Google puts its AI focus on India with major partnership with Reliance Jio
The US firm is giving Jio customers 18-month access to its premium service for free
Welcome back—US AI giants continue to swarm into India, which is one of the world’s top users of AI services, after Google partnered with Reliance to offer 18 months of free access to its AI Pro platform for customers of Jio, the conglomerate’s telecom arm.
Customers who are eligible will get access to Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, Nano, Banana and Veo 3.1 models.
This move comes just weeks after Google extended the availability of its cheaper ($5) AI Pro service to 40 countries, mostly in emerging markets, having debuted the lower-priced offering in Indonesia in September. There’s a longer-standing link here. Google is an investor in Jio, it put $4.5 billion into the Reliance Jio platform back in 2020. Meta is another backer, so it’ll be interesting to see if anything materialises on that front. Jio could offer a selection of AI services to its customers in the future.
It certainly has courted the big names. OpenAI had previously been in talks with Reliance over a potential partnership in India, according to numerous media reports. There’s no sign of that yet, this Google deal may scupper it.
OpenAI did respond to Google’s Reliance tie-up by offering one year of its $5 plan to any users who sign up now. It’s not clear how long the promotional window will remain open, but it is clear that India is a major hunting ground for users, developers and corporations.
Indeed, OpenAI is hiring go-to-market and solutions architects roles in India as it hones in on startups and enterprises in the country.
Rivals Anthropic and Perplexity have also planted flags on Indian soil for the very same reasons. Clearly the country is a beachhead for launching in emerging markets. There it can test lower priced offerings, investigate the benefit carrier tie-ups, figure out how to grow developer communities and more.
We’ll have more on this soon so stay tuned.
Have a great week,
Jon
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Deal spree in Korea propels Nvidia to $5 trillion valuation
Image credit: YONHAP News
Let’s start with the fun part: three billionaires walked into a popular fried chicken restaurant in Seoul, drank beer, ate wings and paid the bills of all other patrons.
Why is that relevant to Asia Tech Review? The three executives involved were Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group executive chair Chung Eui-sun.
The restaurant visit—which was mobbed by photographers, reporters and civilians—was arguably the highlight of Huang’s latest visit to Asia. He was in Seoul for the APEC CEO Summit, but the trip also saw Nvidia announce a string of major partnerships.
In Korea, Nvidia agreed to supply more than 260,000 of its most advanced AI chips to the government and top companies in the country. It announced major commerce tie-ins with Samsung, LG and Hyundai across various areas of its business.
Samsung revealed plans for an AI factory in Hwaseong in partnership with Nvidia as part of this new chip supply deal. The Korean giant will purchase and deploy over 50,000 Nvidia GPUs to embed AI across its semiconductor manufacturing process, accelerating the development and production of chips, mobile devices and robotics.
In addition, Samsung is in “close talks” to supply its next-generation HBM4 chips to Nvidia, as it races to catch up with rivals in the fast-growing AI chip market. Rival SK Hynix is currently Nvidia’s main supplier of HBM chips, with its own HBM4 product set to begin shipping before the end of the year.
Elsewhere, Huang praised President Trump’s administration in a speech and voiced his hope that Nvidia will be able to sell its Blackwell chip in China. Despite saying he would, Trump confirmed that he hadn’t discussed Nvidia and Blackwell’s potential for China with President Xi. But it appears tech wasn’t high on the agenda, despite the two world leaders agreeing to a one-year truce over their trade war.
Still, Nvidia’s week was hugely successful. This flurry of partnerships helped push the company’s market value to $5 trillion, the first-ever business to hit that milestone. Remarkably, Nvidia added nearly $400 billion to its market capitalisation in just five days.
Not only that: the stock prices of Korean fried chicken businesses jumped 30%.
Behold the Nvidia effect.
ByteDance US deal still lacks clarity despite US-China meeting
Big shock here but the ByteDance US deal, which Trump said would close last week, did not close last week. There was a major development, however, after Beijing pledged to work with Washington to resolve the fate of TikTok’s US business. The Chinese government, however, did stop short of saying that it has agreed to the deal which President Trump has been trumpeting for weeks.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that a deal had been approved with China following Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping at the APEC Summit in Malaysia.
However, there was little word of the deal from either side:
But after the meeting, China’s Ministry of Commerce mentioned the social media platform only in passing, stating that the two countries planned “to properly resolve issues” related to TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance, without elaborating further. Mr. Trump did not mention the company at all in his own remarks.
The uncertainty continues.
