Welcome back to Asia Tech Review, your curated digest to keep up to date with tech news across Asia.
Google is in hot water in Indonesia where it has been caught up in the scandal that led a court to sentence Gojek founder Nadiem Makarim to prison. In a new twist, the Android-maker has been ordered to return the money it made from a laptops-for-schools programme, despite weak evidence behind Makarim’s conviction.
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Indonesia’s court puts Google into Chromebook corruption case
Google has been thrown into the controversial corruption case against Gojek founder Nadiem Makarim after a court ruled that the US tech giant is liable to pay back $44 million.
This week, Jakarta High Court judges cut the 10 year prison sentence given to Makarim by one year and reduced the restitution order against him from about Rp809 billion to Rp548.8 billion.
That slim reduction got most of the attention, but they also ruled that suppliers that took part in the Chromebook procurement programme at the centre of the case are liable to pay back the total amount lost by the state. The court put that amount at Rp1.568 trillion, or roughly $94 million, with Google on the hook for half of it. Makarim is deemed responsible for one-third with the remainder coming from Chromebook suppliers, principals and distributors.
The ruling doesn’t mean Google is guilty of a crime, but the court urged prosecutors to investigate the company and others that were part of the programme, which ran from 2020-2022 and distributed Google’s Chromebook devices to schools across the country.
We wrote about the case in detail when Makarim was sentenced in July. Makarim wasn’t sentenced for kickbacks, bribery or illicit payments, despite accusations, and claims that a WhatsApp group chat showed intent of criminal conspiracy before he came into office were rejected by the court.
Instead, the ruling centred around the then-minister committing “an abuse of authority” by giving the project to Google, which had invested in his startup Gojek. That was seen as a conflict of interest, even though the judges said there was no evidence that he controlled Gojek during his time in government. That’s without stating the obvious that Google’s growth wouldn’t have a material impact on its ownership stake in Gojek.
But this new twist has taken things further and brought Google directly into the chaos. The company is no longer in the background, it has been named a beneficiary. It’s not clear if prosecutors are looking into the matter more closely, but you can’t ignore that a court has called for greater scrutiny of its role.
Google appeared reluctant to get directly involved in the case. It provided a statement denying that it offered “benefits to education ministry officials in exchange for their decision to adopt Google products,” and multiple Google executives testified in Makarim’s defence, but its response felt measured despite the severity of the claims and unconvincing evidence at sentencing. At the time of publication, Google had not replied to a request for comment from ATR.
Indonesia is not a core global market, but Google has built a strong commercial presence across Android, search, cloud and investments in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. How will it respond now?
The signaling couldn’t be worse for foreign companies looking to do business in Indonesia when even Google, a new economy company that pioneers technology, is caught up in mudslinging and corruption allegations.
For Indonesia, the episode adds another uncomfortable layer to the Makarim story. A founder who became the country’s startup poster boy, then a cabinet minister, is now serving a corruption sentence. The appeal court’s decision means the case may no longer be contained to him.
Fintech in the future of vibecoded banks
Today, you can build a bank in less than three months so how do fintech founders build a moat? And why is Southeast Asia emerging as a gaming hub, but the Japanese market alone still generates more than 10X the revenue.
Fintech and gaming were on the agenda yesterday as Jon Low, co-founder of Elephants Inc, and Dr Serkan Toto, who runs Kantan Games, joined Wing and me on The Offline Network Southeast Asia.
Catch highlights on our LinkedIn page, X account and YouTube channel.
Freed from Meta, Manus launched AI agents, video editor and game development products
Less than a month after it went independent of Meta by unwinding its $2 billion-plus acquisition, Manus announced a major new product when it introduced AI agents.
The company rose to prominence with an AI product that could handle complicated data requests and develop documents like slideshows, which saw it rocket past $100 million ARR within just eight months of launch. It also caught the attention of Meta. Now, though, Manus is competing directly with its former owner; Manus’ Cue bot competes directly with Meta’s Muse.
Cue is the splashy launch, but Manus also launched a video editor, game development product, and a number of AI agentic tools including a virtual machine for storage, harness for agents and more.
I’ve not had a chance to try them out, but the new products are in keeping with the current trends in consumer AI products, and it’ll be interesting to find out how the Meta experience helped shape their development. Both in terms of what the team learned from being inside the US tech giant, and from seeing its product pipeline.
