Grab launches new AI services to again push its creds as a tech company
The Singapore firm launched 13 new services, China suffered a huge cyber theft and a reminder forecasts aren’t facts
Good morning from Seoul, where I am for this week, but let us first focus on Southeast Asia where Grab continued its push to be seen as a tech company with the launch of more than a dozen new services and features.
The big theme was Grab turning its app into an “everyday guide” using AI to reduce manual tasks for consumers, drivers, and merchants.
The new features, 13 in total, are all ‘AI-powered’ and they range from group rides and consumer maps to personalised travel recommendations, a virtual store manager and AI assistant for drivers.
The features themselves may not all be hugely compelling but Grab pushed hard on its tech credentials. Not only do they cater to its range of users, consumers, drivers and business owners, but visually they were announced at GrabX, the company’s own tech event held in Jakarta, the heart of the key Indonesian market.
Grab has always made Indonesia a key focus, given the market used to be owned almost entirely by key rival Gojek. I happened to be in Jakarta last week, not for the show I might add, and I saw a fairly equal distribution of drivers wearing both uniforms on the city’s busy roads.
While Grab has driven its business to a decent financial destination, with annual profitability banked for the first time and plenty of cash for investments, it hasn’t convinced the market of its tech edge. When it went public in 2021, that edge was going to be fintech in the form of lending of payments.
Now it is pushing hard on AI, which has been investor catnip, and its Indonesia claim. But last week’s announcements are more of a nudge than an iPhone launch-level news event. I’m more interested in what deals Grab does as it continues its M&A spree.
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Chinese defence information stolen in massive data centre hack
An alarming report suggests a hacker breached a major state-linked data centre in China and made off with a trove of sensitive defence data in what may be one of the country’s largest cyber attacks ever.
The alleged attack on the National Supercomputing Centre in Tianjin, which handles data for over 6,000 clients, is said to have exposed more than 10 petabytes, that’s the equivalent to roughly 2 billion photographs or over one million hours of HD video. The attacker is said to be actively selling the information online, and it reportedly includes missile schematics, weapons testing, aerospace simulations and other technical files.
The attacker reportedly claimed they got in through a compromised VPN domain. Once inside, they allegedly used a botnet to pull data out.
Data has become a national commodity in today’s world, and that’s only going to increase given the dramatic rise in new data centres as usage of AI jumps. To state the obvious: Storing data securely will be essential for governments if they are to tap into the benefits of AI across their economies. Few are diving into AI more than China.
Quick commerce drives India’s e-commerce growth: Google and Deloitte
A report from Google and Deloitte claims India’s digital commerce market is projected to grow to $250 billion by 2030 from $90 billion right now.
The key forecasts also include:
The growth is being driven by quick commerce, Gen Z and AI-led shopping
The report says 220 million Gen Z consumers will account for 45% of online spend
It also expects 150 million new shoppers to enter the digital economy
Quick commerce is a major focus as you’d expect::
Quick commerce is expected to grow 6x to $50 billion by 2030, from $7-8 billion in 2025
The number of quick commerce shoppers is forecast to rise from 32-34 million in 2025 to 65-70 million by 2030
Growth is coming from tier-2 cities and non-food categories, with non-food already makes up about 45% of total spend
In related news, Amazon is putting more focus on its 10-minute Now service which will expand to as many as 15 cities by the middle of this year, according to a report. In response, it is winding down its Fresh service in 10-15 cities. Meanwhile, Flipkart and Amazon are said to be ramping up dark stores and discounting in an effort to squeeze the rising (and much younger) quick commerce players.
Reports are all well and good, but these are forecasts and there’s often little accountability on the numbers which are often cited widely as if they’re factual. But they aren’t and my former colleague Manish Singh has a great analysis of how such reports often fall short in accuracy—Bain being a notable example, including being wrong on overall e-commerce predictions by a factor of nearly 50%.
A good reminder that future-gazing is mostly errors.
