Anthropic is the latest AI giant to focus on India
As US giants pour in, India is boosting its homegrown champions to take on the competition
Welcome back—Monday was a public holiday in Thailand, where I live, so this week’s newsletter comes today. India is gearing up to defend its digital sovereignty just as another richly-backed US AI company rolls into town on a charm offensive. That’s top billing on the irony charts this week.
Let’s start with California-headquartered Anthropic, which is following its rivals by placing its focus on India for growth. Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei visited the country as the company plans to set up an office in Bengaluru and explore a partnership with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries.
India is the second-largest market for Claude, Anthropic’s ChatGPT rival, behind only the US and notably the company said the service is used for a higher proportion of technical functions, such as developing software or debugging code, than most markets.
To hone in on its Indian audience, Claude will get a multilingual upgrade to add support for Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu. The company will also enhance its capabilities with Hindi to enable greater usage and adoption among government and enterprise users.
There’s no word on lower priced services. That’s the route OpenAI took in India with its $5 subscription option. Smaller player Perplexity partnered with Bharti Airtel, the country’s second-largest mobile operator, to offer its $200-per-year subscription to customers for free.
Notably, Anthropic is following the playbook for big tech India launches after Amodei met Indian Prime Minister Modi as part of his visit. With every AI company under the sun looking to grow in India, that’s just the standard and it doesn’t guarantee success or adoption among the government. It does mean there will be plenty of public policy roles opening up for those looking to jump into the AI industry across India and other parts of Asia.
Elsewhere, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has launched a pilot that allows consumers to shop and pay for goods directly through AI chatbots led by OpenAI’s ChatGPT service.
Maps next on the list for India’s local tech champion push
Now for the irony, following the surge in interest around Arattai, the Zoho-owned messaging app staking its claim as an alternative to WhatsApp, another home-grown tech company has thrown its hat into the ring: MapmyIndia.
The 30-year-old company has seen downloads of its Mappls navigation app, which rivals Google Maps and Apple Maps, jump by 10X during October. That spike came after IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw publicly endorsed the product as an example of a local tech champion.
Vaishnaw began using Zoho software last month as part of an effort to use local products that enshrine India’s digital sovereignty—the idea being to keep data locally and back domestic companies. He backed MapmyIndia and Mappls in a similar vein.
In response, MapmyIndia co-founder Rakesh Verma has urged the government to mandate the pre-installation of Mappls on all smartphones made in India using the PLI Scheme, which provides incentives for local manufacturing and production businesses.
Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu, meanwhile, has echoed the government by stressing that India needs local tech champions to guard its national data sovereignty. On its side, Zoho said it is fast-tracking end-to-end encryption for Arattai. That’s one of the most-requested features and shipping it would help Zoho establish the product as a worthy competitor to WhatsApp, rather than one that’s simply being championed for the sake of being Indian.
That looks like a tougher sell for Mappls. It doesn’t have the same sophistication as Google Maps, which also boasts a treasure trove of data from users and businesses which is difficult to replicate. It does, though, boast local data that Google Maps doesn’t, including traffic light timings in some cities.
The horse may have already bolted when it comes to consumer apps, but AI is another area of focus for digital sovereignty. India’s own AI model is being prepared to launch before February when the government hosts its AI Impact Summit, according to a top IT ministry official.
That effort has scaled to reach 38,000 GPUs with the first foundational model expected to arrive before the end of this year. India is also developing a governance framework to promote control and transparency, inspired by the EU AI Act and China’s AI rules.
Dutch government seizes China-own chipmaker in fear of tech transfer to Beijing
The Dutch government seized control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned chipmaker based in the Netherlands, to secure supplies for Europe’s automotive and electronics industries.
The rare move represents the first use of the Dutch Goods Availability Act, an emergency law from the Cold War era which cites threats to vital technological knowledge and capabilities. Officially, it was invoked due to “recent and acute signals of serious governance shortcomings” at Nexperia, which the government believed could translate to the possible transfer of crucial technology to China.
Nexperia’s parent company, China’s Wingtech, is a partially state-owned company that designs and builds hardware including smartphones, laptops and automotive terminals. Wingtech bought Nexperia for $3.6 billion in 2018 but it sits on Washington’s entity list, which restricts US companies from working with it.
The Dutch government hasn’t taken ownership of Nexperia but it has effectively frozen the business. Its powers will allow it to block or reverse decisions previously taken by the company, which could include the recent sale of assembly line assets to Luxshare, a high-profile manufacturer that works with Apple among others.
More immediately, we can expect escalated trade tensions with Beijing, which may try to target Europe’s tech industry in response. We may also see discounts factored into future deals based on the risk of this episode playing out again.
