Grab reports profit, growth despite Southeast Asia fuel crisis
Ride-hailing firm also plays down Indonesia’s move to cut commission rate
Welcome back after a restful May Day bank holiday weekend—last week we wrote about China wanting to unwind Meta-Manus, GoTo posting its first profit, eFishery’s CEO getting a 9-year jail term and we spoke to Aspire’s CEO on its growth story and US fintech battle.
Now to Grab, which announced an operating profit of $22 million for Q1 as revenue increased 24% year-on-year to $955 million.
The ride-hailing firm recorded $120 million in profit for the period, which you might read in a lot of headlines, but that figure was heavily boosted by non-cash items that related to Grab’s convertible loan so it’s a less telling indicator of progress. That was simultaneously boosted by a quote from CEO Anthony Tan in a press release, and then acknowledged by CFO Peter Oey in prepared comments that support the earnings report.
But generally Grab posted decent growth, considering the potential impact that the fuel crisis could have over its business in Southeast Asia:
Its on-demand business grew 24% despite being a ‘soft period’ (as we saw with GoTo’s mobility slump last week) while financial services revenue increased 43%. Grab remains heavily reliant on the former, which provided 88% of revenue, but its financial services segment is growing with its lending business more than doubling annually.
That’s one to watch as it is unclear how strong these loanbooks can be. Likewise, Grab is doling out increasing amounts of incentives, particularly to drivers which increased at a rate of more than 50% year-on-year. That’s to combat fuel prices, among other things, and it is one to keep on the radar.
The Indonesian government announced last week that it plans to reduce commissions ride-hailing firms take from drivers from around 20% to just 8%. Indonesia’s driver population is huge, at an estimated 4 million. Grab’s share price dipped 6% in response, but the company played down concerns. It claimed the focus is on bike rides only, and that these account for just 6% of the GMV from its mobility division.
“We view regulatory clarity as a long-term net positive for the industry,” it added with diplomacy.
GoTo got itself profitable with a little help from TikTok, as we noted last week, but Grab’s profitability appears a lot more established thanks to the scale and differentiation it has built across markets in Southeast Asia.
China’s tech self-sufficiency drives profits, growth and potential
China’s pioneering chip companies had plenty to shout about with their earnings reports:
Moore Threads posted a 29.4 million CNY ($4.3 million) first-quarter profit as revenue jumped 155% year-on-year
Cambricon saw revenue increase 160% to 2.89 billion CNY ($423 million) with a net profit of 1 billion CNY ($146 million)
MetaX, a five-year-old company that went public in Shanghai in December, had revenue of 561.9 million CNY ($82 million) which was up 75% year over year
That’s impressive growth, even for the most junior member, MetaX, which also remains unprofitable. The progress of Cambricon really sums up China’s push for technology self-sufficiency, as Tom’s Hardware explains:
As recently as early 2024, Cambricon was still loss-making and had just lost Huawei as a major customer. Its full-year 2025 revenue reached 6.5 billion yuan with a net profit of 2.06 billion yuan, and marked the company’s first annual profit since it was founded in 2016.
Cambricon’s top five clients accounted for 94% of the company’s revenue in the first half of 2025, with the largest single customer contributing roughly 80%. Chinese media identifies ByteDance as the dominant buyer, with Caixin reporting the TikTok parent pre-ordered approximately 200,000 Siyuan 590 chips. Whether that concentration eased in subsequent quarters is unclear, but Alibaba is also expected to become a significant buyer as it expands domestic AI infrastructure.
In an adjacent space, Huawei is making strong progress.
It is tipped to lead China’s AI market with orders of its Ascend 950PR expected to grow demand for domestic alternatives to Nvidia by 60% this year. A huge amount of demand is based on DeepSeek’s integration with those chips via the AI firm’s newest V4 model. ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba are among the big names said to be “rushing to secure” them. Another factor is likely that the price of Nvidia B300 servers in China has nearly doubled due to rising demand.
