s happening and why [Recode China AI]

Japan is launching a program to train space industry professionals from developing countries including India, Philippines and Indonesia [Nikkei Asia]

F88, Vietnam largest pawnshop, is preparing for a local IPO [Nikkei Asia]

Shein accused rival Temu of “industrial-scale” copyright infringement in a new trial between the two in London [Reuters]

Social media firm Kuaishou Technology is reportedly preparing to spin off its Kling AI video unit ahead of a planned IPO next year [The Information]