China
Chinese robotaxis companies Apollo Go from Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai are outnumbering their US counterparts with more projects in various stages of commercialisation link
China is ramping up its military AI push, with defense giant Norinco unveiling an autonomous combat vehicle powered by DeepSeek—Huawei chips are also increasingly a part of the strategy link
China is fast-tracking IPO approvals to spur investment in its tech sector—regulators cleared chip designer startups MetaX and Moore Threads for listing in under three months, a process that typically takes a year and favors profitable firms to protect retail investors link
AI startup MiniMax announced its M2 model, which topped the global leaderboard for open models—M2 ranked among the world’s top five models, surpassing Google DeepMind’s Gemini 2.5 Pro but trailing those from OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI link
Chinese researchers claim to have achieved a key breakthrough in lithography technology in the latest step in the country’s effort to achieve self-sufficiency with advanced chips link
Apple says an Oppo engineer stole Apple Watch trade secrets and shared them in a presentation to hundreds of people link
China completed the first phase of what it calls the world’s first underwater data center in Shanghai—built for $226M, it is fully powered by wind energy link
A look at the culture behind tech startup founders in China compared to Silicon Valley link
China has launched a testing platform for automotive semiconductors in Shenzhen, which is notable given the issues around Nexperia, which serves the automotive industry, following the seizure of control by the Dutch government link
Meanwhile, China said it will allow some Nexperia chips to be shipped out of the country as shortages of the critical products threaten to halt auto production around the world—Wingtech, the owner of Nexperia, also named a new president link
A Chinese-linked hacking group, UNC6384, allegedly targeted Hungarian and Belgian diplomatic entities in September and October link
Ant Group’s international arm is expanding into Latin America with a strategic investment in embedded lending firm R2, which provides credit for small and medium-sized businesses link
Several US federal agencies backed a Commerce Department proposal to ban future sales of TP-Link routers, citing national security concerns over the company’s links to China link
US software analytics firm SAS has exited China after 25 years of business there, laying off around 400 staff in the process—there’s no specific reason other than “optimising” its global footprint link
India
PhonePe, India’s most valuable fintech, raised $600M from General Atlantic at a $14.5B valuation as it prepares for a local listing early next year link
Swiggy’s quarterly revenue jumped 54% year-on-year to about $665M, but its net loss widened to roughly $131M from $75M a year earlier link
Meanwhile Swiggy is reportedly considering raising up to $1.5B to grow its quick commerce business and generally strengthen its balance sheet link
Fractal Analytics, which provides AI services to big firms, is said to be preparing to go public in India before the end of the year—the goal is to raise $555M with a target valuation of $3B link
Blume Ventures announced the first close of $175M for its fifth fund, with a final target of at least $250M link
Accel and Prosus launched a joint initiative to back Indian startups from day zero—the collaboration expands Accel’s Atoms X founder program, with Prosus matching Accel’s investments from $200,000 to $2M link
The funding flywheel is spinning at speed, with the following deals announced last week:
On-demand home-help startup Snabbit closed a $30M Series C at a $180M valuation link
Fintech credit startup SalarySe, which offers advance salaries and credit cards to white-collar employees, raised $11.3M link
Jupiter Money, which provides credit cards, personal loans, and wealth management services, raised $15M in a round that came with a flat valuation link
IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity bus platform, raised $30 million at a $140M post-money valuation link
Snapmint raised $125 million for its fintech business which gives shoppers credit and instalment solutions for purchases—General Atlantic led the round, which takes the 8-year-old startup to $140M raised link
An Indian court has sided with an XRP holder against WazirX and granted the user “interim protection” by preventing the crypto exchange from reallocating the user’s XRP assets link
Kabeer Biswas, co-founder and former chief executive officer of Dunzo, controversially joined Flipkart in January to scale its quick commerce business but now he is reportedly in talks to take up a similar role at rival BigBasket link
Electronic exports are set to overtake petroleum thanks to the boom in Apple’s iPhone production in India link
Tata Motors confirmed that it fixed security flaws which exposed company and customer data link
Southeast Asia
A new unicorn may be coming to town: Tencent is reportedly investing in Genspark, a Singapore/US-based startup building AI agent systems, through a deal that gives the startup a $1B valuation link
Ad giant Publicis is buying Singapore-based Hepmil Media Group, which works with brands, creators and operates meme networks, for an undisclosed price that’s said to be one of the region’s most significant internet deals this year link
WSJ looks at how Indonesia and other developing nations are emerging as new AI hubs thanks to low costs and the need for data sovereignty link
More than 1,500 people are said to have fled Myanmar for Thailand after the military shut down a major online scam centre located near border trading town Myawaddy in mid-October link
In related news: Singapore seized more than S$150 million ($115 million) in assets tied to alleged money laundering and forgery involving Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi and his Prince Group, which were indicted by the US government last month link
GoTo is making progress after it posted a slim adjusted pre-tax profit (of $3.74M) for the first time and raised its guidance for the full year—there’s still some way to go for actual profitability, as Grab has achieved link
In a win for the region’s manufacturing: Garmin plans to build its first production base in Southeast Asia with a factory in Thailand that will manufacture smartwatches and GPS navigational devices link
South Korea
SK Hynix, world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, posted a record $7.9B profit thanks to the ongoing AI chip boom—it recently signed deals to provide memory chips to OpenAI and Broadcom link
The Trump administration signed a deal with South Korea to bolster cooperation in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 6G link
Amazon is committing an additional $5B to build data centers in South Korea by 2031—it follows a $4B deal between AWS and SK Group in June link
Samsung is also seeing profits soar thanks to strong demand for AI—its semiconductor arm reported a bigger-than-expected 80% surge in profit link
Japan
Japan now has its first yen-denominated stablecoin following a launch from fintech company JPYC link
Bitcoin mining maker Canaan signed a deal to supply rigs to a major Japanese utility for a grid-stability research project, the partner wasn’t named but the deal marks Japan’s first publicly known state-linked mining effort link
Hong Kong
Chinese EV car maker Seres raised $1.8B after it completed a secondary listing in Hong Kong at the upper end of its price target link
Uber plans to invest in the Hong Kong listings of Chinese robotaxi firms Pony AI and WeRide—Grab and Temasek may also join link
Ant Group is looking to trademark the term ‘Antcoin’ in Hong Kong in what could be a hint at a future cryptocurrency coin, even though Beijing recently forbade Ant and others from introducing stablecoins in Hong Kong link
Pollon Life, a stem cell drug maker that includes Jack Ma among its backers, has reportedly filed for a Hong Kong IPO link
Taiwan
Foxconn plans to deploy humanoid robots at its AI server plant in Houston which serves Nvidia link
SK Hynix's record profits really highlight how critical memory has become in the AI stack. Their deals with OpenAI and Broadcom for HBM chips show where the real bottleneck is shifting as models scale up. It's interesting that memory suppliers are now posting better margins than most chip designers. The race between SK Hynix and Samsung for HBM4 suply could determine which hyperscalers win the next generation of AI infrastructure deployment.