Huawei has even pushed domestic usage for consumers. Its HarmonyOS, which it developed to replace Android altogether, now runs on 55 million smartphones.
Finally, on another related note: China’s national supercomputing centre in Shenzhen plans a CPU-only exascale system using 47,000 domestically built processors with no foreign reliance. But the industry is skeptical it can be done. That may be so but this is clearly the shape of the future.
First SK Hynix, now Samsung rakes in billions from AI demand
Following SK Hynix’s incredible earnings thanks to the AI boom, Samsung Electronics enjoyed similarly record highs as its memory business continued to soar, too.
Samsung’s chip division, which is a major producer of memory chips integral to AI systems, helped revenue jump around 70% to reach 133.9 trillion KRW, or $89.96 billion. Operating profit rose eight-fold (yes, 8X) to $41 billion on the back of this surge.
Like SK Hynix, Samsung isn’t producing significantly greater output of these chips, yet, but prices are rocketing thanks to constrained supply brought about by a demand for memory to satisfy the skyrocketing demands from AI.
In fact, Samsung joined the chorus of voices warning of an impending memory chip shortage. Customers are already placing orders for next year, even though the Korean firm is struggling to be able to fulfil current demand. The impact on the wider tech and electronics industry could last for years, as Tim Culpan noted.
There’s been plenty of controversy around the Lee family that controls Samsung—Lee Jae-yong was jailed in 2017 for corruption, which followed a family feud over a multi-billion dollar inheritance and that Apple copyright lawsuit—but Samsung’s recent growth has doubled their fortune to more than $45 billion.
China
AI startup MiroMind, founded by Chinese billionaire Chen Tianqiao, is splitting its China and US operations and setting up internal firewalls after regulatory scrutiny linked to Meta’s Manus deal link
Chinese early-stage funds are using parallel fund structures to attract US investors while navigating compliance limits around sensitive sectors link
DeepSeek is cutting prices for its new flagship model by up to 75% as competition intensifies in China’s AI market link
Xiaomi’s open-source MiMo-V2.5 and V2.5-Pro models is said to rank among the most efficient and affordable for agentic claw tasks link
Alibaba developed an AI model that detects early-stage colorectal cancer from CT scans with higher sensitivity than radiologists, according to its Damo Academy unit link
SenseTime launched SenseNova U1, an open-source visual AI model it says can generate and interpret images faster than top US systems link
DeepRoute.ai says more than 300,000 vehicles use its advanced driving system link
China halted new autonomous vehicle licences after Baidu Apollo Go robotaxis stopped in Wuhan and stranded passengers link
Xiaomi has delivered 650,000 electric vehicles two years after entering the market as it prepares a push into Europe link
The US ordered chip equipment makers including Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA to halt some shipments to China’s Hua Hong Semiconductor link
China-linked hackers used more than 100 malicious domains in phishing campaigns targeting journalists and opposition activists, according to Citizen Lab link
Tencent is said to have used Anthropic’s Claude to evaluate and fine-tune the company’s Hy3 model despite access restrictions on China-based companies link
US House Republicans are probing Airbnb and Anysphere over their use or testing of Chinese AI models link
Chinese hackers breached Cuba’s embassy in Washington to spy on diplomatic communications, according to Gambit Security link
Fake journalists and cyber spies targeted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) network after its China Targets investigation, according to ICIJ and Citizen Lab link
China threatened retaliation if the European Union proceeds with a proposed ban on Huawei equipment link
Wingtech faces delisting risk from the Shanghai Stock Exchange after an audit failure tied to its Nexperia control dispute link
Beijing banned drones within city limits from May 1, including sales and storage of drone equipment without police approval link
A Chinese court ruled companies cannot fire workers simply to replace them with AI link
Build American AI, a nonprofit linked to a super PAC bankrolled by executives at OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz, is funding a campaign to spread pro-AI messaging and stoke fears about China, according to Wired link