Deals
Antom, the merchant payments unit from Ant Group, deepened its strategic investment in Indonesian payment fintech DOKU, which has now rebranded as “DOKU by Antom” and will collaborate more closely with Antom and its payment gateway 2C2P [PRNewswire]
Peak XV Partners raised its maximum Surge seed investment to $5 million per startup from $3 million, committing more than $50 million to its latest (and 12th) cohort of 18 startups, which collectively raised more than $90 million in seed funding [TechCrunch]
Samsung Electronics and five other Samsung Group companies have agreed to invest a combined $1 billion in US data centre operator Helix Digital Infrastructure, which is backed by KKR [Bloomberg]
India’s Kiwi is reportedly seeking $30-40 million to accelerate customer acquisition for its bank-issued RuPay credit cards and UPI credit lines—it raised $24 million from investors including Vertex Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners and Stellaris Venture Partners last year [Economic Times]
Japan plans to establish an independent agency as early as next fiscal year to invest in defense startups, support dual-use technology and promote exports. Run by the Defense Ministry and METI, the agency will invest directly in startups and private-sector funds, with legislation to establish it expected to be submitted to parliament next year. [Nikkei Asia]
Markets
Zhuhai Amicro Technology, a chip-maker backed by Xiaomi, is said to be preparing to begin premarketing for a Hong Kong IPO of more than $100 million as early as this week [SCMP]
Earnings
Shein reported second-quarter sales of $11.08 billion, up 0.9% year on year, as Europe revenue fell 13.9% to $3.77 billion and US revenue declined 6% to $2.5 billion, there was growth in Latin America but still the share price fell by 14% to reach a record low so far [Reuters]
AI and Chips
China’s industry ministry reportedly told some companies, including Alibaba and ByteDance, that it intends to approve purchases of Nvidia’s new RTX Pro 5500 chips [The Information]
VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing, a joint venture between TSMC affiliate Vanguard International Semiconductor and NXP Semiconductors, is considering a second chipmaking plant in Singapore to meet rising demand [Bloomberg]
NTT and SoftBank are separately expanding cybersecurity systems that process AI data entirely within Japan, allowing companies to identify software vulnerabilities without sending sensitive data to US-based systems [Nikkei Asia]
Kuaishou’s AI spinoff unveiled Kling 4.0, its latest video-generation model which generates clips up to 30 seconds long and accepts more than a dozen text, image and video references—a full release is planned for October, while Kling is said to be planning a Hong Kong IPO [Bloomberg]
China has built more than 24GW of data centre capacity across over 1,000 facilities, with AI demand driving a shift toward large-scale hyperscaler infrastructure [SemiAnalysis]
Japanese semiconductor materials maker Resonac Holdings has developed a 300mm silicon carbide substrate that can produce four times as many chips as the 150mm substrates widely used today [Nikkei Asia]
Philippine infrastructure company YCO Cloud and Singapore-based AI cloud provider Aolani plan to deploy more than 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs in the Philippines [Aolani]
Australian data centre operator Firmus has signed agreements with Meta to provide GPU computing capacity at its facilities in Southeast Asia [Reuters]
Broadcom and Japan’s Toppan Holdings have opened Singapore’s first advanced chip substrate plant, months ahead of schedule, as the city-state expands its role in the AI supply chain [Nikkei Asia]
Samsung Electro-Mechanics will invest about $5 billion to expand chip package substrate capacity in South Korea and Vietnam amid rising AI demand [The Korea Herald]
Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT plans to invest 34.9 billion yuan ($5.2 billion) in expansion, with 22.4 billion yuan, or 93% of its R&D budget, going toward equipment purchases [SCMP]
China is building its own Hugging Face services with Alibaba’s ModelScope and OSChina’s MoArk emerging as domestic alternatives [Rest of World]
India is preparing to deploy $25 billion to support deep-tech startups as it seeks to reduce reliance on foreign technology [CNBC]
Policy
China has extended overseas travel restrictions for senior AI and chip executives at private companies to their spouses and children, requiring government approval for some foreign trips [Bloomberg]
The Indian government told the Supreme Court it will amend IT rules to prevent social media platforms from allowing users under 18 to create accounts [Times of India]
In other news:
A quiet start but Apple Pay is now available in India starting with Axis Bank cards [MacRumors]
Remember Luckin Coffee? It’s on the comeback trail and is now said to be considering expansion into Persian Gulf markets after Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala became a direct investor [CNBC]
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