Asia's tech news, weekly: April 4th 2023
South Korean chipmaking, Alibaba's logistics IPO, India-Taiwan space-tech, Australian ad-tech, Singapore and driverless vehicles, DPRK cloud-based crypto mining...
• "$368 billion, 20,000 jobs over 20 years: How AUKUS could ‘fundamentally transform’ Australia"
• Philippines: Advance gains $16M pre-A with salary-on-demand platform, and steps into Vietnam market with acquisition of BravoHR, diversifying beyond core employee focus
• India's SatCom Industry Association and Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute ink MOU to collaborate on common platform for the space industries of both countries
"If users don’t have to visit sites directly anymore, those sites’ business models, based on advertising and subscriptions, will collapse. But if those sites can no longer produce content then AI tools won’t have...material..."
• Pinduoduo Android hack of versions hosted on 3rd-party sites: Why is non-Store downloading important? It's the only way for many users to get the app.
• Hackers including North Korean APT groups found to be renting online cloud-based services to mine crypto, producing 'clean' bitcoin minus blockchain-based connections used in law enforcement tracing
• Japan to gain from critical minerals trade agreement with US with electric vehicles tax credit for Japanese automakers on EVs made with metals processed in Japan
• Australia: Bill introduced to parliament proposing a licensing regime for cryptocurrency exchanges, bringing them in line with other financial service providers in the country
• Philippines: Hong Kong's HGC Global Communications partners Amsterdam Internet Exchange for new internet exchange in Manila, creating new internet access infrastructure options
• China: Cainiao, Alibaba’s $20BN logistics arm, sets sights on Hong Kong IPO, the first of Alibaba's 6 recently-calved business units to go public
"CFTC is charging Binance with violating laws around futures offerings, illegal off-exchange commodity options, failing to register as a futures commissions merchant..." and more across KYC and AML activities.”
• Australia: Herik Labs takes Entrepreneur of the Year and People's Choice awards at Ventures ilab Accelerator Pitch Night with highly-efficient 3D-printed rocket engine
• South Korea is forecast to increase spending on advanced chipmaking equipment by 41.5% to $21 billion in 2024
• Binance: A look at 7 key items in the CFTC lawsuit against the company
• Australia: Cauldron secures $10.5M seed funding with animal-free meat and dairy products, with sights on creating Asia-Pac's largest network of precision fermentation facilities
• Indonesia: Dagangan rural e-commerce firm looks to finalize $25-30M financing round, focusing on minimizing costs for everyday necessities
• Japan: Alibaba Cloud to open blockchain 'laboratory' in Shibuya to focus on Japanese game developers working in Web3
"It almost doesn’t matter if this is deliberate sabotage by Musk or the blundering stupidity of a clueless idiot. The upshot is the same: Twitter is dying."
• Australia: Latitude Financial consumer finance firm confirms cyberattack, with details of 14M customers stolen in potentially Australia's biggest data breach
• GPT & AI: "A platform that can mimic humans’ writing with no commitment to the truth is a gift for those who benefit from disinformation. We need to regulate its use now."
• Twitter lost 46% of its Australian advertising dollars following Elon Musk takeover, dropping from $7.3M to $3.9M in just the final 3 months of 2021
• India: HCL Technologies expecting to double semiconductor manufacturing and services in 3-4 years, with chip fabrication unit for consumer durables set for operation within 2 years
• Australia: MADU, helping online publishers monetise visual content by turning photos into revenue-generating items by recognising products and and creating affiliate links
• Singapore: An intro to Little Wallet, a Tech in Asia Startup Arena 2022 winner providing an all-in-one money management platform for families
"Binance hid substantial links to China for several years, contradicting executives’ claims that the crypto exchange left the country after a clampdown...in late 2017, according to...company documents..."
• India: Gov't identifies 117 apps for possible ban over sending data of Indian citizens to foreign destinations
• Singapore: SMRT Strides, arm of the largest public transport operator, inks MOU with China's WeRide to test autonomous driving solutions in Singapore
• Thailand: An overview of True Digital Park's Startup Booster Program, an incubator offering mentoring, connections and a 1-year smart visa type S for entrepreneurs to stay and work in Thailand
And in other news…
» Firefox browser developer, Mozilla, announces $30M MozillaAI startup with hopes it 'will build a trustworthy and independent open-source AI ecosystem'
» UK government drops plans for NFT made by the Royal Mint, likely in part due to concerns over Terra/UST collapse
» Belgium's State Security Service reportedly scrutinizing Huawei over espionage concerns relating to EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels
» AI experts, including Musk, issue open letter calling for 6-month pause in developing systems more powerful than GPT-4, citing risks around manageability and social impacts
» Global Media Forum is looking for news media startups working - pitch applications close April 17th
» AWS European Defence Accelerator launches, building on UK edition, seeking startups using AWS services to develop solutions for defence organisation challenges
More of Asia’s tech news headlines:
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