Uber eyes Korea's Baemin as Asia ambitions return
Plus Malaysia lands a rare tech IPO and a $240M exit.
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After Uber sold its China and Southeast Asia businesses long ago, Asia felt like an afterthought. But now the US ride-hailing giant looks poised to get serious about the region again. We also have news of an AI IPO and AI-related exit in Malaysia.
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Uber’s Delivery Hero stake could reopen the door to Asia
Uber is about to get more serious about Asia again after it became the largest shareholder of Delivery Hero, the Germany-based company that operates Foodpanda, Korea’s Baemin and other food delivery brands across the world.
The US firm acquired shares from Prosus, once Delivery Hero’s largest shareholder but now forced to sell for anti-trust reasons, to take its holdings to 19.5% with an additional 5.6% in share options. Uber said it doesn’t plan to increase its ownership, but it would be obligated to make a takeover bid if its shareholdings reached 30%, according to German regulations. Uber’s stake, estimated at €1.7 billion by Reuters, means it will be involved in budget, M&A and other parts of Delivery Hero’s strategy.
The situation with Prosus gives Uber the opportunity to take a major position within a rival business, and there could be immediate implications. Not only does this position give Uber insight into Delivery Hero’s global business, which spans Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East via 11 brands, it could put it in the driving seat to acquire Baemin, the Korean delivery giant that’s reportedly on sale for around $5.4 billion.
Baemin is a big deal. The company is a money-making machine unlike so many other delivery businesses worldwide.
The company’s revenue has more than doubled from around $1.5 billion in 2021 to more than $3.4 billion in 2025, depending on the variable exchange for the Korean won.
It’s also highly-profitable. Delivery Hero has taken around $1 billion in dividends since it bought Baemin (via parent company Woowa) in 2019 in a deal worth around $4 billion.
David Oh, who led investor relations at Woowa before transitioning to Delivery Hero Asia, offered up an insightful comparison on LinkedIn:
A food delivery platform [Baemin] generating ~$400M in annual operating profit — peaking closer to $470M in 2023 — is a genuinely rare asset globally. For context, Grab’s entire deliveries segment, spanning six Southeast Asian countries, generated $196M in Adjusted EBITDA in FY2024, and $285M in FY2025. Baemin, operating in a single market, comfortably outearns one of the world’s most recognized delivery platforms on an absolute profit basis.
Delivery Hero has been offloading assets to pay off debts of around $3 billion. In recent times, it has closed Foodpanda in several markets, including Thailand, and agreed to sell the Taiwan-based business to Grab for $600 million, having seen a deal with Uber collapse a year earlier due to competition laws. Selling Baemin fits that pattern, but the question has been to who?
Uber is reportedly part of a bid that’s fronted by Naver, the internet platform company that offers messaging, payments, commerce and content. The union of the two companies has plenty of synergies, particularly since Uber is active in Korea but it shuttered its Uber Eats service in 2019. Uber once had a sprawling business across Asia, but after exiting China and Southeast Asia, it is a patchwork relic from older times. Now, as a profitable business, it appears to be interested in the region once again.
It’s not a done deal, though. DoorDash and Alibaba are reportedly among the other bidders for Baemin.
The deal will be an important one, since it will crown the largest rival to Coupang, which is said to be responsible for eating into Baemin’s profits, which have declined in the last three years. Uber’s new position inside Delivery Hero looks like it will give it the advantage it may need to acquire Baemin and revive its Asia strategy.
Malaysia sees $90M chip IPO and battery startup sold for $240M
Malaysia had a rare tech IPO after SkyeChip became the first chip design company to list on the Bursa Malaysia stock exchange.
SkyeChip raised around $90 million from the float, the largest IPO fundraise in the country for 16 years. The IPO was oversubscribed by more than 95 times, and that appetite for the stock saw its share price rocket 4x.
We’ve seen a lot of listings linked to AI and high-performance computing, and SkyeChip can be added to the list. It designs integrated circuits which are licensed to customers for integration into their chips. Its specialisation is silicon IP and products, including application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).
Malaysia is the world’s sixth-largest exporter of semiconductors, and the government has bet big on the chip industry for its future. It signed a $250 million deal with design giant ARM last year. That gave it crucial IP with a target to create 10,000 new jobs and boost its industry through upskilling. The chip industry in Malaysia has traditionally focused more on lower-skilled areas like production.
Examples like SkyeChip, which was founded in 2020 by two semiconductor veterans, will go some way to helping the country’s chip industry become more sophisticated.
In related news, TDK announced it will pay $240 million to acquire Malaysian battery startup Linergy Power to expand its capacity for energy storage in response to the boom from AI. The Japanese firm already owned 25% of Linergy, which was only founded in December 2024.
In other interesting news you won’t want to miss:
A grey market for AI credits is emerging in India after participants at Y Combinator’s Bengaluru Startup School began reselling discounted access to services from AWS, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic [The Economic Times]
Morgan Stanley has issued special devices to its entire Hong Kong investment banking team for use in mainland China, reflecting growing concerns over data compliance [FT]
Japan will issue guidelines encouraging startups to pursue acquisitions as a viable alternative to IPOs [Nikkei]
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son’s more than $60 billion bet on OpenAI is reportedly raising concerns among some insiders over his growing devotion to CEO Sam Altman. [Bloomberg]
Vietnam has enacted one of the world’s first comprehensive AI laws, requiring model classification by risk level, disclosed chatbot use and deepfakes labels [Nikkei]
Moonshot AI plans to overhaul its corporate structure in line with Beijing’s rules ahead of a Hong Kong IPO [Bloomberg]