Anthropic is missing out on Asia
Google and OpenAI are all in on the region, but the Claude maker lags going into IPO
Welcome back to Asia Tech Review, your curated digest to keep up to date with tech news across Asia.
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.
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]