Welcome back to Asia Tech Review, your curated digest to keep up to date with tech news across Asia.
There’s no better job than reporting, and reporting on topics that don’t get the attention they deserve. I remember when Rest of World launched in 2020 with its founder, the daughter of a major tech executive, promising to spend as much as $60 million to fund it. The tough reality of media has caught up now though, as we explore today.
To keep up with our issues, follow us on LinkedIn or WhatsApp. Please do share Asia Tech Review with people you know who want to get smart about Asia tech.
For news as it happens, follow ATR Bulletin, our real-time news site that keeps you in the know.
Rest of World could shut shop in early 2027
There are few media outlets that cover technology and the digital world in Asia, and the list may be about to lose another member based on reports that Rest of World may close down at the end of January.
Semafor reports that founder Sophie Schmidt emailed the publication’s donors, which have helped fund it since its launch six years ago, to explain that it has “begun the search for a new institutional home.” Talks with potential acquirers are ongoing, but Schmidt is preparing to close the outlet at the end of January.
Rest of World has been impacted by a decline in traffic from search, social media and other digital channels. A number of key personnel have left recently, including former editor-in-chief Anup Kaphle who exited in March. At the same time, its editorial focus has redoubled around core topics like AI and China with less of a focus on under-served regions like Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America which it came out of the gate covering in detail back in 2020.
Semafor explains more:
Around the beginning of the second Trump administration, Rest of World saw a sharp decline in online web traffic, prompting concern from its leadership and a scramble to hold onto its audiences. The organization reprioritized Western readers in an attempt to sharpen its connection with the audience most likely to read its content, and chose to focus coverage on regions it believed remained true to its mission but would more easily appeal to American readers, like China.
(Ironically, Schmidt’s father, Eric, played a key role in making Google the giant it is today.)
Surprisingly, Rest of World didn’t make a dent in video reporting despite its lucrative war chest. Even in just six years, you’d imagine that the publication would look a lot different if it were to be launched today. A smaller team, more interactive approach and other strategies might have made it leaner and punching harder.
I know well that building a tech-focused media business covering topics and regions outside of Silicon Valley is a tough challenge. It’s one that’s got harder since I left The Ken in 2022. Honestly, I don’t know how I’d cover Southeast Asia or the wider Asian region in today’s era in which AI dominates the discourse, with a venture capital winter across much of the region.
The Ken just turned 10 years old and the difference between it and challenger media is the business model. Rest of World didn’t venture into subscriptions, but it would have been a tough challenge. Free-to-read media struggle to pivot into paid content because often they keep some articles available to read to retain traffic, awareness and try to upsell readers.
The Ken’s open secret is a hard paywall. You know what you get, and what you won’t get. Most people will bounce at a paywall that gives no freebies beyond a small preview of each article, but those who do pay are strongly incentivised. Offering quarterly, six-monthly and annual subscriptions only means that churn is less of an issue than weekly, monthly or even daily options.
Rest of World has done valuable work over the last six years, and I’ll be keenly watching to see where it finds a new home. Media has always been a tough industry, but it’s never been harder than it is today.
Deals
Toyota is planning to deploy 400,000 robots under a $6.4 billion annual investment programme, while its Walden Robotics spinout raised $300 million at a $1.1 billion valuation in July [FT]
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has selected sites in Malaysia for $50 billion of planned technology investment, including data centres [Bloomberg]
Markets
SK Hynix plans a 16 trillion won ($12 billion) special dividend, returning 80% of its gains from the Kioxia stake sale to shareholders [Bloomberg]
Meanwhile, SK Hynix has scrapped a planned US listing for its Solidigm unit after shareholder opposition and regulatory scrutiny over minority investor protections [Bloomberg]
Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing raised HK$9.9 billion ($1.3 billion) in Hong Kong’s largest listing in almost two months, even as AI infrastructure stocks face a volatile market [Bloomberg]
China’s CSI Artificial Intelligence Index has fallen nearly 40% from its June peak as investors question AI profits and US market weakness hits Chinese chip suppliers [Nikkei Asia]
Earnings
Chinese AI chipmaker Cambricon reported third-quarter net profit of 1.4 billion yuan ($210 million), up 147.7%, as revenue more than doubled to 3.5 billion yuan ($525 million) [SCMP]
AI and Chips
SK Hyper, SK Group’s data centre arm, is seeking funding for a 15-gigawatt South Korean buildout through 2035, with its first 5-gigawatt phase estimated to cost $350 billion [Bloomberg]
South Korea plans to invest $1 trillion in Gwangju to turn the southwestern city into a technology hub and spread AI-led growth beyond Seoul [Nikkei Asia]
Asia-Pacific AI agent software revenue is forecast to rise more than 14-fold to $11.2 billion by 2030, from $782 million this year, as Chinese companies push automation into office and industrial work [SCMP]
China has approved DeepSeek and MiniMax AI models for overseas deployment as Beijing prepares export controls for certain AI tools and services [Bloomberg]
inDrive is partnering with Pony.ai and Nvidia to test robotaxis in Kazakhstan from the first half of 2027 [TechCrunch]
Moonshot AI launches Kimi K3.1 Pro, an open-weight model with a 1 million-token context window and new coding, 3D creation, financial-research and agent features [Kimi]
But Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3.1 Pro faces questions over purported influencer instructions that discouraged disclosure of paid partnerships [VentureBeat]
Moonshot AI says it stripped cyber-offensive data from Kimi K3.1 Pro’s training and reinforcement-learning environments while keeping its general coding skills [Reuters]
Asia’s AI data-centre boom is meeting a tougher public market as stalled IPOs, volatile debuts, debt costs and construction delays test expansion plans [Nikkei Asia]
ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba are recruiting more forward-deployed engineers to help customers turn AI models into working products, with pay packages nearing 1 million yuan ($149,739) a year [SCMP]
Crypto
Indian exchange CoinDCX lost 15.99 million USDT after an automated system failed to move funds from deposit wallets compromised in its July 2025 hack [The Block]
Malaysia’s and Thailand’s central banks have joined Singapore’s BLOOM initiative to develop cross-border payments using regulated stablecoins and tokenised bank deposits [The Block]
Policy
A failed deal between Ramp and rival Airwallex has prompted Ramp’s politically connected investors to press Washington to investigate Airwallex’s alleged ties to the Chinese government [The Information]
The US Federal Communications Commission has blocked two devices containing HiSilicon surveillance chips, its first use of new powers targeting foreign surveillance technology [Reuters]
The Trump administration has proposed tighter scrutiny of US investments in Chinese advanced chips, AI, biotechnology and other sensitive sectors [Financial Times]
Shein has agreed to pay $100 million to settle a US Federal Trade Commission investigation into delivery delays and customer complaints [Reuters]
Malaysia may widen its ban on civil servants using Google’s Waze over concerns around government information and personal data [Bloomberg]
In other news:
Tata Electronics is exploring glass-based enclosures and specialised metal components as it looks beyond iPhone casings and moves into higher-value Apple manufacturing in India [Economic Times]
CATL and BAIC plan a battery-swapping system for 1 million vehicles, with BAIC adding compatible models to CATL’s Choco-Swap network [Bloomberg]