Asia's tech news, weekly: April 30th 2024

Malaysian semicon moves, Seoul Vision 2030 Fund, Google's Taiwan R&D, Japan spacetech, Australia bets on quantum, Asia-Pac e-fraud, Vietnam tech aims, China's lunar mission...

• Malaysia: Gov't to build SE Asia's largest circuit design park, offering tax breaks, subsidies and visa fee exemptions to draw firms and investors in bid to break into high-end tech manufacturing

• South Korea: Seoul Metro Gov't advances ‘Seoul Vision 2030 Fund’ with plans to invest $939M and sights on additional fund-raise of $845M to hold edge in future technologies

• Vietnam: FPT and NVIDIA partner to invest $200M in AI facility, aiming for cloud computing R&D and introducing high school and university training and education for 30K students across 5 years

• Taiwan to establish its first overseas integrated circuit design training base in the Czech Republic, looking at September to commence operations

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"Researchers...reported a nearly 325% jump in malicious cyber activity targeting the Philippines during the first months of 2024, compared to levels at the end of 2023."

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• China: Major surveillance security loophole found in most Chinese-character typing apps, allowing keystrokes to be collected and decrypted

• Decarbonization Partners, Singapore's Temasek state fund and BlackRock partnership, close inaugural $1.40BN fund for late-stage investments in decarbonization tech startups targeting a net-zero era

• Space Law and Policy Conference 2024 set for May 30th with theme of 'To Orbit and Beyond: Challenges and Outlook for Space Law and Policy in Australia, New Zealand and the Global Context'

• SemiCon Southeast Asia 2024 event set for May 28-30 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, looking at all things semiconductor-related

Critical technologies, quarterly: Q1 2024

• Taiwan: Google opens 2nd hardware R&D facility, deepening ties with Taiwan's end-to-end technology supply chains

• China: 'Xiaohong' chip hits 504-qubit quantum computing milestone, the highest number of qubits in a superconducting quantum chip in the country

• Malaysia: Khazanah retirement fund, KWPD pension fund and Blue Chip Venture Capital join for $627M SEA startup-focused fund, part of the country's bid for global tech position into the future

• Japan's Astroscale publishes close-up image of space debris, 11 meters long, 4 meters diameter and weight of 3 tons, illustrating necessity of removal

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Vietnam: "Central to the work plan are ambitious targets, including the development of 48,000 digital technology enterprises across localities and the adoption of digital platforms by 60% of businesses in industrial parks..."

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• Australian National University researchers and Queensland's CQSola join on Au$2.25M project to speed commercialization of solar-to-hydrogen systems, incorporating NZ, US and German involvement

• Future Food Asia returns for 8th edition in May, with 11 agri-food startups pitching at conference in Singapore

• South Korea: SEMIFIVE and MetisX partner for 4nm-process memory accelerator chips, seeing opportunities in data center operations

• Japan's Mizuho Bank and Taiwan's Industrial Tech Research Institute ink major agreements on information exchange, startup matching and corporate connections

• China: Crew of three astronauts arrive at Tiangong space station following launch from Gobi desert Jiuquan spaceport, marking the 7th crewed mission to Tiangong

• Hong Kong: Germany's tozero GmbH circular economy battery startup takes overall win at EPiC 2024 elevator pitch competition, with sights on establishing Europe-based lithium-ion battery recycling

• China: Huawei to roll out MateBook Pro X laptop featuring Intel AI chipset running Huawei's Harmony OS and Pangu LLM

• Malaysia: Blue Chip Venture Capital to invest in more than 10 semiconductor industry firms with $209M fund, looking in part to bring China's semicon firms to Malaysia

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"India is in talks with several countries seeking partnerships for technical help on lithium processing... to bolster its nascent lithium mining and electric vehicle industries and avoid relying on China."