China
China has tightened drone rules with the introduction of real-name registration, urban flight permits and real-time data sharing with authorities link
Bitchat, decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app developed by Jack Dorsey, was removed from Apple’s China App Store for allegedly breaching internet service rules link
Chinese micro-drama producers are adapting the hit domestic format for mobile-first audiences in the US link
OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have started coordinating to stop Chinese rivals distilling outputs from their most advanced AI models—Anthropic spoke out in March about competitors in China plagiarising its tech link
TikTok plans to invest €1B ($1.16B) in a second Finnish data centre as it moves European user data storage to the continent—its first centre is the country is due to come online later this year link
Zhipu raised prices for its top AI model by at least 8% as it pushes to monetise its heavy investment in AI like others link
Alibaba had a busy week:
It created a top-level technology committee led by CEO Eddie Wu to sharpen its AI push and monetisation plans link
Meanwhile: Alibaba Cloud CTO Jingren Zhou will step down to focus on AI models as chief AI architect link
Alibaba Cloud accounted for more than half of global open-source AI model downloads by March, with nearly 1B cumulative downloads link
On the infrastructure side: Alibaba and Huawei are deploying massive computing clusters as China steps up its push for home-grown AI infrastructure link
And the e-commerce firm and China Telecom are launching a southern China data centre using 10,000 Zhenwu chips to train and run large AI models link
Finally, Alibaba quietly released its HappyHorse-1.0 AI video model, which topped benchmark leaderboards and stirred buzz online taking some attention from ByteDance’s Seedance product link
It is also involved in AI video startup ShengShu Technology, which raised $293M in a round led by Alibaba Cloud link
Unitree will reportedly begin to sell its cheapest humanoid robot internationally via AliExpress this week—the R1 is tipped to retail for 29,900 CNY or around $4,400 link
DeepSeek disclosed it operates a data centre at a location in Inner Mongolia which suggests it may be running clusters of restricted Nvidia Blackwell chips link
China is drawing AI talent back from Silicon Valley with higher pay, stronger career prospects and a tougher climate in the US link
Super Micro launched an independent probe weeks after three people linked to the company were indicted on US export-control charges link
Sharetronic Data Technology fell 20% after the US charges against Super Micro’s co-founder heightened scrutiny of its links to banned Nvidia chip servers link
India
Digital lender KreditBee is India’s newest unicorn after it raised $280M at a $1.5B valuation link
India is replacing China-made highway toll cameras with US, German and Taiwanese systems on security grounds link
Y Combinator hired Harshita Arora, a recipient of India’s Bal Shakti Puraskar academic award and formerly a YC batch startup founder, as its youngest general partner ever—however she will be based in California link
Wipro agreed to buy Olam Group’s IT services arm for $375M to expand its enterprise tech and cybersecurity business link
Manav Robotics, which focuses on industrial customer needs and is founded by former Ola employees, is said to be in talks to raise $15M to $20M from Blume and Qualcomm Ventures link
SatLeo Labs raised $2.2M from Unicorn India Ventures to build a multi-spectral Earth observation satellite constellation link
Nava raised $22M to build a full-stack AI cloud infrastructure platform across Asia-Pacific link
Slice, the small finance bank, is in talks to raise $50M to $100M at a valuation below $1B, which would represent a drop from its previous $1.3B valuation link
Atlas raised $6M from Accel and Stellaris to expand its AI-native accounting platform in North America link
Southeast Asia
OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital invested into local crypto entity CAEX to enable it to participate in Vietnam’s pilot program for regulated crypto asset trading—the country is allowing only domestic players to offer trading services, CAEX has now raised the minimum investment sum of $380M from its backers, which also include VPBank and tech company LynkiD link
Bain Capital’s Bridge Data Centres removed cloud provider Megaspeed’s tech from its Malaysian facility after US authorities investigated the company over alleged ties to Nvidia chip smuggling to China link
ESR, which focuses on real estate, secured $850M in additional capital to expand its logistics and data centre business link
Digital Realty, a real estate firm focused on data centres, is planning to invest around $5.5B in Singapore, including more than $3.35B for new data centres link
Samsung plans to invest $4B in a chip packaging plant in northern Vietnam, starting with a $2B outlay link
Hot on the heels of Grab’s first autonomous rides, Pony AI partnered with ComfortDelGro to launch by-invite autonomous rides in Singapore ahead of a planned public rollout link
Vietnamese fintech MoMo, which claims 30M users, is reportedly weighing options including new investors at a valuation above $2B—it last raised funds 5 years ago and u-turned on previous IPO plans link
The Philippines has asked Meta to curb false and panic-inducing content and warned of legal action if it fails to act link
Taiwan
Taiwan’s security agency said China is targeting the island’s chip technology and talent to break through international curbs link
TSMC reported first-quarter revenue of $35.6B, up 35%, suggesting AI chip demand held up despite the Middle East war link
Japan
Arm CEO Rene Haas is set to take a wider role across SoftBank’s international operations, overseeing semiconductors and AI link
Japan approved a bill to reclassify cryptocurrencies as financial products, moving towards tighter oversight link
Japan approved an extra $4B in subsidies for Rapidus to speed up its advanced AI chip push link
South Korea
Fintech startup Toss is reportedly considering launching its own blockchain network and token, including a possible Layer 1 mainnet and Layer 2 network link
Samsung forecast first-quarter operating profit of $37.9B, beating estimates as AI chip demand drove an eightfold jump from a year earlier link
South Korea posted a record $23.2B current account surplus in February as chip exports surged link
Kia plans to deploy humanoid robots in US factories from 2029 and roll out a hybrid truck and its first software-defined vehicle link
North Korea
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said a North Korea-linked IT worker network was generating about $1M a month through crypto payments and fraudulent employment schemes link
Drift, which runs a decentralised exchange focused on perpetual futures trading, claimed North Korea-linked hackers were responsible for an exploit that stole $280M following a months-long campaign that include social engineering and others activities link
North Korea-linked hackers briefly hijacked the open-source project Axios after cultivating trust with top developers for weeks link
Hong Kong
Hong Kong granted its first stablecoin issuer licences to HSBC and a Standard Chartered-led joint venture link
AI smart glasses maker Rokid is reportedly preparing for a Hong Kong IPO as early as late April link
Manycore Tech launched its Hong Kong IPO aiming to raise about $130M link
Rest of Asia
Bhutan became known for Bitcoin mining but now it has sold off most of its holdings and reportedly stopped the mining operations altogether link
Kazakhstan’s financial watchdog is pushing insurers and select companies to move client communications to local messaging app Aitu link
Australia’s Firmus Technologies raised $505M at a $5.5B valuation to expand Nvidia-powered AI infrastructure across Asia-Pacific link