India
Nasdaq-listed Palo Alto Networks is buying India’s Portkey, an AI infrastructure security startup, for a reported $120-$140M, or roughly double its valuation in February when it raised $15M from Elevation Capital link
India became the largest user base for ChatGPT Images 2.0 within a week of launch, according to OpenAI link
Truecaller’s growth is slowing in India, its largest market, as downloads fell 16% in 2025, dragging global installs down 5% link
Digital insurance firm Acko is reportedly lining up a potential IPO to raise up to $350M at a valuation of about $2.5B link
Amazon India is expanding Amazon Now to 100 cities with more than 1,000 micro-fulfilment centres link
India is seeking access to Anthropic’s Mythos AI model for domestic companies working on critical infrastructure security link
Stock trading platform Sahi raised $33M from Accel Growth, Elevation Capital and Accel at a valuation of about $200M link
Fintech startup Oolka raised $14M in a funding round led by Accel, with Lightspeed and Z47 also participating link
Apple accused India’s competition regulator of overreach for demanding its financials in an iPhone app antitrust probe link
Calligo Technologies is reportedly in talks to raise $12M-$15M to develop its indigenous RISC-V chip business, which serves applications across AI, aerospace, and supercomputing link
Southeast Asia
Grab is introducing rides between Singapore and Malaysia, one of the world’s busiest land crossings, after a number of its fleet were among 300 taxi drivers to be issued with inaugural cross-border licences for the journey link
Robinhood secured in-principle approval to launch a brokerage service in Singapore link
Google is opening an applied AI lab in Vietnam link
Green SM, an increasingly popular taxi brand using EVs from Vietnam’s VinFast, is being investigated in Indonesia after one of its fleet caused a fatal train accident after it stalled on a level crossing link
You might have forgotten Bukalapak, but it just posted a 63% year-on-year revenue jump thanks to gaming link
The Philippines is one of two markets worldwide where Meta is experimenting with offering USDC payout for some content creators as it deliberates a jump back into blockchain-based payments link
Taiwan
A Taiwanese court sentenced former Tokyo Electron engineer Chen Li-ming to 10 years in prison for stealing proprietary data from TSMC link
Foxconn missed its lofty AI expectations even though first-quarter sales rose 57% to 251B yuan ($35B), which was below estimates link
TSMC sold its remaining Arm stake for about $231M after investing ahead of the British chip designer’s 2023 IPO link
Japan
Tokyo Electron cut ties with veteran executive Jay Chen after discovering links to Chinese startups developing rival chipmaking tools link
Bitbank launched a crypto-linked credit card that lets users pay bills with assets held on its exchange link
SoftBank plans to spin out and list AI and robotics firm Roze in the US at a valuation of up to $100B link
More banks joined syndication for SoftBank’s $40B bridge loan linked to its OpenAI investment link
Voice AI Verbex plans to move its global headquarters from Singapore to Japan by year-end as it targets the country’s ecommerce market link
South Korea
Shinhan Card partnered with Solana Foundation to test stablecoin payment systems on Solana link
Google plans to build an AI campus in Seoul, according to South Korea’s presidential office link
South Korean lawmakers are protesting against what they describe as US pressure over a legal case involving Coupang link
A South Korean court granted a stay on Bithumb’s six-month suspension pending a final ruling link
A UK court ordered Samsung to pay China’s ZTE a $392M lump sum after a patent trial link
Hong Kong
Uber is consolidating in Hong Kong by acquiring smaller rival FlyTaxi, a 13-year-old business specialising in regulated taxi rides, in an undisclosed deal link
Lightelligence surged 400% on its Hong Kong debut as investor demand for AI-linked photonics chips grows link
Goldman Sachs has apparently blocked its Hong Kong bankers from using Anthropic’s Claude on internal platforms link
Rest of Asia
North Korean hacking groups stole about $577M in crypto in 2026 through April, according to TRM Labs link
Sri Lanka disclosed another missing payment days after hackers stole $2.5M from its finance ministry link