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• Australian gov't makes near $1BN investment in quantum tech firm, PsiQuantum, with sights on delivery of the country's first quantum computer

• Malaysia: Penang state's semiconductor sector to gain $100M investments from 3 China firms working in semicon packaging, equipment manufacturing and materials R&D

• Australia: University of Sydney awarded $18.3M federal grant over 4 years to establish research and commercialisation group for the country's quantum sector

• China: May 3rd launch approaches for Chang’e-6 launch to collect first set of lunar far-side samples, building on technical, engineering, scientific and communications tech of past missions

Surfshark global data breach map

• Malaysia: KL20 Action Plan available to download, 'Unleashing the Full Potential of Malaysia's Startup Ecosystem'

• Philippine Rice Research Institute partners Int'l Rice Research Institute for Drones4Rice project, aiming for standardized protocols to develop productivity and sustainability

• Misconfigured North Korean Internet cloud server provides a glimpse of animation outsourcing work, and of how foreign companies may unknowingly hire North Korean firms on IT projects

• FinTech Australia and Thai Fintech Association ink MOU around collaboration and promotion of fintech capabilities between Australia and Thailand

• Global Startup Pitch Competition applications close May 17th, seeking travel and tourism-related startups and ready-to-grow firms

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"Across APAC, digital channels account for 51% of overall fraud losses, surpassing physical fraud for the first time..."

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• India: Dhruva Space raised $9.6M Series A2 funding with plans for mass production facility for satellite-focused equipment

• Hong Kong: Brinc venture accelerator launches IGNIT3, a bespoke full-service token advisory program, to aid blockchain startups through the lifecycle of a token offering

• China: AIsphere text-to-video firm raised over $13M in Ant Group-led round just 2 months on from a similar raise, targeting catch-up to OpenAi Sora capabilities in 3-6 months

• Philippines: Higala secures near $5M with instant payment system for thrift banks, rural banks and microfinance, a low-cost alternative to traditional banking industry's prohibitive switching and on-ramp fee

• Philippines: Pomelo 'send now, pay later' fintech raises $35M Series A, building out Mastercard partnership with international remittances that allow a user to also build credit rating

• Available now: 'India's Web3 Landscape Report 2023' from Hashed Emergent

• India: Capria Ventures early-stage investment firm closes India Opportunity Fund at near $19M

• Online now: 'The great potential of India-Australia quantum collaboration'

• Malaysia: China's Ant International unveils Digital Business Centre plans for Malaysia, expecting to hire 500 by next year for ‘huge operations centre’ with global tasking

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Australia: "Holding social media companies accountable for seriously harmful misinformation and disinformation on their platforms has never been more important..."

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• 3rd Malaysia-China Committee Meeting on Science, Tech & Innovation Cooperation sees commitment to research collaboration in key areas including space tech, AI, blockchain and advanced materials

• Hong Kong Securities & Futures Professionals Association calls for independent self-regulatory organizations to oversee HK's digital assets sector, rather than SFC

• Philippines: Gov't inks agreement with Plug&Play for development of national innovation platform to grow startups, aiming to develop 40 firms annually

• Vietnam: South Korea's Woori Financial Group opens DINNOlab - Digital Innovation Lab - Vietnam Center in Hanoi, part of Woori startup discovery and development program

The State of Southeast Asia 2024 Survey Report

• South Korea: Busan city's digital assets exchange plans delayed as consortium establishment payment is missed, preventing platform build, and staff hiring and training

• 9 Australian and New Zealand tech startups that collectively raised $60.3M in the week past

• Chinese nationals barred from Hong Kong's spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, even though the 3 offering firms are mainland offshore asset managers with products tradable in Yuan

• India Australia Rapid Innovation & Startup Expansion - RISE - Accelerator unveils 15 startups selected for the program's first edition, focusing on circular economy solutions

• South Korea: Ju Jae-Young AI Co unveils magnet-based wall-climbing robot for metal structure inspections, integrating AI-driven image processing

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"Careless speech is a new type of harm created by large language models...that poses cumulative, long-term risks to science, education and the development of shared social truths in democratic societies"

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In wider-world technology news:

» Zap Energy, backed by Bill Gates and others, hits fusion energy milestone, claiming energy production at a fraction of complexity and cost of other systems

» Brazil's Nubank, Latin America's largest neobank with 80M customers, to launch crypto withdrawal services for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana

» Stripe payments giant moves carefully back into crypto market, now allowing customers to take crypto payments in USDC stablecoins via Solana, Ethereum and Polygon

» Google vs election misinformation: "...post-ad surveys showed that the share of individuals who could correctly identify a manipulation technique increased by as much as 5% after viewing a prebunking video."

» NVIDIA acquires Run:ai artificial intelligence hardware workload management startup in $700M deal, providing scheduling and optimization across multiple tools and locations

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"Automated traffic makes up almost half of all internet traffic worldwide... Concerningly, bad bots alone account for nearly a third of all traffic, at 32%..."

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