India
Apple exported a record $10B worth of iPhones from India in the first half of 2025, up 75% year-on-year link
Raise Financial, parent of trading app Dhan, raised $120M led by Hornbill Capital at a $1.2B valuation link
TechCrunch profiled Dhravya Shaha, a 19-year-old Indian tech founder who is developing a memory solution for AI apps that gained the backing of Google among others link
India plans to double down on developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) while it has reaffirmed its stance against crypto, according to a report link
Indian tax authorities are probing at least 400 wealthy Binance users in a tax evasion probe link
The tax authority patched a security flaw in its e-filing portal that exposed taxpayers’ personal and financial data link
Digital payment volumes rose 35% in 2025, reportedly driven by increased UPI and credit card usage among women and Gen Z consumers link
Rapid growth and digitalisation are straining India’s power grid, even as the country targets 500 gigawatts of non-fossil capacity by 2030 link
Google is bringing its AI-powered conversational search feature, Search Live, to India with an initial launch in English and Hindi—it is also expanding its AI Mode feature to seven new Indian languages link
Revolut is launching its payment platform in India, partnering with Visa and UPI—it has already racked up 350,000 waitlisted customers with the goal of helping cheapen cross-border payments link
SoftBank-owned British chip designer Graphcore plans to announce a $1.3B investment in India, including a new research hub in Bengaluru and up to 500 hires over five years link
Google plans to invest $10B to build a 1 GW data center cluster in Visakhapatnam, its first such project in India link
Tata Consultancy Services made its steepest-ever job cuts, losing nearly 20,000 employees in a quarter, as strained ties with the US and a rapid shift toward artificial intelligence reshape the country’s IT services sector link
Prosus will acquire a 10.1% stake in Indian travel platform Ixigo for $146M, a 10% discount on its share price link
China
International investors are cautiously returning to China’s startup scene, with several top VC funds close to raising $1.1B in total this year including Source Code Capital, BA Capital, Lightspeed China and Qiming link
UK police say they’ve dismantled an international gang accused of smuggling up to 40,000 stolen phones from the UK to China over the past year link
Foreign suppliers of silicon wafers are being squeezed in China, where local manufacturers have slashed prices to nearly half those of Japanese rivals and are winning support from domestic chipmakers and government agencies pushing for homegrown materials link
China introduced strict new export controls on rare earths and related tech, aiming to safeguard its global dominance in critical minerals link
US semiconductor investment is set to outpace that of major chip economies China, Taiwan and South Korea from 2027 amid a boom in AI demand and Washington’s push to localize production, a SEMI forecast showed link
China opened an antitrust probe into US chipmaker Qualcomm for failing to disclose its acquisition of Autotalks in June, it also imposed new fees on US-owned ships at its ports link
China is also tightening enforcement of chip import controls, pushing local tech firms to move away from US products like Nvidia’s AI processors link
The Trump administration is weighing a move to label route-maker TP-Link as a national security threat. An initial determination link
XPeng has evolved from a Tesla clone to a serious contender over 12 years thanks to sharp strategy and standout products—its share price has more than doubled and XPeng could soon rank as the world’s 6th top EV maker link
China’s censors are now targeting pessimism itself, with bans for influencers whose weary posts resonate amid public gloom link
Alibaba has formed an in-house robotics team under its Qwen AI unit to develop AI-powered physical machines link
China added Canadian teardown firm TechInsights to its Unreliable Entity list, barring it from doing business in the country—the firm is well known for dissecting Huawei’s AI chips and revealing hidden suppliers and foreign components link
China’s AI toy market is poised to boom to $14B by 2030, with over 1,500 companies in the space including BubblePal, which sells a $149 device that clips onto any plush toy to make it “talk” using LLM models from DeepSeek link
Shein is tightening compliance measures following multiple fines for data privacy violations, misleading discounts and greenwashing, that’s according to a letter sent to investors link
Shein has chosen Paris for its first boutique, but France isn’t pleased and it is pushing back link
Southeast Asia
Singapore-based equity management platform Qapita raised $26.5M link
US officials are investigating Singapore-based Megaspeed and its executive Alice Huang over suspicions it helps Chinese tech companies evade export controls on Nvidia’s AI chips link
Supabase, which is Singapore-based, raised a $100M Series E at a $5B valuation led by Accel and Peak XV—the deal comes just 4 months after its $200M Series D at $2B link
China-backed InfinitUs Marketing Solutions ran a cyber campaign in the Philippines to undermine government policies and stir discord over its US security alliance, according to documents, fake Facebook accounts and interviews with former employees and officials link
Thailand plans to streamline stock-listing rules to boost capital market competitiveness and attract global investors link
TikTok handed extensive data on Indonesian users to the government to avoid a license suspension in its largest Southeast Asian market, where it has 100M users link
OpenAI is making its sub-$5 ChatGPT Go plan available in 16 Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam link
South Korea
KakaoTalk reversed a planned overhaul of its messaging app to introduce more Instagram-like features to stimulate advertising revenue link
Samsung Electronics shares surged towards an all-time high thanks to optimism over its AI chip potential and a rebound in its memory business link
Japan
SoftBank consolidated its robot investments, including SoftBank Robotics and logistics automation company Berkshire Grey, into a dedicated holding company owned by SoftBank (58.7%) and its Vision Fund (41.3%) link
In addition: SoftBank agreed to buy ABB’s robotics arm in a deal valuing the business at $5.4B link
Meanwhile, PayPay acquired a 40% stake in Binance Japan with the goal of integrating fintech and crypto services link
SoftBank is in talks to borrow $5B from global banks backed by Arm stock to fund additional investment in OpenAI this year link
Alt, the AI startup that went public last October at a $130M valuation, has been delisted after less than a year due to an accounting scandal link
Rest of Asia
Taiwan has seen no significant impact on its chip sector from China’s curbs on rare earth materials link
Heidi, an AI startup that automates administrative work for doctors, raised $65M to expand into Singapore and Hong Kong and strengthen its teams in the US, UK and Canada link